II.i.88 (28,6) [the winds, piping] So Milton,
While rocking winds are piping loud.
II.i.91 (28,7) [pelting river] Thus the quarto's: the folio reads petty.
Shakespeare has in Lear the same word, low pelting farms. The meaning is plainly, despicable, mean, sorry, wretched; but as it is a word without any reasonable etymology, I should be glad to dismiss it for petty, yet it is undoubtedly right. We have petty pelting officer in Measure for Measure.
II.i.92 (28,8) [over-born their continents] Born down the banks that contained then. So in Lear,
Close pent guilts
Rive their concealing continents.
II.i.98 (29,1) [The nine-men's morris] This was some kind of rural game played in a marked ground. But what it was more I have not found.
II.i.100 (29,2) [The human mortals want their winter here] After all the endeavours of the editors, this passage still remains to me unintelligible. I cannot see why winter is, in the general confusion of the year now described, more wanted than any other season. Dr. Warburton observes that he alludes to our practice of singing carols in December; but though Shakespeare is no great chronologer in his dramas, I think he has never so mingled true and false religion, as to give us reason for believing that he would make the moon incensed for the omission of our carols. I therefore imagine him to have meant heathen rites of adoration. This is not all the difficulty. Titania's account of this calamity is not sufficiently consequential. Men find no winter, therefore they sing no hymns; the moon provoked by this omission, alters the seasons: that is, the alteration of the seasons produces the alteration of the seasons. I am far from supposing that Shakespeare might not sometimes think confusedly, and therefore am not sure that the passage is corrupted. If we should read,
And human mortals want their wonted year,
yet will not this licence of alteration much mend the narrative;