“There thou mayst be called a knave in grane,
And where knaves be scant thou mayst go for twayne.”
See a note on “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” vol. i., edition 1778, p. 176.—S.
[25] i.e., If he were hanged for it, he could not tell one tale without telling two lies. Yet Mr Collier would change where to were he.
[26] This whole line is omitted in the later of the two old copies, and as Mr Reed and his friend remarked in their notes sometimes even the variation of letters, it is singular that they should have passed over this circumstance without observation.—Collier.
[27] Meane, second edition.
[28] Ed. 1571 has patron.
[29] This was proverbial. See [Hazlitt’s] “Collection of Proverbs,” p. 291.
[30] A proverbial expression often found in ancient writers. Heywood has it: “Happy man, happy dole.” See Dyce’s Glossary to his second edition of Shakespeare, p. 201. Dole, Mr Steevens observes (Notes to “The Taming of the Shrew,” act i., sc. 1), is any thing dealt out or distributed, though its original meaning was the provision given away at the doors of great men’s houses. It is generally written be his dole, though Ray, p. 116, gives it as in the second 4to by his dole. Shakespeare also uses the phrase in “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”
Again, in “Hudibras,” p. 1, c. 3, l. 637—