IV.iii.358 (422,9)
[Or for love's sake, a word, that loves all men;
Or for men's sake, the author of these women;
Or women's sake, by whom we men are men]
Perhaps we might read thus, transposing the lines,
Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men;
For women's sake, by whom we men are men;
Or for men's sake, the authours of these women.
The antithesis of a word that all men love, and a word which loves all men, though in itself worth little, has much of the spirit of this play.
IV.iii.386 (423,2) [If so, our copper buys no better treasure] Here
Mr. Theobald ends the third act.
V.i.3 (423,3) [your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious] I know not well what degree of respect Shakespeare intends to obtain for this vicar, but he has here put into his mouth a finished representation of colloquial excellence. It is very difficult to add any thing to this character of the school-master's table-talk, and perhaps all the precepts of Castiglione will scarcely be found to comprehend a rule for conversation so justly delineated, so widely dilated, and so nicely limited.
It may be proper just to note, that reason here, and in many other places, signifies discourse; and that audacious is used in a good sense for spirited, animated, confident. Opinion is the same with obstinacy or opinionated.
V.i.14 (424,4) [He is too picked] To have the beard piqued or shorn so as to end in a point, was, in our authour's time, a mark of a traveller affecting foreign fashions: so says the Bastard in K. John, —_I catechise My piqued man of countries.
V.i.29 (425,6) [(Ne intelligis, Domine.) to make frantick, lunatick?] There seems yet something wanting to the integrity of this passage, which Mr. Theobald has in the most corrupt and difficult places very happily restored. For ne intelligis domine, to make frantick, lunatick, I read, (nonne intelligis, domine?) to be mad, frantick, lunatick.