He’ll tell me all his purpose: sure he’ll come,’
were intended to rhyme and therefore favour the later reading. But in this scene there are no rhyming lines except the couplet at the end.
On the whole, it seems likely that the name was altered in the stage copies at the instance of some person of the name of Brook living at Windsor, who had sufficient acquaintance with the players, or interest with their patrons, to get it done.
[ Note VII.]
[III. 1. 74, 78.] Mr Staunton is unquestionably right in supposing that one part of Evans’s speech is spoken aside to his opponent, and the other part aloud. It is impossible else to account for the sudden change of tone. It might have been conjectured that, being a parson, he wished to appear peacefully minded, and therefore made his offers of reconciliation aloud and his menaces in an under tone, but Caius’s reply shews that it was the threat which had been made aloud. Evans’s valour, it would seem, had already evaporated when he had ‘a great dispositions to cry’ ([III. 1. 20]) and, besides, he had just begun to see that he was being made a laughing-stock. As his former speech (74, 75,) is also conciliatory, it was probably spoken so as to be heard by Caius only. He wished to keep up his credit for courage in the eyes of the bystanders. In the corresponding scene of the first Quartos we have the words ‘Hark van urd in your ear,’ and the meaning of the text may have been obscured by some omission in the Folio.
[ Note VIII.]
[IV. 4. 41.] No doubt there is an omission here in the Folio, which may be partly supplied from the Quarto. But it is probable that Mrs Ford gave a still fuller explanation of her device and the grounds on which the disguise was recommended to Falstaff, otherwise Page would not have been so confident of his falling into the snare.
[ Note IX.]
[IV. 5. 49.] In the edition of 1778 Steevens reads ‘Ay, sir Tike, like’ ... but it is clear from Farmer’s note that it should be ‘Ay, sir Tike,’ ... and so it is corrected in the later Editions of Steevens. In the Edition annotated by Fanner, mentioned in [note V.], we find another conjecture of his: ‘Ay, sir, if you like,’ ... or it may have been ‘Ay, sir, an you like,’ for the word preceding ‘you’ has been cut away by the binder.