In the next passage, given as emended by the folio, we have what appears to me one bad and one decidedly good alteration from the usual reading, which, in all the editions given hitherto, has left the meaning barely perceptible through the confusion and obscurity of the expression.
"He being thus lorded,
Not only with what my revenue yielded,
But what my power might else exact,—like one
Who having unto truth by telling of it
Made such a sinner of his memory
To credit his own lie,—he did believe
He was indeed the Duke."
The folio says,—
"He being thus loaded."
And to this change I object: the meaning was obvious before; "lorded" stands clearly enough here for made lord of or over, etc.; and though the expression is unusual, it is less prosaic than the proposed word loaded. But in the rest of the passage the critic of the folio does immense service to the text, in reading
"Like one
Who having to untruth by telling of it
Made such a sinner of his memory
To credit his own lie,—he did believe
He was indeed the Duke."
This change carries its own authority in its manifest good sense.
Of the passage,—
"Whereon,
A treacherous army levied, one midnight
Fated to the purpose, did Antonio open
The gates of Milan, and in the dead of darkness
The ministers for the purpose hurried thence
Me and thy crying self,"—
Mr. Collier says that the iteration of the word "purpose," in the fourth line, after its employment in the second, is a blemish, which his folio obviates by substituting the word practice in the first line. I think this a manifest improvement, though not an important one.