Both sense and metre require _so_, given in Collier's folio. * * * * * SC. 2. "When in Bohemia You take my lord, I'll give him my commission To let him there a month behind the gest Prefix'd for his parting." The third line has apparently no sense. The critics say 'let' is detain; but no instance of its use in that sense is to be found. We might read _sit_, which occurs in the sense of stay, dwell, live, as "I sit at ten pounds a week" (Mer. Wives, i. 3); and we have "and _sit him_ down and die" (2 Hen. IV. iii. 1). We might also, and still better, read _set_, which has nearly the same sense, settled, seated: "Being unarm'd and _set_ in secret shade" (F. Q. vi. 3, 8). "Whoever shoots at him, _I set him there_" (All's Well, iii. 2). In Fletcher's Nice Valour (iv. 1) Heath, followed by Dyce, reads _sets_ for 'lets' in "That lets it out, only for show or profit." 'Gest' (from _giste_, _gîte_, Fr.?) is used of the halting-places on a royal progress. Singer quotes from Strype a request from Cranmer to Cecil, "to let him have the new-resolved upon _gests_ from that time to the end, that he might know from time to time where the king was." Hence it would appear that there was a program of the gests, stating the time of arrival at and departure from each of them. I have therefore read 'gest-day,' supposing the last word, as usual, to have been effaced. See Introd. p. 58. * * * * * "What lady she her lord." I read _soe'er_ for 'she.' "What bloody work _soe'er_" (Othel. iii. 3). * * * * * "The doctrine of ill-doing nor dream'd _we even_." The usual reading is '_no_ nor,' that of the 2nd folio. * * * * * "Of my young play-fellow.--_Good_ grace to boot!" * * * * * "You may ride us With a soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere With spur we heat an acre." The phraseology here is evidently that of the race-course, where a _heat_ is a race. I read 'we heat _us_.' The phrase is elliptic, the full phrase being 'We heat us by running over an acre of ground.' * * * * * "May it be?-- Affection! thy intention stabs the centre." So I would point, with Steevens; in the folio it is "May it be affection?" The whole passage is rather obscure. 'Affection' is imagination, fancy (see Index _s. v._); and the meaning seems to be that it stretches to (expressed by intention), and stabs, or pierces, even the centre of the earth. * * * * * "Looking on the lines Of my boy's face methought I did recoil Twenty-three years." The folio reads 'methoughts,' and a MS. correction, followed by Mr. Collier, _my thoughts_; but 'recoil' is always a neuter verb in Shakespeare. * * * * *