Franklin. Ay, by my faith; the air is very cold.
Michael, farewell; I pray thee dream no more.
[Exeunt.
III. i. 5. Couch dishonour as dishonour buds. Warnke explains Couch = ‘spread,’ comparing ‘couch-grass’; but there is no authority for this use. Is the word used in its surgical sense? The line would then = ‘Cut the bud of dishonour so that it bursts into flower.’ The surgical sense occurs in Holland’s Pliny, 1601.
III. i. 13. plenished is Warnke’s reading for the Quartos’ perisht. Delius and Bullen read flourished.
III. i. 19. Cf. ‘Sorrow and grief have vanquished all my powers.’—2 Henry VI., II. i. 83.
III. i. 45. For this use of sullen cf. ‘Why are thine eyes fixed to the sullen earth?’—2 Henry VI., I. ii. 5, and Sonnet XXIX. 13.
SCENE II
Outside Franklin’s house.
Here enters Will, Greene, and Shakebag.
Shakebag. Black night hath hid the pleasures of the day,
And sheeting darkness overhangs the earth,
And with the black fold of her cloudy robe
Obscures us from the eyesight of the world,
In which sweet silence such as we triumph.
The lazy minutes linger on their time,
As loth to give due audit to the hour,
Till in the watch our purpose be complete
And Arden sent to everlasting night.
Greene, get you gone, and linger here about, 10
And at some hour hence come to us again,
Where we will give you instance of his death.