You take my lord, I'll give him my commission
To let him there a month behind the gest
Prefix'd for his parting."
The third line has apparently no sense. The critics say 'let' is detain; but no instance of its use in that sense is to be found. We might read sit, which occurs in the sense of stay, dwell, live, as "I sit at ten pounds a week" (Mer. Wives, i. 3); and we have "and sit him down and die" (2 Hen. IV. iii. 1). We might also, and still better, read set, which has nearly the same sense, settled, seated: "Being unarm'd and set in secret shade" (F. Q. vi. 3, 8). "Whoever shoots at him, I set him there" (All's Well, iii. 2). In Fletcher's Nice Valour (iv. 1) Heath, followed by Dyce, reads sets for 'lets' in "That lets it out, only for show or profit." 'Gest' (from giste, gîte, Fr.?) is used of the halting-places on a royal progress. Singer quotes from Strype a request from Cranmer to Cecil, "to let him have the new-resolved upon gests from that time to the end, that he might know from time to time where the king was." Hence it would appear that there was a program of the gests, stating the time of arrival at and departure from each of them. I have therefore read 'gest-day,' supposing the last word, as usual, to have been effaced. See Introd. p. [58].
"What lady she her lord."
I read soe'er for 'she.' "What bloody work soe'er" (Othel. iii. 3).
"The doctrine of ill-doing nor dream'd we even."
The usual reading is 'no nor,' that of the 2nd folio.