"Archbishop. My brother general, the commonwealth,
To brother born, an household cruelty.
I make my quarrel in particular."
Nobody knows what Shakespeare meant to say in this passage, and no satisfactory guess has ever been made as to what has happened to these lines.
A knowledge of Elizabethan English has cleared up the following passage perfectly. According to the First Folio, the only early print, Antony calls Lepidus, in Julius Caesar, IV, i, 36-37:—
"A barren-spirited fellow; one that feeds
On objects, arts, and imitations...."
This has been corrected to read in the second line
"On abjects, orts, and imitations."
Abjects here means outcasts, and orts, scraps, or leavings; but no one unfamiliar with the language of that time could have solved the puzzle.
A different sort of problem is offered by such plays as King Lear, of which the quartos furnish three hundred lines not in the Folio, while the Folio has one hundred lines not in the quartos, and is, on the whole, much more carefully copied. The modern editor gives all the lines in both versions, so that we read a King Lear which is probably longer than Shakespeare's countrymen read or ever saw acted. The modern editor selects, however, when Folio and quartos differ, the reading which seems best.
FOLIO. "Cordelia. Was this a face
To be opposed against the jarring winds?"