The tucket sonuance, and the note to

mount:

For our approach shall so much dare the field. He uses terms of the field as if they were going out only to the chace for sport. To dare the field is a phrase in falconry. Birds are dared when by the falcon in the air they are terrified from rising, so that they will be sometimes taken by the hand.

Such an easy capture the lords expected to make of the English. JOHNSON.

1

The tucket sonuance was, 1 believe, the name of an introductory flourish on the trumpet, as toccata in Italien is the prelude of a sonata on the harpsichord, and toccar la tromba is to blow the trumpet. STEEVENS.

P. 78, last 1. By their ragged curtains, are meant their colours, M. MASON.

P. 79, 1. 4. 5. Their horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks

With torch - staves in their hand:] Grandpré alludes to the form of ancient candlesticks, which frequently represented human figures holding the sockets for the lights in their extended hands.

The following is an exact representation of one of these candlesticks, now in the possession of Francis Douce, Esq. The receptacles for the candles are wanting in the original. The sockets in which they were to be placed are in the outstretched hands of the figure.

A similar image occurs in Vittoria Corombona, 1612: " he show'd like a pewter candlestick, fashioned like a man in armour, holding a tilting staff in his hand little bigger than a candle."

The form of torch-staves may be ascertained by a wooden cut in Winter's Tale, Act IV. sc. 3.

STEEVENS. P. 79, 1. 10. Gimmal is in the western counties, a ring; a gimmal bit is therefore a bit of which the parts played one within another.

JOHNSON.

I meet with the word, though differently spelt, in the old play of The Raigne of Ming Edward the Third, 1596

"Nor lay aside their jacks of gymold mail.” Gymold or ginimal mail means armour composed of links like those of a chain, which by its flexibility fitted it to the shape of the body more exactly than defensive covering of any other contrivance There was a suit of it to be seen in the Tower. Spenser, in his Fairie Queen, Book I ch. 1. calls it woven mail:

In woven mail all armed warily."

STEEVENS.

A gimmal or gemmow ring, (says Minshen, Dictionary, 1617) from the Gal. gemeau, Lat. gemellus, double, or twinnes, because they be rings with two or more links. " MALONE.

P. 79, 1. 12. And their executors, the knavish crows,] The crows who are to have the disposal of what they shall leave, their hides, and their flesh. JOHNSON,

P.•79, d. 23. I stay but for my guard:] It * seems, by what follows that guard in this place means rather something of ornament or of distinction, than a body of attendants. JOHNSON.

The following quotation from Holinshed, p. 554, will best elucidate this passage: "The Duke of Brabant when his standard was not come, caused a banner to be taken from a trumpet and

fastened upon a spear, the which he commanded to be borne before him instead of a standard."

In the second part of Heywood's Iron Age, 1632, Menelaus, after having enumerated to Pyrrhus the treasures of his father Achilles, as his myrmidons, &c. adds:~

"His sword, spurs, armour, guard, pa-`

vilion."

9

From this last passage it should appear that guard was part of the defensive armour; perhaps what we, call at present the gorget. STEEVENS.

By his guard, I believe, the constable means, not any part of his dress, but the guard that usually attended with his want of which he aftes banner; to supply the

says, that he will take a banner from a trumpet, and use it for,

his

scene of thPpears from a passage in the last

fourth act, that the principal nobility, and the Princes, had all their respective banners, and of course their guards: of Prince Hees in this number,

rinces

"And nobles bearing banners, there be

dead

One hundred," &c. M. MASON. P. 79, last but one 1. SALISBURY,] Montacute, Earl of Salisbury. MALONE.

Thomas

P. 80, 1. 14. And my kind kinsman,] This must be addressed to Westmoreland: but how was that nobleman related to Salisbury? True it is, that the latter had married one of the sisters and co-heirs of Edinund Earl of Kent, and that another of them was wife to Westmoreland's eldest son. Salisbury's daughter was likewise married to a younger son of Westmorelaud's, who, in her right, was afterward Earl of Salisbury, and appears in the Second and thir

Parts of K. Henry VI. The present speaker is Thomas Montacute, who is killed by a shot in the next play. But these connections do not seem to make him akin to Westmoreland.

P. 80, 1. 52. 33.

RITSON. Goll's will! I pray thee,

wish not one man more, By Jove, &c.] The King prays like a christian, and swears like a heathen. JOHNSON. I believe the player editors alone are answerable for this monstrous incongruity. In consequence of the Stat. 3. James I. c. xxi. against introducing the sacred name on the stage, &c. they omitted it where they could; and in verse, (where the metre would not allow omission,) they substituted some other word in its place. The author, I have not the least doubt, wrote here MALONE. By heaven,

P. 80, last 1. To yearn is to grieve or vex.

P. 81, 1. 16. This day's call'd

STEEVENS.

the feast of Crispian:] The battle of Agincourt was fought upon the 25th of October, St. Crispin's day. GREY.

P. 81, 1. 21. ing before this festival. STEEVENS.

on the vigili. e. the even

P. 81, 1. 25-27. Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,

But he'll remember, with advantages,

What feats he did that day:] Old men, notwithstanding the natural forgetfulness of age, shall remember their feats of this day, and remember to tell them with advantage. Age is commonly boastful, and inclined to magnify past acts and past times. JOHNSON.