Pope follows the Folios and Rowe, except that for ‘Know, my loving Lord,’ he substitutes ‘my lord,’ ending the next line at fled. Steevens retains the reading of the Folios, but in other respects adopts Pope’s arrangement, assigning it, more suo, to Sir Thomas Hanmer.
Mr Staunton follows Steevens as regards Stanley’s speech, and then reads with the Quartos. In the preceding line he reads with the Quartos: ‘How now what news with you?’
Mr Collier suspects that ‘What’s the news?’ in line 46, is an interpolation and that the true reading is,
‘How now, Lord Stanley?
Stan. Know, my loving lord,
The Marquess Dorset, as I hear, is fled &c.’
NOTE XIX.
[IV. 4, 365, 366.] The first Quarto alone preserves the proper order of the lines here. Its words are:
‘King. Harpe not one that string Madam that is past.
Qu. Harpe on it still shall I till hartstrings breake.’