The Cambridge editors seem to imply that the word rendered wife here, is one of those in which different copies of the first folio vary, some giving it as wife, and some as wise; and they accordingly adopt the former, with the punctuation as given above. Judging from the photozincographic facsimile of the first folio, to which alone I have access, it reads wise. But owing to the use of the long s, the difference between the two letters is exceedingly slight; and where the printing is not perfectly clear, it is just one of the rare cases where the facsimile might mislead. In the second folio it is unquestionably wise, and is punctuated accordingly, thus :

So rare a wonder'd father, and a wise,
Makes this place paradise.

:

This, I cannot doubt, is the true reading. Pope, who adopts wife, changes makes to make, to agree with the two nominatives. But it is common enough with Shakespeare to make the verb agree with the nearest nominative. Collier parades his folio annotator as giving what he assumes to be 'the final decision in favour of wife. Prospero has just replied to a question of Ferdinand, that the majestic vision they have witnessed is the work of spirits, called forth by his art to enact his present fancies; and he naturally responds: 'Let me ever live in a place which so wonderful and wise a father converts into a paradise.'

I' the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell,

There dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake
O'erstunk their feet.'

Feet cannot be the word here, when they were up to their

chins. Spedding suggests fear. Should it not be fell? Macbeth speaks of the time when his 'fell of hair would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir, as life were in't;' and Corin, in 'As You Like It,' speaking to Touchstone of the ewes, says 'their fells you know are greasy.'

'Cal. The dropsy drown this fool!'

In the folio it is dropsie. Query deep sea.

'Pros. Go, charge my goblins that they grind their joints With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews

With aged cramps.'

Query

wry convulsions . agued cramps.

ACT V. SCENE I.

Pros. My charms crack not; my spirits obey.'

Query:-break not. He says shortly after, 'My charms I'll break.'

His brother, and yours, abide all three distracted,
And the remainder mourning over them,

Brimful of sorrow and dismay.'

So it is in the Cambridge and in other editions. But in the folios it is brim full, which makes better rhythm, and no worse meaning.

'Pros. A solemn air, and the best comforter

To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains,

Now useless, boil'd within thy skull!'

The folios have boile and boil. Boil'd is the suggestion of Pope.

Query 'now useless coil,' as in Act i. Sc. 2,

Collier's MS. substitutes servant for sir. Query suitor. It is not his loyalty or service to the usurper that Prospero commends; but he may refer, in calling him a loyal suitor, to the fidelity with which he sued to Antonio, the usurping duke, on Prospero's behalf.

Begins to swell; and the approaching tide

Will shortly fill the reasonable shore

That now lies foul and muddy. Not one of them
That yet looks on me, or would know me.'

The first and second folios both read: 'That now ly foule.' Assuming that some change is necessary, I should prefer adhering to this, and reading: 'The reasonable shores that now lie foul.' The repetition of That at the beginning of two successive lines suggests the possibility of a compositor's misreading here, as in similar instances. Query, 'E'en yet looks on me.'

Pros. As great to me as late; and supportable
To make the dear loss, have I means much weaker

Than you may call to comfort you.'

Query reparable. Prospero is replying to Alonzo's

exclamation 'Irreparable is the loss.'

unmusical and mars the rhythm.

Supportable is

'Pros. Mark but the badges of these men, my lords, Then say if they be true

These three have robb'd me; and this demi-devil

For he's a bastard one-hath plotted with them
To take my life.'

My 1632 folio bears on its margin the substitution of visages for badges. But the badges which shewed they were not true, were, I presume, the stolen apparel in which Stephano and Trinculo are decked. But as Caliban would have none on't,' it should read 'these two have robb'd me.'

'Alon. Where should they find this grand liquor that hath gilded 'em?' Shakespeare repeatedly uses the word gilded, but nowhere else in this sense. Query 'guiled.

The epilogue which is appended to 'The Tempest' seems an impotent afterpiece to this beautiful comedy. It embodies in lame verse a feeble re-echo of the previous sentiments, without a single novel or apt idea. It resembles in no respect Shakespeare's own epilogues, and may be unhesitatingly assigned to some nameless playwright of the seventeenth century.

CHAPTER XIV.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

Bottom. I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream,-past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was— there is no man can tell what.'-A Midsummer Night's Dream.

ΤΗ

HE text of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' rests on different authority from that of The Tempest,' which appeared for the first time in the 1623 folio, seven years after its author's death. A quarto edition of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was printed for Thomas Fisher, and 'soulde at his shoppe, at the Signe of the White Hart, in Fleetestreete,' in the year 1600. It bears the name of William Shakespeare on the title; was duly entered at Stationers' Hall; and, though characterised by the usual carelessness of the press at that date, was, we may presume, set up from the author's manuscript. This was followed during the same year by another, and probably surreptitious reprint, by James Roberts, in which the printer's errors of the first quarto are corrected, and the stage directions somewhat augmented, but with a due crop of misreadings of its own. The Cambridge editors surmise that it was a pirated reprint of Fisher's quarto, for the use of the players. As such it got into the hands of those two special players who issued the first folio as 'Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Published according to the True Originall Copies;' and who, in the preface, pray their readers that they 'doe not envy his friends the office of their care