[Or for love's sake, a word, that loves all men;
Or for men's sake, the author of these women;
Or women's sake, by whom we men are men]
Perhaps we might read thus, transposing the lines,
_Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men;
For women's sake, by whom we men are men;
Or for men's sake, the authours of these women_.
The antithesis of _a word that all men love_, and _a word which
loves all men_, though in itself worth little, has much of the
spirit of this play.
IV.iii.386 (423,2) [If so, our copper buys no better treasure] Here
Mr. Theobald ends the third act.
V.i.3 (423,3) [your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious]
I know not well what degree of respect Shakespeare intends
to obtain for this vicar, but he has here put into his mouth a
finished representation of colloquial excellence. It is very
difficult to add any thing to this character of the school-master's
table-talk, and perhaps all the precepts of Castiglione
will scarcely be found to comprehend a rule for conversation so
justly delineated, so widely dilated, and so nicely limited.
It may be proper just to note, that _reason_ here, and in many
other places, signifies _discourse_; and that _audacious_ is used in
a good sense for _spirited, animated, confident_. _Opinion_ is the
same with _obstinacy_ or _opinionated_.
V.i.14 (424,4) [He is too picked] To have the beard _piqued_ or shorn
so as to end in a point, was, in our authour's time, a mark of a
traveller affecting foreign fashions: so says the Bastard in K.
John,
--_I catechise
_My_ piqued _man of countries_.
V.i.29 (425,6) [(_Ne intelligis, Domine._) to make frantick, lunatick?]
There seems yet something wanting to the integrity of this passage,
which Mr. Theobald has in the most corrupt and difficult
places very happily restored. For _ne intelligis domine, to make
frantick, lunatick_, I read, (nonne _intelligis, domine?_) to _be_
mad, frantick, lunatick.
V.i.44 (427,6) [_honorificabilitudinitatibus_] This word, whencesoever
it comes, is often mentioned as the longest word known.
(1773)
V.i.110 (429,6) [dally with my excrement] The authour has before
called the beard _valour's excrement_ in the Merchant of Venice.
V.ii.43 (432,5) ['Ware pencils!] The former editions read,