"A contract of eternal bond of love
Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands,
Attested by the holy close of lips,
Strengthen'd by interchangement of your rings, &c."
Scene 4. Page 210.
Sil. That you are welcome?
Pro. ... No; that you are worthless.
Dr. Johnson has here inserted the particle no, "to fill up the measure;" but the measure is not defective though the harmony is. Mr. Steevens, disputing the suggestion of a brother critic, that worthless might have been designed as a trisyllable, asks whether worthless in the preceding speech of Sylvia is a trisyllable? Certainly not; but he should have remembered the want of uniformity of metre in many words among the poets of this period. Thus in p. [223], lines 8 and 9, the word fire is alternately used as a monosyllable and dissyllable; and where the quantity is complete, as in the present instance, the harmony is often left to shift for itself.
ACT III.
Scene 1. Page 232.
Duke. Why Phaeton, (for thou art Merop's son)
It is far more likely that Shakspeare found this at the end of the first book of Golding's Ovid's metamorphosis, than in the authorities referred to in Mr. Steevens's note.
Scene 1. Page 239.