II. 1. 136. The Folios spell 'than' and 'then' indifferently 'then.' In this passage Malone was inclined to restore 'then.'
II. 1. 143. If 'land-damn' be the right reading it has not yet received a satisfactory explanation. The word 'lamback' which in his first edition Mr Collier offered as a conjecture, he afterwards found in the corrected copy of the second Folio. But with the sense which he assigns to it 'to beat,' it seems an anticlimax after the threat contained in the line preceding. We omitted to record in our note that Dr Nicholson proposes to read 'Lent-damn.'
II. 3. 177. 'It,' as a possessive pronoun, is found again in this play (III. 2. 99). In the latter place Rowe was the first to make the correction 'its.' In The Tempest (II. 1. 157), as here, the change is made by the third Folio. See our note on that passage. It is remarkable that the only comedies in which this ancient usage occurs, viz. The Tempest and The Winter's Tale, are among the latest of our author's works. Perhaps the printer is responsible for the singularity.
Mr Staunton has mentioned the following instances in the Histories and Tragedies: King John, ii. 1, Timon of Athens, v. 2, King Lear, i. 4, Hamlet, i. 2 and v. 1. 'It' occurs besides in Henry V., v. 2, Cymbeline, iii. 4, Romeo and Juliet, i. 3, and Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 7.
In Hamlet, i. 2, the first Quarto has his, the first Folio, published twenty years later, has it. In the same play, v. 1, one of the Quartos has it's. Professor Craik quotes also from the Quarto, ith or it in King Lear, iv. 2. But the two Quartos of 1608 in Capell's collection both read it. 'Its' is found in The Tempest, i. 2. 95, 393, Measure for Measure, i. 2. 4, Winter's Tale, i. 2. 151, 152, 157, 266, iii. 3. 46, 2 Henry VI. iii. 2, Henry VIII. i. 1. On the whole we think it most probable that Shakespeare would not deliberately have written it for its, or his, except when imitating the language of rustics or children. It is only fair, however, to mention that Mr Staunton and Professor Craik are of a different opinion. After all it is not of very great consequence which form we preserve in the text, as we carefully record all the minutest variations at the foot of the page.