Leeds.
P.S.--With reference to the above Note, which, although not before
printed, has been for some time in the Editor's hands, I have observed
in a Dublin paper of Saturday, April 9th, a very singular coincidence;
viz. the recurrence of the self-same misprint corrected by Malone, but
retained by Messrs. Collier and Knight in their respective editions of
Shakspeare. Had the parallel expressions _still-closing_,
_still-piecing_, which I have compared in the above paper, been noticed
by these {404} editors, they would no more have hesitated in accepting
Malone's correction than they would object to the same correction in the
misprint I am about to point out; viz.
"Two planks were pointed out by the witnesses, viz. one with a knot
in it, and another which was piered with strips of wood,"
&c.--_Saunders's Newsletter_, April 9th, 3rd page, 1st col.
_The Passage in "King Henry VIII.," Act III. Sc. 2._ (Vol. vii., pp. 5.
111. 183.).--Is an old Shakspearian to talk rashly in "N. & Q." without
being called to account? "If 'we can,'" says MR. SINGER, "'by no means
part with _have_,' we must interpolate _been_ after it, to make it any
way intelligible, to the marring of the verse." Now, besides the passage
in the same scene--
----"my loyalty,
Which ever has, and ever shall be growing,"
pointed out by your Leeds correspondent, there is another equally in
point in _All's Well that Ends Well_, Act II. Sc. 5., which, being in
prose, settles the question as to whether the omission of the past
participle after the auxiliary was customary in Shakspeare's time. It is
Lafeu's farewell to Parolles:
"Farewell, Monsieur: I have spoken better of you, than you have or
will deserve at my hand; but we must do good against evil."
Either this is "unintelligible," and "we must interpolate" _deserved_,
or (the only possible alternative) all three passages are free from MR.
SINGER'S objection.