Subsequent editors partly followed Theobald's arrangement, without adopting his readings.
Mr Knight printed as follows:
'May these same instruments which you profane,
Never sound more, when drums and trumpets shall
I' the field prove flatterers! Let courts and cities be
Made all of false-fac'd soothing, where steel grows soft
As the parasite's silk!
Let them be made an overture for the wars!' &c.
Hudson follows Knight, but reads where steel ... silk as one line. Singer proposed to read and print thus:
'May these same instruments, which you profane,
Never sound more! shall drums and trumpets, when
I' the field, prove flatterers? (Let courts and cities be
Made all of false-faced soothing,
When steel grows soft as the Parasite's silk)—
Let them be made an overture for the wars!—
No more! I say,' &c.
In his Text of Shakespeare Vindicated, &c. (1853) he arranged the first four lines as in our text, and in the two following read silks ... them.
Note V.
II. 3. 236-238. The Folios here read:
'hither,
And Nobly nam'd, so twice being Censor,
Was his great Ancestor.'
Rowe, in his first edition, reads: