Mojo, The Bard, & Me

Well, sir, there rest in your foolery. Is there any ship puts forth to-night? may we be gone?


-Antipholus of Syracuse


 The Comedy Of Errors             Act IV, scene iii, line 35


Today I looked at this line and wondered why the ‘may’ in ‘may we be gone?’ was not capitalized. It comes after a question mark and the apparent end of a sentence, so what's up? I decided to go back to my First Folio to see what it had.

Well, fir, there reft in your foolerie:

Is there any fhips puts forth to night? may we be gone?

That’s exactly what the First Folio has. Or at least, that’s what my copy has.

So let’s look at this. We know that they used f for s, and so it’s easy to see why the modern editors replace all those f’s with s. I think we can also understand using the modern spelling of foolery, and maybe adding the hyphen in to night. Further, I suppose we can forgive the editors for turning ‘ships’ into the singular since that makes more sense, and it does go with the singular verbs ‘is’ and ‘puts’. Turning the colon into a period? That’s starting to get a bit iffy. But then, if they’re going to make all these edits for the modern version, why leave the uncapitalized ‘may’?

I’m not sure why I find that so irksome, but I do. I can't help it.

My associate and I happened to be talking about this editing issue whilst sitting outside the hotdog stand at the Frognerbadet in Oslo. His keen interest in the subject matter is written all over his face.