Twelfth Night - a textual problem
The opening lines of
Shakespeare's
Twelfth Night read:
- If music be the food of love, play on;
- Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
- The appetite may sicken, and so die.
- That strain again! it had a dying fall:
- O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
- That breathes upon a bank of violets,
- Stealing and giving odour!
Alexander Pope emended the word
sound (line 5) to
south.
A discussion of Pope's motive for this emendation is discussed here: