Page:Some Textual Difficulties in Shakespeare.djvu/37

Rh and at length because it has so utterly disappeared from the text, in the relations which "airy" gives it, that the whole weight of editorial authority is against me; and I am desirous of having it restored permanently.

The only real "authority" in such a case is that of internal evidence. If we change "airy air," we have not only lost the soft suggestion of that mild and dewy morning when the lion rose and shook himself, but we have given the actor's arm no medium to move in and no course to follow. The words "airy air" are susceptible of the most expressive flourish of a bandmaster's wand—so also of the motioning hand. But the ending "to air" is all too scant.