ranean devils, besides those faieries, satyres, nymphes, &c. "Fiery spirits or divells are such as commonly worke by blazing starres, fire-drakes, and counterfeit sunnes and moones, and sit on ship's masts, &c. &c. "Aeriall spirits or divells are such as keep quarter most part in the aire, cause many tempests, thunder and lightnings, teare oakes, fire steeples, houses, strike men and beasts, make it raine stones," &c. PERCY. Philip, 361. knighted him by the by his former name. -] Here the king, who had name of Sir Richard, calls him Mr. Tyrwhitt would read: Hubert, keep [thou] this boy, &c. STEEVENS. 379. Bell, book, and candle, &c.] In an account of the Romish curse, given by Dr. Grey, it appears that three candles were extinguished, one by one, in different parts of the execration. JOHNSON. 394- But I will fit it with some better time ] The first and second folio both read-tune; which, I think, can hardly be right. We meet, however, in Macbeth: "Mac. Went it not so? "Banq. To the self-same tune and words.” MALONE. In the hand-writing of Shakspere's age, the words time and tune are scarcely to be distinguished from each other. STEEVENS. Is not the sense of the context, with the following passage from Hamlet, a sufficient reason for restoring the reading of the folios ?" Thus has he only got the the TUNE of the time, and outward habit of encounter." 404. ornaments. HENLEY. full of gawds,] Gawds are any showy "To caper in his grave, and with vain gawds 407. STEEVENS. Sound on unto the drowsy race of night;] We should read: Sound oneWARBURTON. I should suppose sound on (which is the reading of the old copy) to be the true one. The meaning seems to be this; if the midnight bell, by repeated strokes, was to hasten away the race of beings who are busy at that hour, or quicken night itself in its progress, the morning bell (that is, the bell that strikes one) could not, with strict propriety, be made the agent; for the bell has ceased to be in the service of night, when it proclaims the arrival of day. Sound on has a peculiar propriety, because, by the repetition of the strokes at twelve, it gives a much more forcible warning than when it only strikes one. Such was once my opinion concerning the old reading; but, on re-consideration, its propriety cannot appear more doubtful to any one than to myself. It is too late to talk of hastening the night, when the arrival of the morning is announced; and I am afraid that the repeated strokes have less of solemnity than the single notice, as they take from the horror and awful silence here described as so propitious to the dreadful purposes of the king. Though the hour of one be not the natural midnight, it is yet the most 3 solemn solemn moment of the poetical one; and Shakspere himself has chosen to introduce his Ghost in Hamlet: "The bell then beating one." Mr. Malone observes," that one and on are perpetually confounded in the old copies of our author." STEEVENS. One and on seem in our author's time to have been pronounced alike. Hence the transcriber's ear might have been easily deceived. That these words were sometimes pronounced in the same manner, appears from a quibbling passage in The Two Gentlemen of Verona: "Speed. Sir, your glove. "Valiant. Not mine; my gloves are on. "Speed. Why then this may be yours, for this is but one." So, once was anciently written, as it was probably pronounced, ons. In Chaucer, and other old writers, one is usually written on. See the Glossary to the Canterbury Tales, Tyrwhitt's edition, 1775. The instances that are found in the original editions of our author's plays, in which on is printed instead of one, are so numerous, that there cannot, in my apprehension, be the smallest doubt that the latter is the true reading in the line before us. Thus, in Coriolanus, edit. 1623. 66 -This double worship, "Where on past does disdain with cause, the other "Insult without all reason." F Again, hind, to descant on interest and commodity, very properly ends the act. The next scene then, in the French king's tent, brings us Salisbury delivering his message to Constance, who, refusing to go to the solemnity, sets herself down on the floor. The whole train returning from the church to the French king's pavilion, Philip expresses such satisfaction on occasion of the happy solemnity of that day, that Constance rises from the floor, and joins in the scene by entering her protest against their joy, and cursing the business of the day. Thus, I conceive, the scenes are fairly continued; and there is no chasm in the action, but a proper interval made both for Salisbury's coming to lady Constance, and for the solemnization of the marriage. Besides, as Faulconbridge is evidently the poet's favourite character, it was very well judged to close the act with his soliloquy. THEOBALD. This whole note seems judicious enough; but Mr. Theobald forgets that there were, in Shakspere's time, no moveable scenes in common playhouses. JOHNSON. It appears from many passages, that the ancient theatres had the advantages of machinery, as well as the more modern stages. See a note on the fourth scene of the fifth act of Cymbeline. How happened that Shakspere himself should have mentioned the act of shifting scenes, if in his time there were no scenes capable of being shifted. Thus in the chorus to King Henry V. << Unto "Unto Southampton do we shift our scene.' This phrase was hardly more ancient than the custom which it describes. STEEVENS. 78. To solemnize this day, &c.] From this passage Rowe seems to have borrowed the first lines of his Fair Penitent. JOHNSON. 79.- and plays the alchymist;] Milton has borrowed this thought, Paradise Lost, B. III. when with one virtuous touch "Th' arch-chemic sun," &c. STEEVENS. 84. A wicked day, &c.] There is a passage in The Honest Whore, by Decker, 1604, so much resembling the present, that I cannot forbear quoting it. "Curst be that day for ever, that robb'd her "Within the wizzard's book (the kalendar) "Slander (the beggar's sin), lies (the sin of fools), "On Monday let them be delivered," &c. |