nnot fulfill the
condition precedent of being Shakespeare's peers, we must exercise the
greatest caution in changing a reading of the Quartos or Folios, lest
in condemning the text as corrupt we pass judgment on our own wit.

He who the sword of Heaven would bear
Must be as holy as severe.

And we must be very sure that the passage is corrupt before we set
about amending it. First and last, we must remember that primal elder
law, that of two readings the more difficult is to be preferred.
_Durior lectio preferenda 'st_ should be a frontlet between our brows.
The weaker reading or the plainer meaning is more likely to be a
printer's interpretation of what he failed to comprehend.

But to understand Shakespeare's meaning in a degree that will
authorize us to amend the text, we must understand Shakespeare's
speech; that is, we must be thoroughly familiar with the words and
usages of Elizabethan English; and not only with Elizabethan words and
phrases, but also, as far as possible, with the very pronunciation.

This fundamental principle is well enforced and illustrated in Dr.
Ingleby's book, which was originally published in one of the Annuals
of the German Shakespeare Society under the title of _The Still Lion_,
a title suggested by a passage in De Quincey, where the danger of
meddling with Milton's text is compared to that of meddling with
a still lion, which may be neither dead nor sleeping, but merely
shamming. Dr. Ingleby substitutes Shakespeare for Milton, and
maintains that the mass of Shakespearian emendations that have
been proposed during the last twenty years are needless; and that
corruptions have been assumed where none exist, owing to the limited
knowledge possessed by the critics. Thus, for instance, in the _Comedy
of Errors_ (I. i. 152) the Duke bids Aegeon to "seek thy _help_
by beneficial _help_." At once there is a chorus from all of
us, sciolists, of "Corruption!" "Sophistication!" "Cacophonous
repetition!" etc. etc. "But gently, friends," says Dr. Ingleby: "may
not 'help' have borne a different or a special meaning in Elizabethan
English?" and turning to medical writers and books on medicine of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (among them Dr. John Hall,
Shakespeare's own son-in-law), he proves that _heal_ and _help_ having
a common origin, _help_ was used by Shakespeare's contemporaries as a
synonym for _cure, deliverance_. The text, then, is perfectly correct,
AEgeon being bid to seek