For sleep I think we should read slept. Love cries to see what was done while hatred slept, and suffered mischief to be done. Or the meaning may be, that hatred still continues to sleep at ease, while love is weeping; and so the present reading may stand.
V.iii.93 (128,3) [In Florence was it from a casement thrown me]
Bertram still continues to have too little virtue to deserve Helen.
He did not know indeed that it was Helen's ring, but he knew that
he had it not from a window.
V.iii.95 (128,4) [Noble she was, and thought I stood engag'd] [T: I don't understand this reading; if we are to understand, that she thought Bertram engag'd to her in affection, insnared by her charms, this meaning is too obscurely express'd.] The context rather makes me believe, that the poet wrote,
noble she was, and thought I stood ungag'd;——-
i.e. unengag'd: neither my heart, nor person, dispos'd of.—The plain meaning is, when she saw me receive the ring, she thought me engaged to her.
V.iii.101 (129,5) [King Plutus himself , That knows the tinct and multiplying medicine] Plutus the grand alchemist, who knows the tincture which confers the properties of gold upon base metals, and the matter by which gold is multiplied, by which a small quantity of gold is made to communicate its qualities to a large mass of metal.
In the reign of Henry the fourth a law was made to forbid all men thenceforth to multiply gold, or use any craft of multiplication. Of which law Mr. Boyle, when he was warm with the hope of transmutation, procured a repeal.
V.iii.105 (129,6) [Then if you know, That you are well acquainted with yourself] The true meaning of this strange [Warburton's word] expression is, If you know that your faculties are so found, as that you have the proper consciousness of your own actions, and are able to recollect and relate what you have done, tell me. &c.
V.iii.121 (130,7)
[My fore-past proofs, howe'er the matter fall,
Shall tax my fears of little vanity,
Having vainly fear'd too little]