ever, seems to have been meant for something active, in the following passage in the 6th canto of Drayton's Barons Wars: "Oh could ambition apprehend a stay, "The giddy course it wandereth in, to guide.” Again, in Spenser's Faery Queen, B. II. c. 10. Till riper years he raught, and stronger stay." "Our ship lay anchor'd close, nor needed we A marginal note adds: "For being cast on the stares, Mr. Malone says in a subsequent scene in this play, to stay signifies to support, and after quoting instances from Cæsar and Pompey, 1607, Davies's Scourge of Folly, Tancred and Gismund, 1592, adds, “these instances induce me to think that our author uses stay here for a partizan or supporter of a cause:"-" Here's an extraordinary supporter of the cause of France, that shakes," &c. "There is (he continues), I apprebend, no necessity that the metaphor here should suit with the image in the next line. Shakspere seldom attends to the integrity of his metaphors." REED. -] We have here a 486. Lest zeal, now melted,very unusual, and, I think, not very just image of zeal, which, in its highest degree, is represented by Το others as a flame, but by Shakspere, as a frost. repress zeal, in the language of others, is to cool; in Shakspere's to melt it: when it exerts its utmost power it is commonly said to flame; but by Shakspere to be congealed. JOHNSON. Sure the poet means to compare zeal to metal in a state of fusion, and not to dissolving ice. STEEVENS. The allusion might, I think, have been to dissolving ice, and yet not subject to Dr. Johnson's objection. The sense may be-Lest the new zealous and wellaffected heart of Philip, which but lately was as cold ice, and has newly been melted and softened by the warm breath of petitions, &c. should again be congealed and frozen.-I rather incline to think this was the poet's meaning, because in a subsequent scene we meet a similar thought couched in nearly the same expressions : "This act so evilly born shall cool the hearts "Of all his people, and freeze up their zeal.” We again meet with the same thought in King Henry VIII. -This makes bold mouths: "Tongues spit their duties out, and cold hearts For Angiers and fair Touraine, Maine, Poiliers, (Except this city now by us besieg'd), Find liable, &c.] What was the city besieged, but Angiers ? Angiers? King John agrees to give up all he held in France, except the city of Angiers, which he now besieged and laid claim to. But could he give up all except Angiers, and give up that too? Anjou was one of the provinces which the English held in France. THEOBALD. Mr. Theobald found, or might have found, the reading which he would introduce as an emendation of his own, in the old quarto. STEEVENS. 536. ·Volquessen,· -] This is the ancient name for the country now called the Vexin, in Latin, Pagus Velocassinus. That part of it called the Norman Vexin, was in dispute between Philip and John. 543 -I am well assur'd, STEEVENS. That I did so when I was first assur’d.] Assur'd is here used both in its common sense, and in an uncommon one, where it signifies affianced, contracted. So, in the Comedy of Errors: 573. Called me Dromio, swore I was assur'd to her." departed with a part:] To part and to depart were formerly synonymous. STEEVENS. 576. -rounded in the ear] i.e, whispered in the car. STEEVENS, 584. Commodity, the bias of the world;] Commodity is interest. So, in Damon and Pythias, 1582: for vertue's sake only, "They would honour friendship, and not for commoditie." Diij Again: Again: "I will use his friendship to mine own commo ditie." So, in Cupid's Whirligig, 1607: STEEVENS. "O the world is like a byas bowle, and it run all on the rich mens sides.' 599. HENDERSON. clutch my hand,] To clutch my hand, is See note on Macbeth, act ii. sc. 1. to clasp it close. STEEVENS. 601. for -] i. e. because. · REED. ACT III. Line 12. FOR I am sick, and capable of fears;] i. e. I have a strong sensibility; I am tremblingly alive to apprehension. So, in Hamlet: "His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, "Would make them capable." MALONE. 23. Like a proud river peering o'er his bounds?] This seems to have been imitated by Marston, in his Insatiate Countess, 1613: "Then how much more in me, whose youthful veins, “Like a proud river, overflow their bounds—" MALONE. 24. Be these sad sighs confirmers of thy words?] For this reading, as in other editions, there is no authority. Both the first and second folio, the only authentick copies of this play, read : "Be these sad signs confirmers of thy words?"? There is clearly no need of change. The sad signs are-the shaking of his head-laying his hand on his breast, &c. MALONE. 43. If thou, &c.] Massinger appears to have copied this passage in The Unnatural Combat: 66 -If thou hast been born "Deform'd and crooked in the features of "I had been blest." STEEVENS. 45. —-sightless--] The poet uses sightless for that which we now express by unsightly, disagreeable JOHNSON. to the eyes. 46. -prodigious,] That is, portentous, so deformed as to be taken for a foretoken of evil. JOHNSON. In this sense it is used by Decker in the first part of the Honest Whore, 1635: -yon comet shews his head again; "Twice hath he thus at cross-turns thrown on us "Prodigious looks." 70. STEEVENS. For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout.] The old editions have-makes its owner stoop: the emendation is Hanmer's. So, in Daniel's Civil Wars, B. VI. JOHNSON. "Full |