O, if thine eye be not a Flatterer,
Come thou on my side, and intreate for mee,
A begging Prince, what begger pitties not.
2 Looke behind you, my Lord.’
Pope adopted the reading of the Quartos, rejecting the last line ‘a begging...not?’ He was followed by Hanmer and Capell. Theobald followed the Folios, reading for life? Ah! you...distress. Johnson, who gives in his text the arrangement which Warburton had borrowed from Theobald, says, in a note: ‘I cannot but suspect that the lines, which Mr Pope observed not to be in the old edition, are now misplaced, and should be inserted here, somewhat after this manner.
“Clar. A begging...pities not?
Vil. A begging prince!
Clar. Which of you if you were a prince’s son, &c.”
Upon this provocation the villain naturally strikes him.’
The arrangement which we have adopted was first suggested by Tyrwhitt and introduced into the text by Steevens, 1793. It involves a rather violent transposition, but we see no better remedy. As the lines omitted in the Quarto have all the appearance of being Shakespeare’s own, we cannot leave them out of the text. We think, however, that they are out of their right place in the Folio, and that the transposition suggested by Johnson does not yield a satisfactory sense.