[Our own love, waking, cries to see what's done,
While shameful hate sleeps out the afternoon]
These two lines I should be glad to call _an interpolation of a
player_. They are ill connected with the former, and not very
clear or proper in themselves. I believe the author made two
couplets to the same purpose, wrote them both down that he might
take his choice, and so they happened to be both preserved.
For _sleep_ I think we should read _slept_. _Love cries_ to see what
was done while hatred _slept_, and suffered mischief to be done. Or
the meaning may be, that _hatred_ still _continues_ to _sleep_ at ease,
while _love_ is weeping; and so the present reading may stand.
V.iii.93 (128,3) [In Florence was it from a casement thrown me]
Bertram still continues to have too little virtue to deserve Helen.
He did not know indeed that it was Helen's ring, but he knew that
he had it not from a window.
V.iii.95 (128,4) [Noble she was, and thought I stood engag'd]
[T: I don't understand this reading; if we are to understand, that she
thought Bertram engag'd to her in affection, insnared by her
charms, this meaning is too obscurely express'd.] The context rather
makes me believe, that the poet wrote,
_noble she was, and thought
I stood_ ungag'd;-----
i.e. unengag'd: neither my heart, nor person, dispos'd of.--The
plain meaning is, when she saw me receive the ring, she thought me
_engaged_ to her.
V.iii.101 (129,5) [_King_ Plutus himself , That knows the tinct and
multiplying medicine] Plutus the grand alchemist, who knows the
_tincture_ which confers the properties of gold upon base metals, and
the _matter_ by which _gold_ is _multiplied_, by which a small quantity
of gold is made to communicate its qualities to a large mass of metal.
In the reign of Henry the fourth a law was made to forbid _all
men thenceforth to_ multiply _gold, or use any craft of_ multiplication.
Of which law Mr. Boyle, when he was warm with the hope of
transmutation, procured a repeal.
V.iii.105 (129,6) [Then if you know, That you are well acquainted
with yourself] The true meaning of this _strange_ [Warburton's word]
expression is, _If you know that_ your faculties are so found, as
_that you have the proper consciousness of your own actions_, and
are able to recollect and relate what you have done, _tell me_. &c.