William Shakespeare, Sonnet xxviii
Notes
line 12: Twire: Malone proposed to read twirl, and Steevens conjectured that twire means quire. Gifford, in a note upon Ben Jonson's 'Sad Shepherd', explains that in the passage before us the meaning is "when the stars do not gleam or appear at intervals". He adds, "Twire should not have been suffered to grow obsolete, for we have no word now in use that can take its place, or be considered as precisely synonymous with it in sense: leer and twinkle are merely shaes of it." Gifford quotes several passages from Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher in confirmation of his opinion. But there are four lines in Drayton's 'Polyolbion' which contain a parallel use of the word:
"Suppose 'twixt noon and night the sun is half-way wrought,[ Back to text ]
(The shadows to be large, by his descending brought,)
Who with a fervent eye looks through the twiring glades,
And his dispersed rays commixeth with the shades."
Most notes to Shakespeare's sonnets are from Charles Knight's edition, but those in square brackets are mine.