Anne, and that no change was intended in that, I hold to be certain. But no inference can be drawn from this as to the capacity of the corrector; for it is plainly no correction, but an ordinary accident of the press. The printer had missed out the whole of Anne's last halfline speech. The reader (or whoever in those days was charged with correcting the first proof), finding Richard's name prefixed to two successive speeches, thus— "Ann. All men, I hope live so. Rich. Vouchsafe to wear this ring. Rich. Look, how this ring encompasseth," &c., struck out one of them, and (as it happened) he struck out the first. If I may trust Booth's reprint, the state of the type bears traces of what occurred, for the word 'Vouchsafe' does not range with the other lines. 9. I. ii. 234. "The bleeding witness of her hatred by." The Folio reads my instead of her. In this case the true reading is not quite so indisputable; because the dead body of Henry was not so much the 'witness' as the motive or ground of Anne's hatred of Richard, whereas it was really the witness of Richard's hatred of her father-in-law. I suspect, indeed, that the reading of the Quarto represents Shakspere's meaning; but the alteration is one which might suggest itself to any intelligent inattentive reader, and cannot therefore be fairly laid to the charge of the corrector. 10. I. iii. 17. "Here come the lords of Buckingham and Darby." "Here comes the Lord of Buckingham and Derby." In this case, again, I have little doubt that the Quarto gives the true reading; and that Shakspere would not have made any such alteration. But could any intelligent critic have done so? For we must not forget that whoever made the corrections for the Folio was a good writer and no fool. I think he was not answerable in this case for anything more than overlooking a misprint. We have no means of knowing what edition he made his corrections in, but, unless it was one of the two first Quartos, the line in his copy ran thus: "Here comes the Lords of Buckingham and Darby." If he failed to observe the error the printer would take the liberty of correcting what would seem an obvious blunder, and the printer was just as likely to correct it by putting 'Lords' into the singular as 'comes' into the plural. 11. I. iii. 63. "The King, of his own royal disposition Which in your outward actions shows itself Though the alteration made in the Folio in the last two lines is a very considerable one, and might therefore at first sight appear to be certainly intentional and deliberate, I am inclined to think that it was really accidental. The construction of the sentence, it will be observed, is irregular; and the irregularity (which, though natural enough in an eager speaker, does not seem to be wanted for any dramatic purpose) might naturally have recommended it for correction. "The King, of his own royal disposition . . . . makes him [i. e. the King] to send," &c. : the meaning being that the royal disposition of the King makes him to send. But though this part of the sentence would have borne correction so well,-I am inclined myself to think that it still needs some,-the alteration made in the Folio does not touch it. The irregularity is left as it was, and the correction is confined to the last two lines, which are condensed into one, but not at all improved by the condensation. "Makes him to send that he may learn the ground" is the reading of the Folio, omitting the concluding words. It is difficult to see the motive of such an alteration as this, whoever made it, and I suspect that it has arisen from a misunderstanding by the printer of the directions in the copy. If the manuscript or corrected Quarto which was sent to the press could be produced, I should expect to find in it directions for an alteration such as that suggested by Pope, and adopted, with an improvement, by Hanmer and Capell : "Makes him to send that he may learn the ground Of your ill-will, and thereby may remove it." 12. I. iii. 113. "What threat you me with telling of the King? I will avouch in presence of the King. 'Tis time to speak. My pains are quite forgot." Here the Folio omits the second line altogether; and, though a slight change is introduced into the third, to save the grammar, which had been disordered by the omission, I am inclined to think that the omission itself was an accident. The change, 'avouch't' for 'avouch,' may have been introduced by the reader or editor, merely to make sense. But a new line has at the same time been added, which, as the Cambridge editors adopt it, I presume they do not include among those which cannot be ascribed to Shakspere. This line I suppose to have been inserted in a copy (containing the line omitted in the Folio) which was sent to the printer; and I suppose, both the loss of the missing line and the insertion of the ''t' in that which followed, to have been the work of the printing-office, no other corrector having seen or had anything to do with it. If my supposition be correct there is nothing here to throw light upon the character of the corrector. When all was done, the whole passage stood in the Folio as follows: "What? threat you me with telling of the King? I will avouch't in presence of the King. I dare adventure to be sent to the Tower. 'Tis time to speak. My pains are quite forgot." But I have no doubt that in printing the first three lines as they stand in the Quarto, and inserting the line which was added in the Folio, the Cambridge editors have restored the passage to the shape in which Shakspere intended it to stand. 13. I. iii. 160. "Which of you trembles not, that looks on me? The only alteration made in this passage (in which the awkwardness of the expression might seem to have invited more) is the substitution in the second line of am for being: "If not that I am Queen, you bow like subjects," where certainly 'being' seems to me the likelier reading; though it can hardly be said with confidence that 'am' is inadmissible, or that Shakspere may not for some reason have preferred it. At any rate, it is one of those slight changes which easily make themselves in the process of printing. The meaning is clear enough, but the wording (though not altogether unlike the style in which Queen Elizabeth sometimes expressed herself) is so unusual as to provoke conjectural emendation. 14. I. iii. 301. "And say poor Margaret was a prophetess." The Folio prints 'poor Margaret' within a parenthesis, which is undoubtedly wrong. It is certain that Shakspere would not have made that change. But would any corrector have done so who understood English? Clearly it is evidence of too little editorial care, not too much. 15. I. iii. 309. “Qu. I never did her any to my knowledge." Here again the Folio is undoubtedly wrong in giving this speech to Mar., that is, old Queen Margaret, who has just made her exit, and about whom they are talking. But there can be as little doubt that it was a mere error of press or pen. The nine preceding womanspeeches had had Mar. prefixed, and the transcriber or printer had not got over the habit of inserting it. 16. I. iii. 327. "Clarence whom I indeed have laid in darkness." The Folio reads who for whom (another printer's, rather than cor rector's, mistake), and cast for laid; a change which Shakspere himself would naturally have made when he observed that the same word had been used in the preceding line in a different sense. "The secret mischiefs that I set abroach I lay unto the grievous charge of others." 17. I. iii. 332. "Now they believe me, and withal whet me Here the Folio makes two alterations : "Now they believe it, and withal whet me The reason for preferring it to me in the first line is obvious. That there is some reason for supposing that Shakspere would not, but that another man might, have substituted Dorset for Vaughan, is possible; but I do not myself see any. 18. I. iv. 233. "Tell him when that our princely father York The third line is omitted by the Folio altogether; a fact which, if done on purpose, would certainly look like the work of a very injudicious corrector. But it is not like the way in which editorial mis-judgment commonly acts; whereas the dropping out of a whole line is one of the ordinary accidents of the press, where there is no editor to look after it. I. iv. 253. 19. "2. What shall we do? [263 in Globe] Cla. Relent and save your souls. 1. Relent, tis cowardly and womanish. Cla. Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish. O if thy eye be not a flatterer Come thou on my side, and entreat for me, Here, between Clarence's answer to the second murderer and the first murderer's reply, five new lines are inserted in the Folio, and |