(_a_) The first of these, I. v. 54-5, I decidedly believe to be
spurious. (1) The scene ends quite in Shakespeare's manner without it.
(2) It does not seem likely that at the _end_ of the scene Shakespeare
would have introduced anything _violently_ incongruous with the
immediately preceding words,
Oh let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!
Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!
(3) Even if he had done so, it is very unlikely that the incongruous
words would have been grossly indecent. (4) Even if they had been,
surely they would not have been _irrelevantly_ indecent and evidently
addressed to the audience, two faults which are not in Shakespeare's
way. (5) The lines are doggerel. Doggerel is not uncommon in the
earliest plays; there are a few lines even in the _Merchant of Venice_,
a line and a half, perhaps, in _As You Like It_; but I do not think it
occurs later, not even where, in an early play, it would certainly have
been found, _e.g._ in the mouth of the Clown in _All's Well_. The best
that can be said for these lines is that they appear in the Quartos,
_i.e._ in reports, however vile, of the play as performed within two or
three years of its composition.
(_b_) I believe, almost as decidedly, that the second passage, III.
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