And good my lord of Somerfet, unite Your troops of horsemen with his bands of foot;- Your angry choler on your enemies. With Charles, Alençon, and that traiterous rout. WIN. SUF. and BASSET. the king WAR. My lord of York, I promise you, WAR. Tufh! that was but his fancy, blame him not; I dare prefume, fweet prince, he thought no harm. YORK. And, if I wift, he did,—But let it reft; Other affairs must now be managed. [Exeunt YORK, WARWICK, and VERNON. And, if I wift, he did,] In former editions: And, if I wifh, he did. By the pointing reform'd, and a fingle letter expung'd, I have reftored the text to its purity: And, if I wis, he did Warwick had faid, the king meant no harm in wearing Somerfet's rofe: York teftily replies, " Nay, if I know any thing, he did think harm." THEOBALD. This is followed by the fucceeding editors, and is indeed plaufible enough; but perhaps this fpeech may become fufficiently intelligible without any change, only fuppofing it broken: And if I wish— or, perhaps he did And if he did I wifb. JOHNSON. I read-I wift, the pret. of the old obfolete verb I wis, is ufed by Shakspeare in The Merchant of Venice: "There be fools alive, I wis, "Silver'd o'er, and fo was this." STEEVENS. which EXE. Well didft thou, Richard, to fupprefs thy For, had the paffions of thy heart burst out, This fhould'ring of each other in the court, 'Tis much, when scepters are in children's hands; But more, when envy breeds unkind divifion;3 There comes the ruin, there begins confufion. [Exit. York fays, he is not pleafed that the king fhould prefer the red rofe, the badge of Somerfet, his enemy; Warwick defires him not to be offended at it, as he dares fay the king meant no harm. To which York, yet unfatisfied, haftily adds, in a menacing tone,If I thought he did;-but he inftantly checks his threat with, let it reft. It is an example of a rhetorical figure, which our author has elsewhere used. Thus, in Coriolanus : "An 'twere to give again-But 'tis no matter." Mr. Steevens is too familiar with Virgil, not to recollect his The author of the Revifal understood this paffage in the fame 9 it doth prefage fome ill event.] That is, it doth prefage to him that fees this difcord, &c. that fome ill event will happen. MALONE. 2 'Tis much,] In our author's time, this phrafe meant-'Tis ftrange, or wonderful. See, As you like it, Vol. VI. p. 136, n. 3. This meaning being included in the word much, the word frange is perhaps underflood in the next line: "But more ftrange," &c. The conftruction however may be, But 'tis much more, when, &c. MALONE. 'Tis much, is a colloquial phrafe, and the meaning of it, in many inftances, can be gathered only from the tenor of the fpeech in which it occurs. On the prefent occafion, I believe, it fignifies'Tis an alarming circumftance, a thing of great confequence, or of much weight. STEEVENS. 3 when envy breeds unkind divifion;] Envy in old English SCENE II. France. Before Bourdeaux. Enter TALBOT, with his Forces. TAL. Go to the gates of Bourdeaux, trumpeter, Summon their general unto the wall. Trumpet founds a parley. Enter, on the walls, the English John Talbot, captains, calls you forth, writers frequently means enmity. Unkind is unnatural. See Vol. V. P. 555, 1. 12; and Vol. VI. p. 70, n. 3. MALONE. 5 Lean famine, quartering feel, and climbing fire;] The author of this play followed Hall's Chronicle: "The Goddeffe of warre, called Bellona-hath these three hand-maides ever of neceffitie attendyng on her; Bloud, Fyre, and Famine; whiche thre damofels be of that force and ftrength that every one of them alone is able and fufficient to torment and afflict a proud prince; and they all joyned together are of puiffance to deftroy the most populous countrey and moft richest region of the world." MALONE. It may as probably be afferted that our author followed Holinshed, from whom I have already quoted a part of this paffage in a note on the first Chorus to King Henry V. See Holinfhed, p. 567. If you forfake the offer of their love." GEN. Thou ominous and fearful owl of death, And ftrong enough to iffue out and fight: 6 the offer of their love.] Thus the old editions. Sir T. Hanmer altered it to our. JOHNSON. "Their love" may mean, the peaceable demeanour of my three attendants; their forbearing to injure you. But the expreffion is harfh. MALONE. There is much fuch another line in King Henry VIII: " If you omit the offer of the time." I believe, the reading of Sir T. Hanmer fhould be adopted. STEEVENS. "To rive their dangerous artillery] I do not understand the phrafe to rive artillery; perhaps it might be to drive; we fay to drive a blow, and to drive at a man, when we mean to exprefs furious affault. JOHNSON. To rive feems to be used, with fome deviation from its common meaning, in Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV. sc. ii : The foul and body rive not more at parting." STEEVENS Rive their artillery feems to mean charge their artillery fo much as to endanger their burfting. So, in Troilus and Creffida, Ajax bids the trumpeter blow fo loud, as to crack his lungs and split his. brazen pipe. TOLLET. To rive their artillery means only to fire their artillery.-To rive is to burst; and a cannon, when fired, has fo much the appearance 8 Upon no chriftian foul but English Talbot. [Exeunt General, &c. from the walls. TAL. He fables not," I hear the enemy ; of bursting, that, in the language of poetry, it may be well faid to burst. We fay, a cloud burfts, when it thunders. M. MASON. due thee withal;] To due is to endue, to deck, to grace. JOHNSON. Johnfon fays in his Dictionary, that to due is to pay as due; and quotes this paffage as an example. Poffibly that may be the true meaning of it. M. MASON. It means, I think, to honour by giving thee thy due, thy merited elogium. Due was fubftituted for dew, the reading of the old copy, by Mr. Theobald. Dew was fometimes the old fpelling of due, as Hew was of Hugh. MALONE. The old copy reads-dew thee withal; and perhaps rightly. The dew of praife is an expreffion I have met with in other poets. Shakspeare ufes the fame verb in Macbeth: "To dew the fov'reign flow'r, and drown the weeds." Again, in the second part of King Henry VI: 66 give me thy hand, "That I may dew it with my mournful tears." STEEVENS. 9 He fables not,] This expreffion Milton has borrowed in his Mafque at Ludlow Cafle: "She fables not, I feel that I do fear -." " STEEVENS. It occurs again in The Pinner of Wakefield, 1599: good father, fable not with him. 66 |