II. 2. 176. Mr Collier in a note which has remained uncorrected in his second edition says, "Malone, without any authority from Quartos or Folios, printed 'Whose ruin you three sought.'" The fact is that this is the reading of every Folio, except the first, and of every edition, without exception, which had appeared before Malone's.
[Note V.]
II. 3. 16. Here is Pope's note on this famous passage: 'These words and a table of green fields are not to be found in the old editions of 1600 and 1608. This nonsense got into all the following editions by a pleasant mistake of the Stage-editors, who printed from the common piecemeal-written parts in the Play-house. A Table was here directed to be brought in (it being a scene in a tavern where they drink at parting) and this direction crept into the text from the margin. Greenfield was the name of the Property-man in that time who furnished implements &c. for the actors. A table of Greenfield's.'
Theobald's emendation was suggested, he says, by a marginal conjecture in an edition of Shakespeare 'by a gentleman sometime deceased.' Shakespeare Restored, p. 138.
Mr Spedding approves of talked as being nearer to the ductus literarum, according to the handwriting of the time. The reading talked derives some support from the following passage in the Quartos:
'His nose was as sharpe as a pen:
For when I saw him fumble with the sheetes,
And talk of floures, and smile vpo his fingers ends
I knew there was no way but one.'
[Note VI.]
II. 4. 1. We retain the reading comes which is authorized by the Folios. It is an example of the idiom mentioned in the note to King John, V. 4. 14. So we find in the passage of the first and third Quartos, corresponding to II. 4. 72, 'Cut up this English short,' and again in that corresponding to IV. 3. 69, 'The French is in the field.' See, also, IV. 4. 74.