rs
do the King best seruice in the end. He keepes
them like an Ape in the corner of his iaw,[8] first
[Sidenote: like an apple in]
mouth'd to be last swallowed, when he needes what
you haue glean'd, it is but squeezing you, and
Spundge you shall be dry againe.

_Rosin._ I vnderstand you not my Lord.

[Footnote A: _Here in the Quarto_:--

Whose whisper ore the worlds dyameter,[9]
[Sidenote: 206] As leuell as the Cannon to his blanck,[10]
Transports his poysned shot, may miffe[11] our Name,
And hit the woundlesse ayre.]

[Footnote 1: unhappily.]

[Footnote 2: He has hid the body--to make the whole look the work of a
mad fit.]

[Footnote 3: This line is not in the _Quarto_.]

[Footnote 4: _Not in Q. See margin above._]

[Footnote 5: He has put it in a place which, little visited, is very
dusty.]

[Footnote 6: He is mad to them--sane only to his mother and Horatio.]

[Footnote 7: _euphuistic_: 'asked a question by a sponge, what answer
should a prince make?']

[Footnote 8: _1st Q._:

For hee doth keep you as an Ape doth nuttes,
In the corner of his Iaw, first mouthes you,
Then swallowes you:]

[Footnote 9: Here most modern editors insert, '_so, haply, slander_'.
But, although I think the Poet left out this obscure passage merely from
dissatisfaction with it, I believe it renders a worthy sense as it
stands. The antecedent to _whose_ is _friends_: _cannon_ is nominative
to _transports_; and the only difficulty is the epithet _poysned_
applied to _shot_, which seems transposed from the idea of an
_unfriendly_ whisper. Perhaps Shakspere wrote _poysed shot_. But taking
this as it stands, the passage might be paraphrased thus: 'Whose
(favourable) whisper over the world's diameter (_from one side of the
world to the other_), as level (_as truly aimed_) as the cannon (of an
evil whisper) transports its poisoned shot to his blank (_the white
centre of the target_), may shoot past our name (so keeping us clear),
and hit only the invulnerable air.' ('_the intrenchant air_': _Macbeth_,
act v. sc. 8). This interpretation rests on the idea of
over-condensation with its tendency to seeming confusion--the only fault
I know in the Poet--a grand fault, peculiarly his own, born of the
beating of his wings against the impossible. It is much as if, able to
think two thoughts at once, he would compel his phrase to utter them at
once.]

[Footnote 10: