Theobald, who is usually followed, read _bawds_ for 'bonds'; but surely _bawds_ could not with any propriety be called 'sanctified and pious.' The truth is, the poet's word was 'bonds,' but the editors have not understood it, Singer, for example, calling it _nonsense_. The whole passage is merely a poetic periphrasis of seduction under promise of marriage; and had the word been _Sounding_, not 'Breathing,' there would probably have been no mistake. * * * * * "Have you so slander any moment leisure." Collier's folio reads _squander_, which may be right; but we have "She slanders so her judgement" (Cymb. iii. 5), and "To slander music any more than once" (Much Ado, ii. 3). In 'any moment leisure' the structure is perfectly correct. * * * * * SC. 4. "The King doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse, Keeps wassail, and the swaggering upspring reels." Here 'wake' is like _watch_ (see Macb. ii. 2), sits up late. In the next line I would for 'swaggering' read _staggering_. 'Upspring' is probably used collectively for the risers from the table, a mode of expression not yet obsolete. "The space was filled by the _in-rush_ before he had time to make his way out."--Mrs. Gaskell, Sylvia's Lovers, ch. xii. * * * * * "The dram of eale Doth all the noble substance, of a doubt To his own scandal....--Look, my lord! it comes." This passage is not in the folio. As in 4to 1604, where it occurs, we have in ii. 1 'a deale' for 'a devil,' I here read _evil_ for 'eale'; in both cases _vi_ may have been written like _a_; and for 'of a doubt,' which is to be found nowhere else, _out o' doubt_, or perhaps '_out_ of a doubt:' some read _often dout_. The sentence, we may see, is not complete, and it should also be recollected that the language of the whole of the speech is involved, as if the speaker was thinking of something else, and merely talking against time. * * * * * "Making night hideous and we fools of nature." Grammar would require _us_ for 'we.' * * * * * SC. 5. "_Hear_ what?--I am thy father's spirit." The repetition of _Hear_ from preceding line seems necessary. Omissions of this kind are not unfrequent. * * * * * "And for the day confin'd to fast in fires." Heath proposed _lasting_ for 'fast in,' but, I think, with a loss of vigour, if a gain of correctness. 'Confin'd' may here signify limited, restrained. See on M. for M. iv. 3. * * * * * "That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf." The folio reads _rots_, which Mr. Dyce adopts. * * * * * "Of life, of crown, of queen, at once despatch'd."