Note XVII

III. 2. 156, 157. Jennens prints in brackets the line of the Quartos which we have omitted, and conjectures, as Johnson had done before him, that a line is lost either before or after it, which should rhyme to 'love.' As in the Quartos the line 'For women feare too much, even as they love,' occurs at the top of a page, the omission is more likely to have been caused by a line having dropped out at the foot of the previous page. Mr Keightley marks the omission of a line after 'love.' Malone supposes that the 'Either none' of the Quartos in line 158 was the commencement of the lost line, which he suggests may have run as follows:

Steevens proposes to retain the omitted line, reading 'lust' for 'love,' making a triplet rhyme with the preceding lines.

The Quarto probably gives us the author's first thought, incomplete, as well as the lines which he finally adopted, as they stand in the Folio. The thought will hardly bear to be expanded over four lines.