[II.48] path: take thy way. Drayton employs 'path' as a verb, both transitively and intransitively, literally and figuratively, in England's Heroicall Epistles (1597-1598). The verb seems to have been in use from the fourteenth century to the close of the seventeenth.
[II.49] path, thy F2 | path thy F1F3F4 | hath thy Quarto (1691) | march, thy Pope | put thy Dyce (Coleridge conj.).
[II.50] Erebus: the region of nether darkness between Earth and Hades. Cf. The Merchant of Venice, V, i, 87: "dark as Erebus."
[II.51] prevention: discovery, anticipation. This, the original sense, would lead to 'prevention,' as the term is used to-day.
[II.52] Scene II Pope.
[II.53] Decius Brutus. See notes, [Dramatis Personæ], and [p. 40, l. 148].
[II.54] ll. 101-111 This little side-talk on a theme so different from the main one of the scene, is finely conceived, and aptly marks the men as seeking to divert anxious thoughts of the moment by any casual chat. It also serves the double purpose of showing that they are not listening, and of preventing suspicion if any were listening to them. In itself it is thoroughly Shakespearian; and the description of the dawn-light flecking the clouds takes high place among Shakespeare's great sky pictures.
[II.55] fret: "mark with interlacing lines like fretwork."—Clar. There are two distinct verbs spelled 'fret,' one meaning 'to eat away,' the other 'to ornament.' See Skeat. In Hamlet, II, ii, 313, we have "this majestical roof fretted with golden fire."
[II.56] growing on: encroaching upon, tending towards.
[II.57] Weighing: if you take into consideration.