Why strew'st thou sugar on that bottled spider, HAST. False-boding woman, end thy frantick curse; Lest, to thy harm, thou move our patience. 6 Q. MAR. Foul shame upon you! you have all mov'd mine. bottled spider,] A spider is called bottled, because, like other insects, he has a middle slender, and a belly protuberant. Richard's form and venom, made her liken him to a spider. JOHNSON. A critick, who styles himself "Robert Heron, Esquire," (though his title to Esquireship is but ill supported by his language, "puppy, booby, wise-acre," &c. being the usual distinctions he bestows on authors who are not his favourites,) very gravely assures us that "a bottled spider is evidently a spider kept in a bottle long fasting, and of consequence the more spiteful and venomous." May one ask if the infuriation of our Esquire originates from a similar cause? Hath he newly escaped, like Asmodeo, from the phial of some Highland sorcerer, under whose discipline he had experienced the provocations of lenten imprisonment?-Mrs. Raffald disserts on bottled gooseberries, and George Falkener warns us against bottled children; but it was reserved for our Esquire (every one knows who our Esquire is) to discover that spiders, like ale, grow brisker from being bottled, and derive additional venom from being starved. It would be the interest of every writer to wish for an opponent like the Esquire Heron, did not the general credit of letters oppose the production of such another critick.-So far I am from wishing the lucubrations of our Esquire to be forgotten, that I counsel thee, gentle reader, (and especially, provided thou art a hypochondriac,) to peruse, and (if thou canst) to re-peruse them, and finally to thank me as thy purveyor of a laugh.-Every man should court a fresh onset from an adversary, who, in the act of ridiculing others, exposes himself to yet more obvious ridicule. STEEVENS. A bottled spider is a large, bloated, glossy spider: supposed to contain venom proportionate to its size. The expression occurs again in Act IV.: "That bottled spider, that foul hunch-back'd toad." RITSON. RIV. Were you well serv'd, you would be taught your duty. Q. MAR. To serve me well, you all should do me duty, Teach me to be your queen, and you my subjects: O, serve me well, and teach yourselves that duty. DOR. Dispute not with her, she is lunatick. Q. MAR. Peace, master marquis, you are malapert: Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current': O, that your young nobility could judge, What 'twere to lose it, and be miserable! They that stand high, have many blasts to shake them; And, if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces. GLO. Good counsel, marry ;-learn it, learn it, marquis. DOR. It touches you, my lord, as much as me. GLO. Ay, and much more: But I was born so high, Our aiery buildeth in the cedar's top, And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun. Q. MAR. And turns the sun to shade ;-alas! alas! Witness my son, now in the shade of death; Whose bright out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath Hath in eternal darkness folded up. Your aiery buildeth in our aiery's nest : 7 Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current:] Thomas Grey was created Marquis of Dorset, A. D. 1476. PERCY. The present scene, as has been already observed, is in 1477-8. MALONE. 8 Witness my son, &c.] Her distress cannot prevent her quibbling. It may be here remarked, that the introduction of Margaret in this place, is against all historical evidence. She was ransomed and sent to France soon after Tewksbury fight, and there passed the remainder of her wretched life. RITSON. "Witness my son." Thus the quarto of 1598, and the folio. The modern editors, after the quarto of 1612, which is full of adulterations, read-sun. MALONE. 9 Your AIERY buildeth in our AIERY'S NEST :] An aiery is a hawk's or an eagle's nest. So, in Greene's Card of Fancy, 1608: "It is a subtle bird that breeds among the aiery of hawks." VOL. XIX. E O God, that see'st it, do not suffer it; BUCK. Peace, peace, for shame, if not for charity. Q. MAR. Urge neither charity nor shame to me; Uncharitably with me have you dealt, And shamefully by you my hopes are butcher'd. And in my shame still live shame still live my sorrow's rage! BUCK. Have done, have done. Q. MAR. O princely Buckingham, I kiss* thy hand, In sign of league and amity with thee: BUCK. Nor no one here; for curses never pass The lips of those that breathe them in the air. Q. MAR. I'll not believe but they ascend the sky, And there awake God's gentle-sleeping peace. O Buckingham, beware of yonder dog; Look, when he fawns, he bites; and, when he bites, His venom tooth will rankle to the death: Have not to do with him, beware of him; Sin, death, and hell1, have set their marks on him; And all their ministers attend on him. GLO. What doth she say, my lord of Buckingham? * Quarto 1597, I will kiss. Again, in Heywood's Rape of Lucrece, 1630: "His high-built aiery shall be drown'd in blood." Again, in Massinger's Maid of Honour : "One aiery, with proportion, ne'er discloses "The eagle and the wren." STEEVENS. 'Sin, death, and hell,] Possibly Milton took from hence the hint of his famous allegory. BLACKSTONE. Milton might as probably catch the hint from the following passage in Latimer's Sermons, 1584, fol. 79: "Here came indeath and hell, sinne was their mother. Therefore they must have such animage as their mother sinne would geue them." HOLT WHITE. As we know that Milton was a diligent reader of Shakspeare, surely Sir William Blackstone's suggestion is the most probable. MALONE. BUCK. Nothing that I respect, my gracious lord. Q. MAR. What, dost thou scorn me for my gentle counsel ? And sooth the devil that I warn thee from? When he shall split thy very heart with sorrow; curses. RIV. And so doth mine; I muse, why she's at liberty3. GLO. I cannot blame her, by God's holy mother; She hath had too much wrong, and I repent My part thereof, that I have done to her. QELIZ. Q. ELIZ. I never did her any, to my knowledge. GLO. Yet you have all the vantage of her wrong. I was too hot to do somebody good, That is too cold in thinking of it now. Marry, as for Clarence, he is well repaid; 2 Live each of you the subjects to his hate, 4 And he to yours, and all of you to God's!] It is evident from the conduct of Shakspeare, that the house of Tudor retained all their Lancastrian prejudices, even in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In his play of Richard the Third, he seems to deduce the woes of the house of York from the curses which Queen Margaret had vented against them; and he could not give that weight to her curses, without supposing a right in her to utter them. WALPOLE. 3 I MUSE, WHY she's at liberty.] Thus the folio. quarto reads: 66 I wonder she's at liberty." STEEVENS. The • He is FRANK'D up to fatting for his pains ;] A frank is an old English word for a hog-sty. "Tis possible he uses this metaphor to Clarence, in allusion to the crest of the family of York, which was a boar. Whereto relate those famous old verses on Richard III.: "The cat, the rat, and Lovel the dog, He uses the same metaphor in the last scene of Act IV. POPE. God pardon them that are the cause of it! RIV. A virtuous and a christian-like conclusion, To pray for them that have done scath to us". GLO. So do I ever, being well advis'd; For had I curs'd now, I had curs'd myself. [Aside. Enter CATEsby. CATES. Madam, his majesty doth call for you,And for your grace,—and you, my noble lords. Q. ELIZ. Catesby, I come:-Lords, will you go with me? RIV. Madam, we will attend your grace. [Exeunt all but GLOSTER. GLO. I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl. The secret mischiefs that I set abroach, I lay unto the grievous charge of others. Namely, to Stanley, Hastings, Buckingham; 66 A frank was not a common hog-stye, but the pen in which those hogs were confined of whom brawn was to be made. STEEVENS. From the manner in which the word is used in King Henry IV. a frank should seem to mean a pen in which any hog is fatted. Does the old boar feed in the old frank?" So also, as Mr. Bowle observes to me, in Holinshed's Description of Britaine, b. iii. p. 1096: "The husbandmen and farmers never fraunke them above three or four months, in which time he is dyeted with otes and peason, and lodged on the bare planches of an uneasie coate." "He feeds like a boar in a frank," as the same gentleman observes, is one of Ray's proverbial sentences. MALONE. Mr. Bowle's chief instance will sufficiently countenance my assertion for what hogs, except those designed for brawn, are ever purposely lodged" on the bare planches of an uneasie coate?" STEEVENS. 5 done SCATH to us.] Scath is harm, mischief. So, in Soliman and Perseda: "Whom now that paltry island keeps from scath." Again: 66 'Millions of men opprest with ruin and scath." STEEVENS. |