[II.78] men Ff | man Pope.
[II.79] spirit F1 | spirits F2F3F4.
[II.80] 'em F1F2F3 | them F4.
[II.81] So the king proceeds with Hubert in King John. And so men often proceed when they wish to have a thing done, and to shirk the responsibility; setting it on by dark hints and allusions, and then, after it is done, affecting to blame or to scold the doers of it.
[II.82] purgers: healers, cleansers of the land from tyranny.
[II.83] 'Think and die,' as in Antony and Cleopatra, III, xiii, 1, seems to have been a proverbial expression meaning 'grieve oneself to death'; and it would be much indeed, a very wonderful thing, if Antony should fall into any killing sorrow, such a light-hearted, jolly companion as he is. Cf. Hamlet, III, i, 85. 'Thoughtful' (sometimes in the form 'thoughtish') is a common provincial expression for 'melancholy' in Cumberland and Roxburghshire to-day.
[II.84] ll. 188-189: Here is Plutarch's account in Marcus Antonius, of contemporary criticism of Antony's habits: "And on the other side, the noblemen (as Cicero saith), did not only mislike him, but also hate him for his naughty life: for they did abhor his banquets and drunken feasts he made at unseasonable times, and his extreme wasteful expenses upon vain light huswives; and then in the daytime he would sleep or walk out his drunkenness, thinking to wear away the fume of the abundance of wine which he had taken over night."
[II.85] no fear: no cause of fear. Cf. The Merchant of Venice, II, i, 9.
[II.86] stricken. In [II, ii, 114], we have the form 'strucken.' An interesting anachronism is this matter of a striking clock in old Rome.
[II.87] Whether. So in the Folios. Cf. the form 'where' in [I, i, 63].