Mr Grant White says: ‘Mr Knight, Mr Collier, Mr Verplanck, and Mr Hudson follow the Folio; the last only attaining a tolerable sense, by supposing Clarence’s question, as it appears in the folio, to end at “would not intreat for life,” and the Murderer to interrupt him in the beginning of a new sentence, thus:—
‘Which of you, &c........
Would not entreat for life? As you would beg,
Were you in my distress,—
1 Murd. Relent!’ &c.—
presuming, I suppose, the Duke to be about to say, ‘As you would beg, &c., so I beg,’ &c. I am unable to look so far into Clarence’s intentions as to decide upon the merits of this reading.’
The punctuation proposed by Mr Hudson had suggested itself independently to Mr Spedding. The chief objection however to the reading of the Folio still remains, viz. the awkwardness of the murderer’s taking up Clarence’s word ‘Relent’ after so long an interval. If, as we suppose, Shakespeare wrote those additional lines in the margin of his original MS., nothing is more likely than that a copyist should have misplaced them. In IV. 3, 52, 53, two lines undoubtedly added by Shakespeare are thus misplaced in the Folio:
‘That reignes in gauled eyes of weeping soules:
That excellent grand Tyrant of the earth.’
Similarly in Act II. Scene 1, the line