The construction of this sentence is awkward. Lines 2231-3 are
parenthetical; Pluto is in apposition with This king in l. 2234, and agrees with the verb sette in the same.
2229-30. Tyrwhitt prints these lines differently, thus:—
Folwing his wif, the quene Proserpina,
Which that he ravisshed out of Ethna.
This reading is from MS. Harl. 7335; and T. adds—'In some other MSS. Ethna, by a manifest error of the copyist, has been changed into Proserpina [as in Cp. Pt. Ln.]. The passage being thus made nonsense, other transcribers left out the [second] line, and substituted in its stead—
Eche after other, right as any lyne.'
But it would appear that the line just quoted, which Tyrwhitt pronounces to be a substitution, is really the original reading, and we must not hastily reject it. It is found in E. Cm. and Hl., whilst in Hn. the line has been erased or omitted, and then filled in (in a spurious form) by a later hand.
Wright and Bell have followed Tyrwhitt's lead, and altered the passage accordingly. Morris silently changes the preserpine of the Harl. MS. to Preserpina, and gives the next line in the objectionable form—'Whiche that he ravysched out of Cecilia' (Sicily).
It seems very much better to restore the original reading, especially when we notice that Próserpýne (not Prosérpiná) is the undoubted reading in the House of Fame, 1511, and that quen-e is constantly dissyllabic (see B. 161, 1671, G. 1089), In l. 2264, we again have Próserpýne . The old black-letter editions are not of much value; still they give line 2230 as in my text, except that they wrongly change any into a.