'Range' in the OED

Abstract

ANTONY cries out, ‘Let Rome in Tyber melt! and the wide arch / Of rang’d empire fall’ (I.i.33–34), and Bishop Warburton, Dr Johnson, and George Steevens could not agree on the meaning of ‘rang’d’. Edmond Malone, however, was tentatively of the opinion that ‘The term range seems to have been applied in a peculiar sense, to mason-work, in our author's time. So, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. ii. c. ix: ‘It was a vault y-built for great dispence, / With many raunges rear’d along the wall.’ Steevens, prompted by Malone's note, bethought himself and wrote, ‘What, in ancient masons’ or bricklayers’ work, was denominated a range, is now called a course’ (1821 Boswell-Malone Shakespeare, XII. 168–69, n. 3). The OED, under ‘Special Comb.,’ has ‘masonry laid in level courses’ for ‘range’ and ‘Building. A single continuous range or layer of stones, bricks, or timber of the same height throughout’.