.. Then, in despight of brooded watchfull day,
I would into thy bosome poure my thoughts....'
If one had to choose the finest line in this passage, the choice would
fall upon
'Sound on into the drowsy race of night.'
Yet you will have to look hard for it in the modern editions of
Shakespeare. At the best you will find it with the mark of corruption:--
+'Sound on into the drowsy race of night ('Globe');
and you run quite a risk of finding
'Sound one into the drowsy race of night' ('Oxford').
There are six pages of close-printed comment upon the line in the
_Variorum_. The only reason, we can see, why it should be the most
commented line in _King John_ is that it is one of the most beautiful.
No one could stand it. Of all the commentators, only one, Miss Porter,
whom we name _honoris causa_, stands by the line with any conviction of
its beauty. Every other person either alters it or regrets his inability
to alter it.
'How can a bell sound on into a race?' pipe the little editors. What is
'the race of night?' What _can_ it mean? How _could_ a race be drowsy?
What an _awful_ contradiction in terms! And so while you and I, and all
the other ordinary lovers of Shakespeare are peacefully sleeping in our
beds, they come along with their little chisels, and chop out the
horribly illogical word and pop in a horribly logical one, and we
(unless we can afford the _Variorum_, which we can't) know nothing
whatever about it.
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