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FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES 75
Tauchnitz Edition, known pretty well all over Germany,
we are not likely to notice a gap anywhere
in the
poems. And yet something
is left out. Every sonnet,
as we know, has fourteen verses. Sonnet 126 has
only twelve lines, and those that have only the Tauch
nitz Edition to go by, might think the sonnet happens
to have only
twelve lines, and terminates with the fullstop
after the twelfth line. If, however, they will
consult the original edition of the "Sonnets" dated
1609, they
ending :
will find that the i26th Sonnet shows this
Her Audite (though delayd) answer'd must be,
And her Quietus is to render thee.
What else does, what else can, this mean but that
the two last lines of the sonnet were suppressed by the
author himself? The space
left open between the
brackets was to be filled in by hand, at the pleasure of
whosoever felt inclined to supply the wanting lines.
This is,
however, not the only instance in which the
Shakespeare Author suppressed something intention
ally.
We shall now show another case in which two
things occur simultaneously, namely, not only are the
rhymed verses printed in the form of prose, but one
line is also omitted. Modern editors have already
noticed the first particular, but have overlooked the
second.
We refer to the beginning of the third act in The
Merry Wives of Windsor^ in which Evans, the
Welshman, sings the verses in his dialect. They are
printed along with the prose, but are rendered promi
nent by italics :