“One without substance,” &c.
The present text, and that proposed by Seward, are equally vile. I have
endeavoured to make the lines sense, though the whole is, I suspect,
incurable except by bold conjectural reformation. I would read thus:—
“One without substance of herself, that’s woman;
Without the pleasure of her life, that’s wanton;
Tho’ she be young, forgetting it; tho’ fair,
Making her glass the eyes of honest men,
Not her own admiration.”
“That’s wanton,” or, “that is to say, wantonness.”