Scottish nation. Thus wrote James Rither of Harewood to Lord Burghley, in 1588:-" It is needful to give an eye to the back-door; if the Scots be our friends, we may well call them our back-friends; for we have seldom had to do with our foes before, but they have stricken at us behind: an old English adage, omne malum ab Aquilone." Wright's Queen Elizabeth and her Times, vol. ii. p. 377. I. 2. K. HENRY. Either our history shall, with full mouth, Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth, Not worshipped with a paper epitaph. There is not the slightest difficulty in this passage, if we consider "worshipped" as used in the sense of "honoured." Henry says, that either he will do deeds worthy of renown, or find a mean grave without any inscription-not even honoured with one of the epitaphs written on paper, with which it was usual to decorate the herses of famous persons. Shakespeare appears himself to have substituted "waxen" for paper. In this case "a waxen epitaph" means an epitaph written on paper and affixed by wax to the herse. The sense is the same: a grave without any inscription, not even one of the meanest and most fugitive. II. 3. QUICKLEY. A made a finer end, and went away, an it had been any chrisom child. Shakespeare in this speech gives to Mrs. Quickley the sentiments and language of an old nurse of the time. The signs of approaching death which she describes are still those which are so regarded by the common people, and the phrase used above was one of the popular and stock comparisons of that class of people in Shakespeare's age. Thus in a manuscript of Alexander Cooke, who was the vicar of Leeds in the time of James the First, (Harl. 5247,) one of the treatises is intitled "Country Errors, commonly received and allowed, disproved by the Scriptures." The ninth error is this," He who dieth quietly, without ravings or cursings, much like a chrysom child, as the saying is; he that giveth up the ghost with 'Lord receive my soul,' or some such like good speech, must needs be thought to make a good end, and, undoubtedly, to be saved, if country divinity be not false divinity." I. 4. FR. KING. Witness our too much memorable shame, And all our princes captiv'd, by the hand Of that black name, Edward, black prince of Wales; Saw his heroical seed, and smil'd to see him Mangle the work of nature, and deface The patterns, that by God and by French fathers Had twenty years been made. Various attempts have been made to amend this passage. Theobald and others would read "mounting sire." Mr. Coleridge proposed "monarch sire." I think the text exhibits what Shakespeare wrote. The idea of Edward the Third seated on a hill watching the conduct of his son at the battle of Cressy, had taken possession of his mind when he wrote this play, as is evident from there being an unquestionable allusion to it in the second scene of the third act. 66 Whiles his most mighty father on a hill Speaking again of the same battle, he calls Edward his mountain sire," merely as having at Cressy stood upon a mountain; but, thinking that this might not be intelligible to the audience, he adds the next clause as explanatory of it. However, if this is the true explanation, the line must be regarded as one of those unfiled expressions, thrown off at once from his mind, which he would have corrected had he condescended to blot. IV. CHORUS. From camp to camp through the foul womb of night This rare word, here so happily used by Shakespeare, occurs in Palsgrave's Table of Adverbs in his French Dictionary, 1530, "Stylly; quoyement." It has the air of having been a word of his own formation invented for the occasion, which may excuse this remark. IV. 3. SALISBURY. And my kind kinsman. Ritson's notes are, in general, intelligent and correct; but it would be well to withdraw his note on this passage from any future edition, as it leaves an impression that Shakespeare is incorrect in making Salisbury address Westmoreland with the appellation "kinsman." Salisbury was related to Westmoreland's wife, who was a Beaufort, daughter of John of Gaunt, either in virtue of his own descent from Joan of Acre, or by his wife, whose grandmother was the Fair Maid of Kent. KING HENRY THE SIXTH. PART THE FIRST. THE play we have just quitted has not only marks of the hand of Shakespeare, but is throughout one of the noblest productions of his genius. At the close of it the chorus tells us that the stage had often shewn the loss of France in the reign of King Henry the Sixth, and how it had shewn it the play before us exhibits proof. We see in it nothing of Shakespeare, neither his beauties nor his faults. It is tame and prosaic, and when not so is turgid. It may deserve to keep its place, inasmuch as it is alluded to in the chorus before mentioned, and for the sake of the continuity of history; but it has no pretension to be regarded as Shakespeare's. The second and third parts have evidently much of his hand; but there are in them portions by an inferior hand. Mr. Malone has treated at large on the composition of these three plays, and to his very valuable dissertation I refer, having nothing of my own to add to so admirable a performance. The date of all the three plays may be fixed at an early period of the Poet's career. Probably the First Part, whoever was the author, was written about 1587. The remarkable allusion in a pamphlet of Robert Green's to a line in the third part O tyger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide! is an accidental proof that Shakespeare had been concerned in these plays before September, 1592, in refitting and improving them at least, as the pamphlet was entered at Stationers' Hall in that month. II. 3. COUNTESS. It cannot be this weak and writhled shrimp Should strike such terror to his enemies. Perhaps Harington's Ariosto supplies a better illustration of this word than is found in the notes. Her face was wan, a lean and writhled skin; Her stature skant three horse-loaves did exceed, &c. Canto vii. St. 62. |