Shared Error
Errors common to all the quartos and F will be a reliable guide to
lines
not checked against the promptbook—if such errors can be securely
identified, and if they do not originate with Shakespeare himself. No such
list
can be definitive. Ours includes editorial emendations which are usually
accepted, together with one convincing emendation (932) introduced by
Kenneth Muir in his 1963 Signet edition,[18]
and 2 proposed
readings (964, 2556) and a proposed alternative reading (1090) first put
forward here.
[19]
|
TLN |
Q1-F1 |
Emendation |
| 1.1.163 |
168-9 |
obedience bids, | Obedience bids |
Obedience bids |
| 2.1.283 |
932 |
Iohn |
Thomas |
| 2.2.12 |
964 |
With . . . at |
At . . . with |
| 2.2.110 |
1065 |
Thus disorderly thrust |
Thus thrust disorderly or Disorderly thus
thrust |
| 2.2.138 |
1090 |
Will the hatefull commons |
Will the hatefull commoners or The hatefull
commons
will |
| 3.4.11 |
1817 |
griefe |
ioy |
| 3.4.67 |
1879 |
you the |
you then the |
| 4.1.148 |
2068 |
Preuent it |
Preuent |
| 5.3.31 |
2528 |
my |
the |
| 5.3.57 |
2556 |
lest thy |
lest |
One odd variant does not quite fit into this category. Q1 has a self-evident
dittography:
Landlord of England art thou now not, not King. (2.1.113; TLN
756)
F reads:
Landlord of England art thou, and not King:
F might have independent authority from the promptbook, though it surely
gives the weaker reading. On the other hand, the simplest unauthoritative
correction would have been to remove the first (nonsensical and
extrametrical) 'not'. Perhaps an annotation was misunderstood by the
compositor. In any case, this variant cannot confidently be put forward as
a
miscorrection resulting from failure to consult the promptbook.
