Note 813:9 — PREFACE
Reading edition
The fourth act of the play in its original shape, and, presumably, as sent to Sheridan, opened with the following lines:—
'Drip! drip! drip! drip!—in such a place as this It has nothing else to do but drip! drip! drip! I wish it had not dripp'd upon my torch.'
In MS. III the opening lines are erased and the fourth Act opens thus:—
This ceaseless dreary sound of water-drops dropping water
I would they had not fallen upon my Torch!
After the lapse of sixteen years Coleridge may have confused the corrected version with the original. There is no MS. authority for the line as quoted in the Preface.