* * * * * "That won you without blows! Despising for you The City, thus I turn my back _upon it_. There is a world elsewhere." ACT IV. SC. 1. "You were used To say extremities was the trier of spirits." The 2nd folio reads 'extremity,' and it is usually followed, and is perhaps right; yet the text is not wrong. See Introd. p. 72. * * * * * "_That_ Fortune's blows, When most struck home, being gentle wounded, craves A noble cunning." Though this may seem devoid of sense, it is, I think, what the poet wrote. If so, we must take 'wounded' actively, like "Under my burden _groan'd_" (Temp. i. 2). "It is twice _blessed_" (M. of Ven. v. 1) etc.; and then 'gentle' will denote that the blows were open and honourable ones. (See the parallel passage in Tr. and Cress, i. 3.) If this should not satisfy, we might perhaps read _in the gentle-minded_. Pope read 'gentle-_warded_.' 'Cunning' here is skill taken in a good sense, as in "May my right-hand forget her _cunning_" (Ps. cxxxvii). * * * * * "Like to a lonely dragon that his fen Makes feared." Perhaps the right reading would be _den_. * * * * * "Will or _not_ exceed the common, or be caught." The negative seems required to make sense. * * * * * "My first son, Whither wilt thou go?" She had, according to herself, no other son (see i. 3); and again she says of herself (v. 3), "While she, poor hen, fond of no second brood." I have never met with 'first' in the sense of noblest, that given it here by the critics. I would therefore read _fairest_. In Tr. and Cr. we have "_fair_ Lord Æneas"(i. 3); "_fair_ Prince" (iii. 1, v. 1); "_fair_ Diomed" (iv. 1); _fair_ beholders (Prol.). * * * * * "More than a wild exposture to each chance." Southern read _exposure_, which probably the poet wrote. * * * * * _Cor._ "Oh, the gods!" I give this speech to _Vir._, to whom it is better suited. Her only other speech in this scene is "O Heavens! O Heavens!" * * * * * SC. 3. "But your favour is well appeared by your tongue." Steevens read _approved_, Singer _appayed_. The poet probably wrote _has_, pronounced _as_, of which the printer made 'is.' * * * * * SC. 4. "My birth-place have I, and my love's upon." With Steevens, I read _hate_ for 'have.' This change of adjacent letters is a common error with printers. * * * * * SC. 5. "All-noble Marcius. Let me _en_twine Mine arms about that body." * * * * * "Unbuckling helms, fisting each other's throat, And waked half-dead with nothing."