Sc. 4.
"For terror not to use, in time the rod
More mock'd than fear'd, so our decrees
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead."
In the second line Becomes was added by Pope, or rather by Davenant, and it has been adopted by subsequent editors. Yet the poet may have written, and I think did write, 'the rod is' and 'More mocked at.'
"And yet my nature never in the fight have
To do in slander."
"How I may formally in person bear me."