they are admitted to be Shakspere's own. But they leave an awkwardness in the text, which suggested to Johnson that they had been misplaced, and ought to have been inserted at the end of Clarence's last speech, instead of the beginning, immediately after "relent and save your souls," where they are introduced in the Folio. I have no doubt that he was right, and that subsequent editors, in endeavouring to improve upon the proposed arrangement, have spoiled it. Johnson seems, indeed, to have thought it necessary to interpose an exclamation from one of the murderers, which I do not think is wanted, and which I omit. This being left out, the whole passage will stand thus : "2. What shall we do? Clar. Relent and save your souls. 1. Relent! no 'tis cowardly and womanish. Come thou on my side and entreat for me. If two such murderers as yourselves came to you, 2. Look behind you, my Lord." This reading is exactly the reading of the Folio, except that the added lines are transferred from 1. 254 (following 'Relent and save your souls') to 1. 264 (following 'A begging Prince' &c.) ; that a note of interrogation has been inserted after 'life;' and that the full stop after 'distress' has been changed to the sign of an unfinished sentence. The second murderer, who has begun to relent, seeing the other preparing to stab Clarence from behind, interrupts him, and tries to put him on his guard. No other change seems to me to be wanted. But this is another instance of too little care, rather than too much, on the part of the editor-if indeed there was any editor in the business. This brings us to the end of the first Act: in which the total number of lines is 1062, and the number of these which have suffered alteration of one kind or another is a little more than 300. Among these the only alterations which I see any reason to think Shakspere could not have intended to make are those nineteen which I have noticed. If we should examine the others, we might probably find that the number of those which there is reason to think he might have intended is larger. But it will be better to go through with these before we enter upon that question. 20. II. i. 5. "And now in peace my soul shall part from heaven, The Folio reads: "And more to peace my soul shall part to heaven I think we may assume that Shakspere could not have intended to change in for to in the first line. But as in the same line from had to be changed to to before 'heaven;' and it is possible that he may have meant to substitute at for in, before 'peace;' it is easy to suppose some confusion in the directions, that would account for such an error of the press. 21. II. i. 7. "Rivers and Hastings take each other's hand." Here we find in the Folio an important variation, evidently deliberate and intentional, yet evidently wrong; and therefore a case in point. The Folio substitutes, "Dorset and Rivers take each other's hand." Now, as Dorset had had no quarrel with his uncle Rivers, and as the immediately subsequent dialogue makes it certain that Rivers and Hastings were the persons really addressed, we may surely conclude that such an alteration cannot have proceeded from any one who knew the relations of the dramatis persona,-therefore not from Shakspere of all men. But though I cannot doubt that this variation was something more than an accident of the press,—that it represents something which was intended by somebody, I do very much doubt whether the alteration as it stands was that which the alterer intended. The mistake is, in fact, too palpable to be imputed to any man of ordinary intelligence who was paying as much attention to the meaning as he must be supposed to have done when making a deliberate improvement in another man's work-more especially if he knew that the work was William Shakspere's. Indeed, it is scarcely more possible to imagine our supposed corrector making such an alteration than Shakspere himself. It is far easier to imagine that a line has dropped out in the printing, or that a correction had been begun in the MS. and left incomplete. Either is possible; but the accident in printing is the more probable, because we know otherwise that it is a very common one. Suppose the corrected passage stood thus in the copy sent to press : "Dorset and Rivers, Hastings, Buckingham, This would have fitted the place quite well, and left no difficulty. The omission in printing of the last half of one line and the first half of the next is, we know, an accident very liable to occur, and as we have no reason to suppose that any one of the nature of an editor had an opportunity of seeing the printed sheets before they were settled, the occurrence of such an accident here would explain the whole thing. The corrector had sent his copy to the press free from error: the error introduced there he knew nothing of. Of course I do not imagine that the words which I have supplied were those really written between the lines of the corrected copy. But I do think that they must have been words to that effect. 22. II. i. 19. "Nor your son Dorset; Buckingham, nor you." The Folio reads you for your. A misprint. Buc. And in good time here comes the noble Duke." So the passage stands in the Quarto. In the Folio it is printed Here comes Sir Richard Ratcliffe, and the Duke. Here the alteration in the stage-direction was no doubt intended. Sir Richard Ratcliffe is described by Sir T. More in his history as one "whose service the Protector specially used in that counsel" [the murder of the Lords at Pomfret] "and the execution of such lawless enterprises, as a man who had been long secret with him," &c. He had an important part in the action of the play, though he scarcely speaks a dozen lines, all through. Shakspere probably thought it advisable to bring him and his relation to Richard into prominence, that when he appears presently in the exercise of his office the spectators might know who he was. Therefore, though he is a mute in this scene, he was to come in with Richard; and 'Ratcliffe,' or 'Sir Richard Ratcliffe,' was written in the margin, meaning it to be added to the stage direction, Enter Glocester.' The printer or the transcriber (for we do not know in what shape the copy went to the press) mistook it for an insertion meant for the text, and thrust it into Buckingham's speech; where it disorders the metre and does not come in at all naturally. Ratcliffe's name has not been mentioned before he comes only as an attendant of the Duke he does not come to say anything: and why should his name be put first? Only for the verse probably. I believe the corrector intended the text of the Quarto to remain as it is; and the stage-direction to be "Enter Gloster and Sir Richard Ratcliffe." 23a. II. i. 56. "If I unwittingly or in my rage." The Folio reads 'unwillingly,' an ordinary misprint. 24. II. i. 57. "Have ought committed that is hardly borne By any in this presence." The Folio reads "To any in this presence." A reading which might perhaps be defended: though I take it for another misprint. 25. The next passage requires more consideration.. II. i. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. "First madam I entreat true peace of you, Which I will purchase with my duteous service; If ever any grudge were lodged between us; In the Folio the first four lines are unaltered; but in place of the last three we find : : "Of you and you, Lord Rivers and of Dorset, Here the Cambridge editors adhere to the Quarto; rejecting the new line altogether, as due to the supposed corrector, and not incorporable with the uncorrupted text of Shakspere. The line, "Of you Lord Woodville, and Lord Scales of you," which "the corrector," they say, "intended to follow line 66, is placed in the Folio after line 67. We have not introduced this line into the text, because Shakspere would not have introduced it after line 66 as it stands in the Quarto, nor have altered that line as it is altered in the Folio." (Note vii., p. 641.) If this can be well made out, we have here conclusive evidence of the corrector's hand: an alteration which Shakspere cannot be supposed to have authorised, and yet which cannot be attributed to the printer for though printers often miss a line out by accident, they never put one in. may But it seems to me that the passage as it stands in the Quarto required some alteration, and that a line must have dropped out: for as it stands, two persons are spoken of as all. Addressing Rivers and Gray, Richard would have said, not all, but both. What have been the form of the omitted line, it is of course impossible to say. But it is not likely, as the editors justly observe, that Shakspere would have allowed two lines of exactly the same form to stand together. This, therefore, he avoided by making a change in the form of the first; introducing at the same time a third name, which removes the objection to the word 'all.' We have only to |