And vnknowne to my wife, shall marrie her.’
[ Note XII.]
[II. 4. 111-113.] Mr Sidney Walker adopts Steevens’ emendation, and affirms that among all the metrical licenses used by Shakespeare, the omission of the final syllable of the line is not one. But if the reading of the first Folio be allowed to stand, we can find many instances of lines which want the final syllable. The line immediately preceding may be so scanned:
‘Ignomy in ransom and free pardon.’
And in this same scene, [line 143], we have
‘And you tell me that he shall die for’t.’
And in [V. 1. 83]:
‘The warrant’s for yourself; take heed to’t.’
It is conceivable that ‘mercy’ may be pronounced as a trisyllable; but in all the undoubted examples of such a metrical license, the liquid is the second of the two consonants, not the first. See, however, S. Walker’s Shakespeare’s Versification, pp. 207 sqq.
Possibly a word may have dropt out, and the original passage may have stood thus: