observing that "the dram of base" means the alloy of baseness or vice, and that it is frequent with our poet to use the adjective of quality instead of the substantive signifying the thing.
It would be tedious to enumerate all the hapless attempts at emendation which have been subsequently made, but I must be allowed to refer to that adopted by MR. SINGER as long since as the year 1826, when he vindicated the original reading, doubt, from the unnecessary meddling of Steevens and Malone. MR. SINGER thus printed the passage:
"The dram of bale
Doth all the noble substance often doubt,
To his own scandal."
Bale was most probably preferred to base as more euphonous, and nearer to the word eale in the first quarto; but MR. S. would now perhaps adopt base, as suggested by the word ease, in the second quarto, for the reasons given by Theobald and your correspondent A. E. B.
It is evident that dout cannot have been the poet's word, for, as your correspondent remarks, the meaning is obviously, that "the dram of base" renders all the noble substance doubtful or suspicious, not that it extinguishes it altogether. This will appear from what precedes:
"Or by some habit that too much o'erleavens
The form of plausive manners," &c.
Under present impressions, therefore, I should prefer, as the least deviation from the old copies, to read: