[As, nimble jugglers, that deceive the eye,
Dark-working sorcerers, that change the mind,
Soul-killing witches, that deform the body]
[W: Drug-working] The learned commentator has endeavoured with
much earnestness to recommend his alteration; but, if I may
judge of other apprehensions by my own, without great success.
This interpretation of _soul-killing_ is forced and harsh. Sir T.
Hammer reads _soul-selling_, agreeable enough to the common opinion,
but without such improvement as may justify the change. Perhaps
the epithets have only been misplaced, and the lines should be
read thus,
Soul-killing _sorcerers, that change the mind_;
Dark-working _witches that deform the body_.
This change seems to remove all difficulties.
By _soul-killing_ I understand destroying the rational faculties
by such means as make men fancy themselves beasts.
I.ii.102 (157,6) [liberties of sin] Sir T. Hammer reads, _libertines_,
which, as the author has been enumerating not acts but persons,
seems right.
II.i.30 (158,8) [How if your husband start some other where?] I
cannot but think, that our authour wrote,
--_start some other_ hare?
So in _Much ado about Nothing_, Cupid is said to be _a good hare-finder_.
II.i.32 (159,9) [tho' she pause] To _pause_ is to rest, to be in
quiet.
II.i.41 (159,1) [fool-begg'd] She seems to mean, by _fool-begg'd
patience_, that patience which is so near to _idiotical simplicity_,
that your next relation would take advantage from it to represent
you as a _fool_, and _beg_ the guardianship of your fortune.
II.i.82 (161,3) [Am I so round with you, as you with me] He plays
upon the word _round_, which signified _spherical_ applied to
himself, and _unrestrained_, or _free in speech_ or _action_, spoken
of his mistress. So the king, in _Hamlet_, bids the queen be _round_
with her son.
II.i.100 (161,5) [too unruly deer] The ambiguity of _deer_ and _dear_
is borrowed, poor as it is, by Waller, in his poem on the _Ladies
Girdle_.
"This was my heav'n's extremest sphere,
"This pale that held my lovely deer."
II.i.101 (161,6) [poor I am but his stale] The word _stale_, in our
authour, used as a substantive, means, not something offered to
_allure_ or _attract_, but something _vitiated_ with _use_, something of
which the best part has been enjoyed and consumed.
II.ii.86 (166,4) [Not a man of those, but he hath the wit to lose his
hair] That is, _Those who have more hair than wit_, are easily
entrapped by loose women, and suffer the consequences of lewdness,
one of which, in the first appearance of the disease in Europe,
was the loss of hair.
II.ii.173 (169,6) [Be it my wrong, you are from me exempt] Exempt,
separated, parted. The sense is, _If I am doomed to suffer the
wrong of separation, yet injure not with contempt me who am already
injured_.
II.ii.210 (171,1) [And shrive you] That is, I will _call you to
confession_, and make you tell your tricks.
III.i.4 (172,2) [carkanet] seems to have been a necklace or rather
chain, perhaps hanging down double from the neck. So Lovelace
in his poem,
_The empress spreads her_ carcanets.
III.i.15 (173,3) [Marry, so it doth appear By the wrongs I suffer,
and the blows I bear] [T: don't appear] I do not think this emendation
necessary. He first says, that his _wrongs_ and _blows_ prove
him an _ass_; but immediately, with a correction of his former sentiment,
such as may be hourly observed in conversation, he observes
that, if he had been an ass, he should, when he was _kicked_, have
_kicked_ again.
III.i.101 (177,7) [supposed by the common rout] For _suppose_ I once
thought it might be more commodious to substitute _supported_; but
there is no need of change: _supposed_ is _founded on supposition_,
made by conjecture.
III.i.105 (178,8) [For slander lives upon succession] The line apparently
wants two syllables: what they were, cannot now be known.
The line may be filled up according to the reader's fancy, as thus:
_For_ lasting _slander lives upon succession_.
III.ii.27 (180,3) ['Tis holy sport to be a little vain] is _light of
tongue, not veracious_.
III.ii.64 (181,2) [My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim]
When be calls the girl his _only heaven on the earth_, he utters
the common cant of lovers. When he calls her _his heaven's claim_,
I cannot understand him. Perhaps he means that which he asks of
heaven.