and did frequently allow himself an extra syllable in his iambic foot) is printed _swallow’d_. When we come to _dispised_, we find in the modern version an accent over the last syllable. By apostrophes and accents and changes of spelling the rhythm and the consistency in spelling of the original is sacrificed; and without making it an easier poem, only a less accurate one. The sound of the poem suffers through respelling as well as through false alterations in the rhythm. _Blouddy_ was pronounced more like _blue-dy_ than _bluddy_; the _ea_ of _extreame_ and _dreame_ were sounded like the _ea_ in great; _Injoyd_ was pronounced as it was written; _periurd_ was probably pronounced _peryurd_. But the changes in punctuation do the most damage: not only to the personal atmosphere of the poem but to the meaning itself. In the second line a semicolon after the first _action_ instead of a comma gives a longer rest than Shakespeare gave; but it also cuts off the idea at _action_ instead of keeping _in action_ and _till action_ together as well as the two _lust_’s. A comma after _blouddy_ separates it from _full_ with which it really forms a single word meaning “full as with blood”. Next come several semicolons for commas; these introduce pauses which break up the continuous flow of ideas treading on one another’s heels. (If Shakespeare had wanted such pauses he would have used semicolons as he does elsewhere.) Particularly serious is the interpolation of a comma after _no sooner had_; for this confines the phrase to a special meaning, _i.e._ “lust no sooner had is hated past reason,” whereas it also means “lust no sooner had _past reason_ is hated past reason”. The comma might as well have been put between _reason_ and _hated_; it would have limited the meaning but no more than has been done. On the other hand a comma is omitted where Shakespeare actually did put one, after _bayt_. With the comma, _On purpose layd_--though it refers to _bayt_--also takes us back to the original idea of _lust_; without the comma it merely carries out the figure of _bayt_. In the original there is a full stop at _mad_, closing the octave; in the revised version a colon is used, making the next line run right on and causing the unpardonable change from _Made_ to _Mad_. The capital _I_ of _In_ shows how carefully the printer copied the manuscript. Shakespeare undoubtedly first wrote the line without _Made_, but probably deciding that such an irregular line was too bold, added _Made_ without changing the capital _I_ to a small one. _Made_ logically follows from _make_ of the preceding line: ‘to make the taker mad, Made (mad)’; but it also returns to the general idea of lust. This change from _Made_ to _Mad_ limits the final _so_ of this line to _Mad_ and provokes another change from comma to semicolon, _i.e._ ‘Mad in pursut and in possession so (mad)’, whereas the idea of _Mad_ is only vaguely echoed in this line from the preceding line. The meaning of the line might