Them severed whom God hath join’d together.
Pity to sunder them, that yoak so well.’
NOTE VI.
[IV. 2. 13.] The reading ‘overture’ first appears in Warburton’s edition, being probably a misprint. Johnson adopts it, but suggests the true reading ‘coverture,’ without giving any indication that this was the reading in all the Folios and in all the editions before Warburton’s. We give this as one of the many instances of the carelessness with which Johnson’s work was done.
NOTE VII.
[IV. 8.] In the Folios, Somerset is introduced in the stage direction, though he had gone with young Richmond into Brittany. The mistake arose from the Quartos in which Scene VI. and Scene VIII. form but one.
NOTE VIII.
[V. 1. 44.] This conjecture of Warburton’s, which as he does not mention it in his edition we have marked ‘withdrawn,’ is found in a series of unpublished letters from Theobald to Warburton recently added to the treasures of the British Museum. The first of these letters is dated Feb. 10, 1729, and the last Sep. 4, 1736. That in which allusion is made to the passage in question is dated March 10, 1732. Theobald rejects Warburton’s suggestion, for, he says, ‘Deck’ is ‘a county dialect,’ meaning the same thing. Among the MSS. recently acquired by the Museum is a series of letters from Hanmer to Warburton beginning Dec. 24, 1735, and ending May 25, 1739. In a letter dated July 27, 1737, Hanmer mentions his conjectural reading ‘truss’ for ‘cost’ which he afterwards inserted in the text of his edition. He defends it thus: ‘when a hawk raiseth a fowl aloft and soaring upwards with it at length seizeth it in the air, she is said to truss the fowl, which I imagine is the word which the poor desponding king was made here to apply to his crown.’
NOTE IX.
[V. 2. 48.] The first Folio, which the later Folios copy verbatim but not literatim, reads as follows: