Though this addition is not absolutely necessary, it gives such force to the sentiment that I willingly believe it may have come from the poet's pen. ACT III. SC. 1. "Servile to all the skyey influences That dost this habitation, where thou keepest, Hourly afflict." No doubt 'dost' may make some sense here, but _do_, or rather, as more Shakesperian, _doth_, makes far better sense. In Son. xxxix. there is the very same confusion of _dost_ and _doth_. * * * * * "For thy complexion shifts to strange effects." Johnson read _affects_, which seems to be better. * * * * * "And Death unloads thee.--Friend hast thou none." There might seem to be no need of adding anything here. But we may see that there is not an end of a paragraph. (See Introd. p. 82.) I therefore read, 'And Death _in fine_.' * * * * * "For all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied Eld." No sense has been made of 'as aged,' which may therefore be regarded as corrupt. As in Tr. and Cr. v. 3, _as lawful_ should be _unlawful_, I have here read in my Edition _engaged_ (also the reading of Mr. Staunton) in the sense of dependent, in subjection, the ordinary state of youth under the authority of parents and elders, depending on them for money, etc. We might perhaps read _as gaged_ in the same sense, if we had examples. The Cambridge editors propose _abased_, which is good, and might easily have become 'as aged.' Possibly the poet wrote _an abject_, as we have, "We are the Queen's _abjects_" (Rich. III. i. 1), and "I will make thee stoop, thou _abject_" (Jonson, Ev. Man Out, etc., v. 3), "That thou wilt never let me live to be _An abject_" (Chapman, Hymn to Venus, _v._ 312), "Yea, the very abjects" (Ps. xxxv. 15). * * * * * "What is yet in this That bears the name of life? Yet in this life Lie hid moe thousand deaths; yet death we fear." For 'Yet,' caused by the other two, I read _Yea_; for 'moe' _some_, not _more_, as is usual, and which makes no sense. * * * * * "Dear sir, ere long I'll visit thee again." For 'sir' Mason, with whom I agree, reads _son_. Further on in the scene the Duke calls him 'son.' (See on Cor. iii. 2.) It was perhaps the following line that suggested 'sir' to the printer. * * * * * "Bring me to hear them speak." So Steevens read, transposing the 'them' and 'me' of the folio; and later editors have properly followed him. * * * * * "Now, sister, what's the comfort?-- Why, as all comforts are, most good, most good indeed." This is the proper arrangement. Editors usually omit the first 'most good,' to get their favourite decasyllabic verse, heedless of the loss of force.