"Breathing like sanctified and pious bonds."

Theobald, who is usually followed, read bawds for 'bonds'; but surely bawds could not with any propriety be called 'sanctified and pious.' The truth is, the poet's word was 'bonds,' but the editors have not understood it, Singer, for example, calling it nonsense. The whole passage is merely a poetic periphrasis of seduction under promise of marriage; and had the word been Sounding, not 'Breathing,' there would probably have been no mistake.


"Have you so slander any moment leisure."

Collier's folio reads squander, which may be right; but we have "She slanders so her judgement" (Cymb. iii. 5), and "To slander music any more than once" (Much Ado, ii. 3). In 'any moment leisure' the structure is perfectly correct.


Sc. 4.

"The King doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse,

Keeps wassail, and the swaggering upspring reels."