Notes & Queries Archive
REPLY1850

On a Passage in "The Tempest"

By GEORGE STEPHENS.

Will you allow me to suggest that the reading of the original edition is perfectly correct as it stands, as will be seen by simply italicising the emphatic words:— "*Most* busie *least*, when I doe it." The construction is thus merely an instance of a common ellipsis (here of the word *busy*), and requires the comma after *least*. This is another proof of the advantage of being slow to abandon primitive texts.

Topics: Literature, Shakespeare, Textual Analysis