NOTE VII.

[I. 4. 255–264.] This passage, including the lines immediately preceding, stands thus in the first Quarto, which is followed by the rest, substantially:

‘2 What shall we doe?

Cla. Relent, and saue your soules.

1 Relent, tis cowardly and womanish.

Cla. Not to relent, is beastly, sauage, diuelish,

My friend, I spie some pitty in thy lookes:

Oh if thy eye be not a flatterer,

Come thou on my side, and intreat for me,

A begging Prince, what begger pitties not?’

It is thus amplified in the Folios:

‘2 What shall we do?

Clar. Relent, and saue your soules:

Which of you, if you were a Princes Sonne,

Being pent from Liberty, as I am now,

If two such murtherers as your selues came to you,

Would not intreat for life, as you would begge

Were you in my distresse.

1 Relent? no: ’Tis cowardly and womanish.

Cla. Not to relent, is beastly, sauage, diuellish:

My Friend, I spy some pitty in thy lookes:

O, if thine eye be not a Flatterer,

Come thou on my side, and intreate for mee,

A begging Prince, what begger pitties not.

2 Looke behind you, my Lord.’

Pope adopted the reading of the Quartos, rejecting the last line ‘a begging...not?’ He was followed by Hanmer and Capell. Theobald followed the Folios, reading for life? Ah! you...distress. Johnson, who gives in his text the arrangement which Warburton had borrowed from Theobald, says, in a note: ‘I cannot but suspect that the lines, which Mr Pope observed not to be in the old edition, are now misplaced, and should be inserted here, somewhat after this manner.

“Clar. A begging...pities not?

Vil. A begging prince!

Clar. Which of you if you were a prince’s son, &c.”

Upon this provocation the villain naturally strikes him.’

The arrangement which we have adopted was first suggested by Tyrwhitt and introduced into the text by Steevens, 1793. It involves a rather violent transposition, but we see no better remedy. As the lines omitted in the Quarto have all the appearance of being Shakespeare’s own, we cannot leave them out of the text. We think, however, that they are out of their right place in the Folio, and that the transposition suggested by Johnson does not yield a satisfactory sense.

Mr Grant White says: ‘Mr Knight, Mr Collier, Mr Verplanck, and Mr Hudson follow the Folio; the last only attaining a tolerable sense, by supposing Clarence’s question, as it appears in the folio, to end at “would not intreat for life,” and the Murderer to interrupt him in the beginning of a new sentence, thus:—

‘Which of you, &c........

Would not entreat for life? As you would beg,

Were you in my distress,—

1 Murd. Relent!’ &c.—

presuming, I suppose, the Duke to be about to say, ‘As you would beg, &c., so I beg,’ &c. I am unable to look so far into Clarence’s intentions as to decide upon the merits of this reading.’

The punctuation proposed by Mr Hudson had suggested itself independently to Mr Spedding. The chief objection however to the reading of the Folio still remains, viz. the awkwardness of the murderer’s taking up Clarence’s word ‘Relent’ after so long an interval. If, as we suppose, Shakespeare wrote those additional lines in the margin of his original MS., nothing is more likely than that a copyist should have misplaced them. In IV. 3, 52, 53, two lines undoubtedly added by Shakespeare are thus misplaced in the Folio:

‘That reignes in gauled eyes of weeping soules:

That excellent grand Tyrant of the earth.’

Similarly in Act II. Scene 1, the line

‘Of you Lord Wooduill, and Lord Scales of you,’

which the corrector intended to follow 66, is placed in the Folio after 67. We have not introduced this line into the text, because Shakespeare 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.

See also IV. 4, 100–104, where, in correcting one mistake of transposition, another has been made.