Note IV.
[i. 2. 147], 149. It does not seem necessary to make any change in the text here. Perhaps Shakespeare wrote the prose parts of the play hastily, or it may be that Orlando, who is summoned by Celia, but whose thoughts are fixed upon Rosalind, is made to say ‘them,’ not ‘her,’ designedly.
Note V.
[i. 2. 187.] Before we were aware of Mason’s conjecture, it occurred to us that the sentence would run better thus: ‘An you mean to mock me after, you should not have mocked me before.’ ‘And,’ for ‘an,’ is a more probable reading than ‘if,’ as it may have been omitted by the printer, who mistook it for part of the stage direction—‘Orl. and’ for ‘Orland.’ We have since discovered that Theobald proposed ‘An.’
Note VI.
[i. 3. 92.] See a discussion as to the proper punctuation and meaning of the words ‘No, hath not?’ in Notes and Queries, 1st Ser. Vol. vii. p. 520, and in Mr Singer’s note on this passage. It may be doubted whether the passages quoted by Mr Grant White are apposite to this, where there is a double negative.
Note VII.
[iii. 2. 317.] In the fourth Folio, and in Rowe’s two editions, the word ‘kindled’ happens to be in two lines, and therefore divided by a hyphen. Pope, misled by this, printed it in his first edition as a compound, ‘kind-led,’ interpreting it probably with reference to the gregarious habits of the animal in question.
Note VIII.
[iii. 3. 80]–83. Johnson proposes to arrange these lines as follows: