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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


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Page 167
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.