Chapter IX: Act IV

SC. 1. "Belike you thought our love would last too long
If it were chain'd together."

For 'it' I think we should read _we_.

* * * * *

SC. 2. "First she denied you had in him no right."

This structure seems strange, but it was in use:--

"You may deny that God was not the cause."
Rich. III. i. 3.

"Fortune forbid my outside have not charm'd her."
Twelfth Night, ii. 2.

* * * * *

"Here go. The desk! the purse! Sweet, now make haste."

For 'Sweet,' which is rather free in the mouth of Dromio, Collier's folio reads _Swift_; we might also conjecture _Speed_. The truth, however, seems to be that _mistress_ has been omitted after 'Sweet.'

* * * * *

"A devil in an everlasting garment hath him."

There is something evidently lost here, riming with 'steel.' It may have been _by the heels_, or _laid by the heels_, alluding to 'Tartar Limbo'; but _still_, or _at his will_, seems preferable.

* * * * *

"A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough."

For 'fairy' Theobald proposed _fury_, and we have "O, my good lord, deliver me from these _furies_" (_i.e._ bailiffs).--Massinger, Fatal Dowry, v. 1. "Fiends, _fairies_, hags that fight in beds of steel."--Peel, Battle of Aleazar, where Mr. Dyce reads _furies_. In Jonson's Poetaster (iii. 1) the Lictors are termed _furies_.

* * * * *

SC. 3. "Master, if you do, expect spoon-meat, or bespeak a long
spoon."

For 'or' we should read _and_, as usual. Mr. Dyce reads _so_.

* * * * *

SC. 4. "In verity you did; my bones bear witness
That since have felt the vigour of his rage."

The change of pronouns is so frequent that I think it would be simpler to read _your_ for 'his' than as is usually done make 'my bones,' etc. an _aside_.