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I.i.235 (15,1) [What power is it, which mounts my love so high;

That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?]

She means, by what influence is my love directed to a person so much above me. [why am I made to discern excellence, sad left to long after it, without the food of hope.]

I.i.237 (15,2)

[The mightiest space in fortune, nature brings

To join like likes, and kiss, like native things.

Impossible be strange attempts, to those

That weigh their pain in sense; and do suppose,

What hath been]

All these four lines are obscure, and, I believe, corrupt. I shall propose an emendation, which those who can explain the present reading, are at liberty to reject.

Through mightiest space in fortune nature brings

Likes to join likes, and kiss, like native things.

That is, nature brings like qualities and dispositions to meet through any distance that fortune may have set between them; she joins them and makes them kiss like things born together.

The next lines I read with Hammer.

Impossible be strange attempts to those That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose What ha'n't been, cannot be.

New attempts seen impossible to those who estimate their labour or enterprises by sense, and believe that nothing can be but what they see before them.

I.ii.32 (17,3)

[He had the wit, which I can well observe

To-day in our young lords, but they may jest,

Till their own scorn return to them; unnoted,

Ere they can hide their levity in honour]

I believe honour is not dignity of birth or rank, but acquired reputation: Your father, says the king, had the same airy flights of satirical wit-with the young lords of the present time, but they do not what he did, hide their unnoted levity in honour, cover petty faults with great merit.

This is an excellent observation. Jocose follies, and slight offences, are only allowed by mankind in him that overpowers them by great qualities.

I.ii.36 (18,4)

[So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness

Were in his pride or sharpness; if they were,

His equal had awak'd them]

[W: no contempt or] The original edition reads the first line thus,

So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness.

The sense is the same. Nor was used without reduplication. So in Measure for Measure,

More nor less to others paying, Than by self-offences weighing.

The old text needs to be explained. He was so like a courtier, that there was in his dignity of manner nothing contemptuous, and

I.ii.41 (19, 5) [His tongue obey'd his hand] We should read,

His tongue obeyed the hand.

That is, the hand of his honour's clock, shewing the true minute when exceptions bad him speak.

I.ii.44 (19, 7) [Making then proud of his humility, In their poor praise he humbled] [W: proud; and his] Every man has seen the mean too often proud of the humility of the great, and perhaps the great may sometimes be humbled in the praises of the mean, of those who commend them without conviction or discernment: this, however is not so common; the mean are found more frequently than the great.

I.ii.50 (19, 8)

[So in approof lives not his epitaph,

As in your royal speech]

[W: Epitaph for character.] I should wish to read,

Approof so lives not in his epitaph, As in your royal speech.

Approof is approbation. If I should allow Dr. Warburton's interpretation of Epitaph, which is more than can be reasonably expected, I can yet find no sense in the present reading.

I.ii.61 (20, 9) [whose judgments are meer fathers of their garments] Who have no other use of their faculties, than to invent new modes of dress.

I.iii (21, 1) [Enter Countess, Steward, and Clown] A Clown in Shakespeare is commonly taken for a licensed jester, or domestick fool. We are not to wonder that we find this character often in his plays, since fools were, at that time, maintained in all great families, to keep up merriment in the house. In the picture of Sir Thomas More's family, by Hans Holbein, the only servant represented is Patison the fool. This is a proof of the familiarity to