[i. 1. 23.] This is an instance of the lax grammar of the time which permitted the use of a singular pronoun referring to a plural substantive, and vice versa, as in The Two Noble Kinsmen, Act i. Sc. 1;
‘You cannot read it there; there, through my tears,
Like wrinkled pebbles in a glassy stream,
You may behold ’em.’
Note V.
[i. 1. 110.] Singer says that in a copy of F1 which he used, the reading is ‘sit.’
Note VI.
[i. 2. 86.] There is probably an allusion in the words, ‘for she had a green wit,’ to the ‘green withes,’ with which Samson was bound. In Shakespeare’s time, ‘mote’ was frequently written ‘moth,’ as in iv. 3. 157 of this play, and in Much Ado about Nothing (ii. 3) the same variety of spelling gives rise to an obscure pun, ‘Note notes, forsooth, and nothing.’ Compare, also, As You Like It, iii. 3. 5.
Note VII.
[ii. 1. 88.] We have retained in this passage the reading of the first Quarto, ‘unpeeled,’ in preference to the ‘unpeopled’ of the second Quarto and the Folios, which is evidently only a conjectural emendation, and does not furnish a better sense than many other words which might be proposed. In the same way, in Act iii. Sc. 1, line 61, we have followed the first Quarto in reading ‘volable’ instead of ‘voluble,’ as it has direct reference to Moth’s last words ‘thump, then, and I flee,’ and is in better keeping with the Euphuistic language of the speaker.