V.i.244 (319,9) some estate] Some person of high rank.
V.i.255 (319,2) Yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants] I have been informed by an anonymous correspondent, that crants is the German word for garlands, and I suppose it was retained by us from the Saxons. To carry garlands before the bier of a maiden, and to hang them over her grave, is still the practice in rural parishes.
Crants therefore was the original word, which the author, discovering it to be provincial, and perhaps not understood, changed to a term more intelligible, but less proper. Maiden rites give no certain or definite image. He might have put maiden wreaths, or maiden garlands, but he perhaps bestowed no thought upon it, and neither genius nor practice will always supply a hasty writer with the most proper diction.
V.i.310 (323,6) When that her golden couplets] [W: E'er that] Perhaps it should be,
Ere yet—
Yet and that are easily confounded.
V.ii.6 (324,7) mutinies in the bilboes] Mutinies, the French word for seditious or disobedient fellows in the army or fleet. Bilboes, the ship's prison.
V.ii.6 (324,8) Rashly,/And prais'd be rashness for it—Let us know] Both my copies read,
—Rashly,
And prais'd be rashness for it, let us know.