'Pretty fond adoptious christendoms
That blinking Cupid gossips,'
we should be inclined to suppose that the whole passage was by another hand. Indeed all the foregoing dialogue between Helena and Parolles is a blot on the play. Mr Badham (Cambridge Essays, 1856, p. 256) would strike out the whole passage (105-152) from 'Ay, you have &c.' to 'Will you any thing with it?' as an interpolation.
i. 3. 50. No one has been able to discover the origin of the names 'Charbon' and 'Poysam,' or to guess at any probable meaning for them. Yet it is not likely that they should have been given at random. Is it possible that Shakespeare may have written 'Chairbonne' and 'Poisson,' alluding to the respective lenten fare of the Puritan and the Papist?
The same suggestion was made independently by Mr Easy (Notes and Queries, 3rd S. iv. 106) after the present note was in the printers' hands (Ibid. p. 203).
i. 3. 106. We have not inserted Theobald's admirable emendation in the text, because it is probable that something more has been omitted, perhaps a whole line of the MS.
Becket would transpose the sentences and read thus:
'... level. This she delivered ... exclaim in.—Queen of Virgins! that ... afterward. This I held....'