The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 5 of 9] · William Shakespeare
NOTE XV.
III. 4. 78–80. The first Folio reads: ‘Off with his Head; now by Saint _Paul_ I sweare, I will not dine, untill I see the same. Lovell and Ratcliffe, looke that it be done.’ The first Quarto has: ‘Off with his head. Now by Saint Paule, I will not dine to day I sweare, Vntill I see the same, some see it done.’ Theobald altered Ratcliffe to Catesby, observing in his note, ‘The scene is here in the Tower: and Lord Hastings was cut off on that very day, when Rivers, Gray and Vaughan suffered at Pomfret. How then could Ratcliff at the same instant be both in Yorkshire and the Tower? In the very scene preceding this we find him conducting those gentlemen to the block. The players in their edition first made the blunder, as to Ratcliff attending Lord Hastings to death: for, in the old Quarto, we find it rightly;--Exeunt: Manet Catesby with Hastings.’ But in the next scene Theobald, while he makes Lovell and Catesby bring in the head of Hastings, allows Gloucester, just before their entrance, to say, ‘Catesby, o’erlook the walls.’ Hanmer corrected this inconsistency by reading, ‘Some one o’erlook the walls.’ We have followed the Folios, for the difficulties could not be removed entirely without applying more violence to the text than an editor is justified in using.
III. 5. 10–21. In the first Quarto this passage stands as follows: And both are ready in their offices To grace my stratagems. _Enter Maior._ _Glo._ Here comes the Maior. _Buc._ Let me alone to entertaine him. Lo: Maior, _Glo._ Looke to the drawbridge there. _Buc._ The reason we have sent for you. _Glo._ Catesby ouerlooke the wals. _Buck._ Harke, I heare a drumme. _Glo._ Looke backe, defend thee, here are enemies. _Buc._ God and our innocence defend vs. _Enter Catesby_ _Glo._ O, O, be quiet, it is Catesby. _with Hast. head._ In the last line Q3 has _G, O, be quiet,_ &c. Instead of lines 12–14, _But what......Lord mayor,_ Theobald read with the Quartos. IV. 1. 92–94. In the second Folio there is a curious mistake here. In the margin of the first Folio, from which the second was printed, some one had inserted the stage directions, ‘to Dorset,’ ‘to Anne,’ ‘to the Queene,’ which the printer mistook and gave as part of the text thus: ‘_Duc. Yorke._ Go to Richmond, to Dorset, to Anne, to the Queene, and good fortune guide thee, &c.’ The error is repeated in the third Folio and, strange to say, corrected in the fourth, where the stage directions are inserted in their proper places. It also inserts the word ‘thou,’ which had been omitted in the second and third Folios.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.