Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. Act i. sc. 1. The quarto and the folio have " textit{Enter Leonato, gouer- nour of Messina, Innogen his wife," and c. (and again at the commencement of Act ii. they make " his wife" enter with Leonato.) " It is therefore clear," says Mr. Collier ad 1., " that the mother of Hero made her appearance before the audience, although she says nothing throughout the comedy ;" and the same gentleman, in his textit{Notes and Emendations, and c., remarks, that " the manuscript-corrector of the folio, 1632, has expunged the words textit{Innogen, his wife, as if the practice had not then been for her to appear before the audience in this or in any other portion of the comedy." p. 66. The great probability is, that textit{she never appeared before any audience in any part of the play, and that Theobald was right when he conjectured that " the poet had in his first plan designed such a character, which, on a survey of it, he found would be superfluous, and therefore he left it out." One thing I hold for certain, viz. that, if she ever textit{did figure among the dramatis personse, it was not as a mere dummy: there are scenes in which the mother of Hero textit{must have spoken;—she could not have stood on the stage without a word to say about the disgrace of her daughter, and c. Act I. sc. 1. " textit{Leon. How many gentlemen have you lost in this action ? textit{Mess. But few of textit{any sort, and none of name." According to Monck Mason, " of textit{any sort" means— of any kind whatsoever; an interpretation which, though manifestly wrong, has found approvers. The reply of the Messenger is equivalent to—But few gentlemen of any rank, and none of celebrity. So presently he says to Beatrice, " I know none of that name, lady; there was none such in the army of textit{any sort." So, too, in t... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.