And you the calendars of their nativity,
Go to a gossips' feast, and joy with me;
After so long grief, such felicity !(106)

Duke. With all my heart, I'll gossip at this feast.

[Exeunt Duke, Abbess, Ægeon, Courtezan, Sec. Merchant, Angelo, and Attendants.

Dro. S. Master, shall I go fetch(107) your stuff from ship

board?

Ant. E. Dromio, what stuff of mine hast thou embark'd? Dro. S. Your goods that lay at host, sir, in the Centaur. Ant. S. He speaks to me.-I am your master, Dromio: Come, go with us; we'll look to that anon:

Embrace thy brother there; rejoice with him.

[Exeunt Ant. S. and Ant. E., Adr. and Luc. Dro. S. There is a fat friend at your master's house,

That kitchen'd me for you to-day at dinner:

She now shall be my sister, not my wife.

Dro. E. Methinks you are my glass, and not my brother:

I see by you I am a sweet-fac'd youth.

Will you walk in to see their gossiping?

Dro. S. Not I, sir; you are my elder.

Dro. E. That's a question: how shall we try it?

Dro. S. We'll draw cuts for the senior: till then lead

thou first.

Dro. E. Nay, then, thus:

We came into the world like brother and brother;

And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another.

[Exeunt.

P. 5. (1)

"Nay, more, if any born at Ephesus

Be seen at Syracusian marts and fairs;
Again, if any Syracusian born"

In the second of these lines the folio has "Be seene at any Siracusian," &c. (the “any” having been inserted by a mistake of the transcriber or compositor, whose eye had caught it in the preceding or in the following line); and so Malone and others, though the passage had been long ago set right.—To my surprise, I find that Walker (Shakespeare's Versification, &c. p. 269) would read and arrange thus ;

Here perhaps, as is suggested by Walker (Shakespeare's Versification, &c. p. 85), "this" ought to be printed "this'," the contraction for "this is"; which the folio has in Measure for Measure, act v. sc. 1.

P. 6. (5)

"And the great care of goods at random left,"

So Theobald (a correction which Malone gives as his own).-The folio has "And he great care of goods at randone left."-The editor of the second folio substituted “ And he great store of goods at randone leaving." (Though here the folio has the old form "randone," it has in The Two Gent. of Verona, act ii. sc. 2, "I writ at randome," &c.)

The folio has "A meane woman.”—The second folio has "A poor meane woman.”—“The word 'poor' was added to complete the metre in the second folio. It is manifest that some word was omitted by the compositor of the original copy; but the word supplied by the second folio can hardly be the author's word, for in the next line but one we have 'for their parents were exceeding poor'." MALONE.-"Read 'A meaner woman'; one of a lower rank than my wife." Walker's Crit. Exam, &c. vol. ii. p. 54.

"Read 'thus"." Walker's Crit. Exam, &c. vol. iii. p. 24.

The folio has "borne vp," &c.; the second folio "borne up upon," &c.—Rowe altered “helpful” to “helpless”: Mr. Swynfen Jervis would substitute “hopeful."

The folio has "What haue befalue of them and they."-Corrected in the second folio.

The folio has "so."-Corrected in the second folio.

P. 9. (14)

"To seek thy life by beneficial help :"

The folio has "To seeke thy helpe by bencficiall helpe."-Steevens suggested "To seek thy help by beneficial means."-Mr. Collier formerly proposed and now reads (with his Ms. Corrector) " To seek thy hope by," &c.—Mr. Singer's emendation is "To seek thy fine by," &c.; Mr. Swynfen Jervis's "To seek thy weal by," &c.-I adopt (with some hesitation) the reading of Pope, which Theobald and Hanmer retained; which Walker (Crit. Exam, &c. vol. i. p. 277) thinks is perhaps right; and which Mr. Grant White thus supports; "The Duke says, though thou art adjudged to the death, yet will I favour thee; . . . therefore I'll limit thee this day to seek thy'-what? With what other word than life' could he fitly close his sentence?"-(Steevens foolishly objects to the present reading, because the expression to seek thy life may also be found in the sense of-to endeavour to take away thy life.)

6

The folio has "no"; a stark error (though defended by Malone).

P. 9. (16)

"Gaoler, now take him to thy custody.”

Here "now" is the addition of Hanmer and of Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector.Capell reads "So, gaoler, take," &c.-Walker (Shakespeare's Versification, &c. p. 153) proposes "Go, gaoler, take," &c.

Hanmer printed "libertines of sin"; and so reads Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector; -very improperly, I think.

The folio has "takes it thus."-Corrected in the second folio.

Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector alters "doubtfully” to “doubly" both here and in Dromio's reply.

The folio has "a hundred."--Corrected in the second folio.

Here the word "home" happens to have dropt out from the folio: and, though the line is unmetrical without it, and though it has been thus reiterated by Dromio in the scene (pp. 10, 11) which he is now describing,-"you come not home," "strike you home,"'—" home to your house,"-" home to dinner,"-Mr. Knight and Mr. Collier are agreed that there is no necessity for its insertion.

P. 15. (25)

"Would that alone alone he would detain,"

So the second folio; and rightly compare our author's Lucrece; "But I alone alone must sit and pine," &c.-The first folio has "Would that alone, a loue he would detaine."

P. 15. (26)

The folio has

"I see the jewel best enamelled

But falsehood and corruption doth it shame."

"I see the lewell best enamaled

Will loose his beautie: yet the gold bides still
That others touch, and often touching will,
Where gold and no man that hath a name,
By falsehood and corruption doth it shame."

I give the passage as amended by the ingenuity of several editors: that they have restored the very words of Shakespeare, I must greatly doubt.

P. 16. (27)

"Your sauciness will jet upon my love,

And make a common of my serious hours."

The folio has "Your sawcinesse will iest vpon," &c.,-an error partly occasioned perhaps by the occurrence of the word "jest" both in the preceding speech and towards the close of the present one.-The second line so obviously leads to the correction which I have now made, that I wonder how it escaped the commentators. Compare Titus Andronicus, act ii. sc. 1;

"and think you not how dangerous

It is to jet upon a prince's right ?"

Richard III. act ii. sc. 4;

"Insulting tyranny begins to jet

Upon the innocent and aweless throne."

and Sir Thomas More (a play edited by me for the Shakespeare Society); "It is hard when Englishmens pacience must be thus jetted on by straungers," &c. p. 2.

Heath proposed "falling;" which Mr. Grant White adopts.

So Rowe. The folio has "trying.”—The usual modern alteration is (Pope's) "tiring."

So the second folio.-The folio has "namely, in no time" (out of which Malone makes the ridiculous lection, “namely, e'en no time," and Mr. Grant White the odd one, "namely, is no time”).

"Qu. 'carv'd thee.' Besides that 'carv'd to thee' makes the verse drag, Shakespeare, as I have observed elsewhere, in his earlier plays eschews the trisyllabic ending altogether." Crit. Exam, &c. vol. iii. p. 24, by Walker, who (p. 25) cites from Beaumont and Fletcher “carve her” and “carve him,” and from Day "carves thee."-Here some of the earlier editors threw out "to thee."

P. 18. (35)

That thou art thus estrangèd from thyself?"

So Rowe and Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector.-The folio has "That thou art then estranged from thyselfe ?"