ACT I.

SC. 1. "Antony Woodeville, her brother there."

Here we must read 'Woodeville' as a trisyllable, like Catesby sometimes in this play, and Colleville in 2 Hen. IV. iv. 3.

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"Even so, an'_t_ please your worship, Brackenbury."

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"Well struck in years, fair, and not jealous."

The folio has _jealious_, which may be read as a trisyllable, of which Sidney Walker has given examples, though none from Shakespeare. I, however, prefer reading 'yeärs' and 'faïr,' as more suited to the slow _chaffing_ tone of Gloster: "Of foür hoürs long. I must endure all." Fletch. Chances, i. 6.

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"Which I must reach unto by marrying her."

This transposition seems necessary; for he is speaking simply and without involution.

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SC. 2. "The bleeding witness of her hatred by."

This is the reading of the 4tos; the folio has _my_, but _her_ hatred had been mentioned only two lines before. Still the point is doubtful.

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SC. 3. "The slave of nature and the son of hell."

So in The Honest Whore (Part I. i. 6) we have,

"You [harlots] are the miserablest creatures breathing, The very _slaves of nature_."

But that expression may have been taken from this very place.

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"Why strewest thou sugar on that bottel'd spider?"

This is the orthography of the folio; the 4tos read here _botled_, but in iv. 4 as the folio. Now as _bottled_ has, as far as my knowledge extends, but one sense, and one which would give no meaning here, it may be intended to show that the verb comes from _bottel_ or _bottle_ in the sense of truss, bundle, as a bottle of hay or straw, a sense which it retains in various compounds in the provincial dialects. 'Bottel'd spider' would then answer to 'bunch-back'd toad' a few lines further on. If this should not satisfy, we might read _bloated spider_, as in Cowper, Task. v. 442.

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SC. 4. "Nay, I pr'ythee, stay a little; I hope my holy humour will change."

This is the reading of the 4tos, which I prefer. The folio has 'passionate humour of _mine_.' The change, as Mr. Dyce says, was made by the editors on account of the statute 3 Jac. I. 21.

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"If two such murderers as yourselves came to you Would not entreat for life? As you would beg Were you in my distress...-- Relent! no, _no_; 'tis cowardly and womanish."

This punctuation gives, I think, the sense of the poet; and I am happy to find I had been anticipated in it by Singer.