Note III.
[ii. 2. 52]. Mr Knight remarks ‘this sentence is usually put interrogatively, contrary to the punctuation of all the old copies, which is not to be so utterly despised as the modern editors would pretend.’ Mr Grant White follows Mr Knight, and has a long note justifying the punctuation. Mr Dyce’s remark that the sentence is a repetition of the preceding interrogation, at line 42, seems conclusive as to the sense. Nothing is more frequent than the omission of the note of interrogation in the older editions, apparently from a paucity of types.
Note IV.
[ii. 7. 77]. The Folios have ‘Flo. Cornets’ at the beginning of the next scene after ‘Enter Salarino and Solanio.’ Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, Warburton, and Johnson (ed. 1765) omitted all notice of this stage direction. Capell transferred it to the beginning of Scene 7. Mr Dyce added ‘Cornets’ at the end of the scene also. We have adopted the suggestion, as the Prince’s leaving the stage would naturally be accompanied with the same pomp as his entrance.
Note V.
[ii. 8. 42]. In the copy of Capell’s edition which he gave to Trinity College Library, he has put a comma after ‘mind’ in red ink. Johnson marked the passage with an asterisk as probably corrupt.
Note VI.
[ii., 9. 68]. Mr Staunton in a note to The Taming of the Shrew, Act i. Sc. 1, mentions, on Sir F. Madden’s authority, that ‘I wis’ is undoubtedly derived from the Saxon adverb ‘gewis,’ but in the thirteenth century ‘ge’ was changed to ‘y’ or ‘i,’ and in the latter end of the fifteenth it was probably held to be equivalent to the German ‘Ich weiss.’ There can be no doubt that Shakespeare spelt it ‘I wis’ and used it as two words, pronoun and verb.
Note VII.
[iii. 2. 61]. Mr Halliwell says that Roberts’s Quarto reads then for thou. It is not so in our copy.