King John, Act IV. Sc. 2.
So the first folio edition of Shakspeare. A palpable error, as the commentators of the present would pleasantly observe, and all the world would echo the opinion; but here, as in most other
instances, commentators and all the world may be wrong, and the folios right. The passage has accordingly been corrupted by the editors of Shakspeare into what was more familiar to their modern ears: "Had none, my Lord!" Though the mode of speech be very common, yet, to deprive future editors of all excuse for ever again depraving the genuine text of our national Bible, I shall make no apology for accumulating a string of examples:
"Fort. Oh, had I such a hat, then were I brave!
Where's he that made it?
Sol. Dead: and the whole world
Yields not a workman that can frame the like.
Fort. No does?"
"Old Fortunatus," Old English Plays, vol. iii. p. 140., by Dilke:
who alters "No does?" into None does? thinking, I presume, that he had thereby simplified the sentence: