IV. 4. 417. We have followed Rowe in ejecting the first 'never' from the line, for these reasons. 1. The misprint is of a very common sort. The printer's eye caught the word at the end of the line. 2. The metre is improved by the change. The line was made doubly inharmonious by the repetition of 'never.' 3. The sense is improved. Polixenes would rather make light of his son's sighs than dwell so emphatically upon their cause.
IV. 4. 504. We think Malone's stage direction 'going' was inserted under a mistaken view of Florizel's meaning. He apologises to Camillo for talking apart with Perdita in his presence. At the commencement of this whispered conversation he said to Camillo, 'I'll hear you by and by,' and at the close of it he turns again to him with 'Now, good Camillo;' &c.
IV. 4. 693. In the first Folio the reading is 'at 'Pallace,' the apostrophe, if it be not a misprint, pointing either to the omission of the article or its absorption in rapid pronunciation, as in iv. 4. 105, 'with' Sun.' Perhaps the Clown speaks of the King being 'at palace' as he would have spoken of an ordinary man being 'at home.'
IV. 4. 715. The first Folio has 'at toaze,' which is apparently a corruption. The subsequent Folios read 'or toaze,' which in default of a more certain correction we have adopted. It is not improbable, however, that Autolycus may have coined a word to puzzle the clowns, which afterwards puzzled the printers.
V. I. 60. Steevens distinctly claims as his own the emendation which is due to Capell, and credit has been given him for it by Malone and subsequent editors. In a similar manner he appropriates Capell's division of the speeches in line 75 as a conjecture of his own. Malone proposes to retain the reading of the Folios in lines 58-60, with a different punctuation, thus: