There is knavery in this desertion, but there is no
folly.
II.iv.116 (383,3) Is practice only] _Practice_ is in Shakespeare, and
other old writers, used commonly in an ill sense for _unlawful
artifice_.
II.iv.122 (384,4) Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels,
when she put them i' the paste alive] Hinting that the eel and Lear are
in the same danger.
II.iv.142 (384,7) Than she to scant her duty] The word _scant_ is
directly contrary to the sense intended. The quarto reads,
--_slack_ her duty,
which is no better. May we not change it thus:
You less know bow to value her desert,
Than she to _scan_ her duty.
To _scan_ may be to _measure_ or _proportion_. Yet our author uses his
negatives with such licentiousness, that it is hardly safe to make any
alteration.--_Scant_ may mean to _adapt_, to _fit_, to _proportion_;
which sense seems still to be retained in the mechanical term scantling.
(see 1765, VI, 67, 4)
II.iv.155 (385,1) Do you but mark how this becomes the house?] [T: the
use?] [Warburton called "becomes the house" "a most expressive phrase"]
with this _most expressive phrase_ I believe no reader is satisfied. I
suspect that it has been written originally,
Ask her forgiveness?
Do you but mark how this becometh--thus.
Dear daughter, I confess, &c.
_Becomes the house_, and _becometh thus_, might be easily confounded by
readers so unskilful as the original printers.
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