Measure for Measure III. i. 93, 96: Prenzie
D. L. Crane · Notes and Queries · 2007
THE F reading ‘prenzie’ here is, as Brian Gibbons notes in his New Cambridge edition, a crux that ‘still resists solution’. But let us suppose that a vestigial ‘u’ before the secretary ‘p’ could have been mistaken by the compositor as no more than the initial flourish characteristic of a secretary hand ‘p’; so that he failed to set the initial ‘u’. Once the ‘u’ is restored and the word as a consequence begins ‘upr …’, the rest is easy. It is not difficult to visualize a secretary scribble that could either be read ‘enzie’ as in F, or complete the word ‘upright’. So we can print in III. i. 93: ‘The upright Angelo?’ and in III. i. 96: ‘In upright guards’; and make perfect sense.