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well as the half groat, bare but half faces impressed. Vide Stowe's Survey of London, p. 47. Holinshed, Camden's Remains, &c. The poet sneers at the meagre sharp visage of the elder brother, by comparing him to a silver groat, that bore the king's face in profile, so shewed but half the face; the groats of all our kings of England, and indeed, all their other coins of silver, one or two only excepted, had a full face crowned, till Henry VII. at the time above-mentioned, coined groats and half-groats, as also some shillings, with half faces, i. e. faces in profile, as all our coin has now. The first groats of king Hen. VIII. were like those of his father; though afterwards he returned to the broad faces again. These groats, with the impression in profile, are undoubtedly here alluded to: though, as I said, the poet is knowingly guilty of an anachronism in it: for in the time of king John there were no groats at all; they being first, as far as appears, coined in the reign of king Edward III.THEOBALD.

The same contemptuous allusion occurs in The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, 1601:

"You half-fac'd groat, you thick-cheek'd chittyface."

Again, in Histriomastix, 1610:

"Whilst I behold you half-fac'd minion."

STEEVENS

127. This concludes- -] This is a decisive arguAs your father, if he liked him, could not have

ment.

been

been forced to resign him, so, not liking him, he is not at liberty to reject him. JOHNSON.

137. Lord of thy presence, and no land beside?] Lord of thy presence can signify only, masier of thyself; and it is a strange expression to signify even that. However that he might be, without parting with his land. We should read: Lord of the presence, i. e. prince of the blood. WARBURTON.

Lord of thy presence may signify something more distinct than master of thyself: it means master of that dignity and grandeur of appearance that may sufficiently distinguish thee from the vulgar, without the help of fortune.

Lord of his presence apparently signifies, great in his own person, and is used in this sense by king John in one of the following scenes. JOHNSON. 139. And I had his, Sir Robert his, like him ;] This is obscure and ill expressed. The meaning is: If I had his shape-Sir Robert's-as he has.

Sir Robert his, for Sir Robert's, is agreeable to the practice of that time, when the 's added to the nominative was believed, I think erroneously, to be a contraction of his. So, Donne :

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-Who now lives to age,

"Fit to be call'd Methusalem his page?"

This ought to be printed:

JOHNSON.

Sir Robert his like him.

His according to a mistaken notion formerly received,

I

being the sign of the genitive case.

As the text be

fore stood there was a double genitive.
-my face so thin,

141.

MALONE.

That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose,

Lest men should say, Look, where three-far

things goes!] In this very obscure passage. our poet is anticipating the date of another coin; humorously to rally a thin face, eclipsed, as it were, by a full blown rose. We must observe, to explain this. allusion, that queen Elizabeth was the first, and indeed the only prince or princess, who coined in England three-half-pence and three-farthing pieces. She coined shillings, six-pences, groats, three-pences, two-pences, three-half-pence, pence, three-farthings, and halfpence. And these pieces all had her head, and were alternately with the rose behind, and without the rose.. The shilling, groat, two-pence, penny, and halfpenny had it not: the other intermediate coins, viz. the six-pence, three-pence, three-half-pence, and three-farthings had the rose. THEOBALD.

Mr. Theobald has not mentioned the most material circumstance relative to these three-farthing pieces, on which the propriety of the allusion entirely depends; viz. that they were made of silver, and consequently extremely thin. From their thinness they were very liable to be cracked. Hence Ben Jonson, in his Every Man in his Humour, says: "He values me at a crack'd three-farthings." MALONE.

So, in The Shoemaker's Holiday, &c. 1610:

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"Here's a three-penny piece for thy tidings." "Firk. 'Tis but three-half-pence I think: yes, 'tis three-pence; I smell the rose." STEEVENS.

142. That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose,] The sticking roses about them was then all the court-fashion, as appears from this passage of the Confession Catho lique du S. de Sancy, 1. ii. c. 1. “ Je luy ay appris à mettre des roses par tous les coins," i. e. in every place about him, says the speaker, of one to whom he had taught all the court-fashions. WARBURTON.

These roses were, I believe, only roses composed of ribbands. In Marston's What you will is the following passage:

"Dupatzo the elder brother, the fool, he that bought the half-penny ribband, wearing it in his ear,'

&c.

Again, in Every Man out of his Humour :

-This

ribband in my ear, or so." Again, in Love and Honour, by S. W. Davenant, 1649:

"A lock on the left side, so rarely hung

"With ribbanding," &c.

I think I remember, among Vandyck's pictures in the duke of Queensbury's collection at Ambrosbury, to have seen one with the lock nearest the ear ornamented with ribbands which terminate in roses; and Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, says, was once the fashion to stick real flowers in the ear.”

"that it

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am not sure that the change, which was made by the editor of the second folio, is necessary. MALONE.

154. -unto the death.] This expression is common among our ancient writers. STEEVENS,

162. Arise Sir Richard, and Plantagenet.] It is a common opinion, that Plantagenet was the surname of the royal house of England, from the time of king Henry II. but it is, as Camden observes in his Remains, 1614, a popular mistake. Plantagenet was not a family name, but a nick-name, by which a grandson of Geoffrey, the first Earl of Anjou, was distinguished, from his wearing a broom-stalk in his bonnet. But this name was never borne either by the first Earl of Anjou, or by Henry II. the son of that Earl by the Empress Maude, he being always called Henry Fitz-empress; his son, Richard Coeur-de-lion; -and the prince who is exhibited in the play before us,. John sans-terre, or Lackland, MALONE.

169. Madam, by chance, but not by truth: what though?] I am your grandson, madam, by chance, but not by honesty-what then? JOHNSON. 171. In at the window, &c.] These expressions mean, to be born out of wedlock. So, in The Family of Love, 1608:

"Woe worth the time that ever I gave suck to a child that came in at the window!"

So, in Northward Hoe, by Decker and Webster, 1607:

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-kindred that comes in o'er the hatch, and

sailing to Westminster," &c.

Bij

STEEVENS.

182.

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