Yet
we find the following note in Knight's pictorial edition:--
"_Clouds_.--Some editors have proposed to read _shrouds_. A line
in Julius Caesar makes Shakspere's meaning clear:--
"'I have seen
Th' ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening _clouds_.'"
_Clouds_ in this instance is perfectly consistent; but here the scene
is altogether different. We have no ship-boy sleeping on the giddy
mast, in the midst of the shrouds, or ropes, rendered slippery by the
perpetual dashing of the waves against them during the storm.
If in Shakspeare's time the printer's rule of "following copy" had
been as rigidly observed as in our day, errors would have been
avoided, for Shakspeare's MS. was sufficiently clear. In the preface
to the folio edition of 1623, it is stated that "his mind and hand
went together; and what he thought he uttered with that easinesse that
wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers."
D***N**R.
8th Nov.
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