This is Pope's correction of 'dam'd coloured' of the folio. Knight reads _damask_; Collier's folio _dun_, which is very bad indeed. We meet in other dramatists with _straw-_, _peach-_, _carnation-colour'd_ stocks. It is perhaps impossible to recover the right word, yet I see little objection to _flame-colour_; for if we suppose _flame_ pronounced as in Latin and French (see Introd. p. 74), _flame-coloured_ might easily become 'damn'd (pr. _dam_) coloured' in the printer's mind. In confirmation we have elsewhere in the folio '_scar_-crow,' not '_scare_-crow,' and other like words. * * * * * SC. 4. "Is as the maiden's organ, shrill and sound; And all is semblative a woman's part." I have read '_in_ sound'; for _and_ and _in_ are perpetually confounded. I also read 'semblative _to_.' * * * * * SC. 5. "Of fools _to be_ no better than the fools' zanies." So also Capell. * * * * * "At your door like a sheriff's post, and be the supporter Of a bench." For 'and' I read _or_, and so did Hanmer. * * * * * "If you be not mad, begone; if you have reason, be brief." Mason omitted the negative, but perhaps needlessly. * * * * * _Oli._ "Tell me your mind.--_Vio._ I am a messenger..." This is Warburton's arrangement, the folio giving the whole to Viola. (See on Meas. for Meas. ii. 3.) I have added the sign of the break, which seems necessary. * * * * * "Look you, sir; such one I was, _as_ this present.... Is it not well done?" By reading and pointing thus we get most excellent sense, and increase the vivacity and humour of the passage. Mason, whom Singer follows, read "_as_ this presents," which no doubt may be right, but is far less effective. * * * * * "With adorations, _with_ fertile tears." See Introd. p. 55. * * * * * "The countes man, he left this ring behind him." Capell, who is invariably followed, made it _county's_. I, however, read, as in iii. 3, 'count _his_.' With one exception (Mer. of Ven. i. 2), _County_ is peculiar to Romeo and Juliet; formosissima in Much Ado, ii. 1, we should, I think, read _Count_. ACT II. SC. 2. "She took the ring of me; I'll none of it." As it is evident from Malvolio's reply that this was not what Viola said, the negative may have been omitted here, as in so many other places; Malone read '_no_ ring.' Singer retains the reading of the folio, saying that Viola fibs to "avoid betraying the weakness of Olivia to her steward." * * * * * "That methought _that_ her eyes had lost her tongue." The 2nd folio read 'That _sure_ methought.' * * * * *