Should be the father of some stratagem The times are wild; contention, like a horse BARD. Noble earl, I bring you certain news from Shrewsbury. BARD. As good as heart can wish :The king is almost wounded to the death; And, in the fortune of my lord your son, Prince Harry slain outright; and both the Blunts Kill'd by the hand of Douglas: young prince John, And Westmoreland, and Stafford, fled the field; And Harry Monmouth's brawn, the hulk sir John, Is prisoner to your son: O, such a day, So fought, so follow'd, and so fairly won, Came not, till now, to dignify the times, Since Cæsar's fortunes! NORTH. How is this deriv'd? Saw you the field? came you from Shrewsbury? BARD. I spake with one, my lord, that came from thence; A gentleman well bred, and of good name, On Tuesday last to listen after news. BARD. My lord, I over-rode him on the way; some stratagem:] Some stratagem means here some great, important, or dreadful event. So, in The Third Part of King Henry VI. the father who had killed his son says: "O pity, God! this miserable age! "What stratagems, how fell, how butcherly! "This mortal quarrel daily doth beget!" M. MASON. And he is furnish'd with no certainties, More than he haply may retail from me. Enter TRAVers. NORTH. Now, Travers, what good tidings come with you? TRA. My lord, sir John Umfrevile turn'd me back With joyful tidings; and, being better hors'd, 9 forspent with speed,] To forspend is to waste, to exhaust. So, in Sir A. Gorges' translation of Lucan, B. VII: "crabbed sires forspent with age." STEEVENS. armed heels-] Thus the quarto, 1600. The folio, 1623, reads-able heels; the modern editors, without au thority-agile heels. STEEVENS. 1 2 poor jade] Poor jade is used, not in contempt, but in compassion. Poor jade means the horse wearied with his journey. Jade, however, seems anciently to have signified what we now call a hackney; a beast employed in drudgery, opposed to a horse kept for show, or to be rid by its master. So, in a comedy called A Knack to know a Knave, 1594: "Besides, I'll give you the keeping of a dozen jades, "And now and then meat for you and your horse." This is said by a farmer to a courtier. STEEVENS. Shakspeare, however, (as Mr. Steevens has observed,) cer 3 Up to the rowel-head; and, starting so, NORTH. Ha! Again. Said he, young Harry Percy's spur was cold? Had met ill luck! BARD. My lord, I'll tell you what ;If my young lord your son have not the day, tainly does not use the word as a term of contempt; for King Richard the Second gives this appellation to his favourite horse Roan Barbary, on which Henry the Fourth rode at his coronation: 3 “That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand.” MALONE. rowel-head;] I think that I have observed in old prints the rowel of those times to have been only a single spike. JOHNSON. He seem'd in running to devour the way,] So, in the Book of Job, chap. xxxix: "He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage." The same expression occurs in Ben Jonson's Sejanus : "But with that speed and heat of appetite, "With which they greedily devour the way "To some great sports." STEEVENS. So Ariel, to describe his alacrity in obeying Prospero's commands: "I drink the air before me." M. MASON. So, in one of the Roman poets (I forget which): cursu consumere campum. BLACKSTONE. The line quoted by Sir William Blackstone is in NEMESIAN: latumque fuga consumere campum. MALONE. ' Of Hotspur, coldspur?] Hotspur seems to have been a very common term for a man of vehemence and precipitation. Stanyhurst, who translated four books of Virgil, in 1584, renders the following line: Nec victoris heri tetigit captiva cubile. "To couch not mounting of mayster vanquisher hoatspur." STEEVENS. Upon mine honour, for a silken point NORTH. Why should the gentleman, that rode by Give then such instances of loss? BARD. Who, he? He was some hilding fellow," that had stol'n The horse he rode on; and, upon my life, Spoke at a venture. Look, here comes more news. Enter MORTON. NORTH. Yea, this man's brow, like to a titleleaf,8 Foretells the nature of a tragick volume: Say, Morton, didst thou come from Shrewsbury? NORTH. How doth my son, and brother? · silken point-] A point is a string tagged, or lace. JOHNSON. 7 some hilding fellow,] For hilderling, i. e. base, degenerate. POPE. Hilderling, Degener; vox adhuc agro Devon. familiaris. Spelman. REED. 8 like to a title-leaf,] It may not be amiss to observe, that, in the time of our poet, the title-page to an elegy, as well as every intermediate leaf, was totally black. I have several in my possession, written by Chapman, the translator of Homer, and ornamented in this manner. STEEVENS. 9 a witness'd usurpation.] i. e. an attestation of its ravage. STEEVens. Thou tremblest; and the whiteness in thy cheek But Priam found the fire, ere he his tongue, thus; Your brother, thus; so fought the noble Douglas; NORTH. Why, he is dead. See, what a ready tongue suspicion hath! He, that but fears the thing he would not know, 1- so woe-begone,] This word was common enough amongst the old Scottish and English poets, as G. Douglas, Chaucer, Lord Buckhurst, Fairfax; and signifies, far gone in WARBURTON. woe. So, in The Spanish Tragedy: "Awake, revenge, or we are wo-begone!" Again, in Arden of Feversham, 1592: "So woe-begone, so inly charg'd with woe." Again, in A Looking Glass for London and England, 1598: "Fair Alvida, look not so woe-begone." Dr. Bentley is said to have thought this passage corrupt, and therefore (with a greater degree of gravity than my readers will probably express) proposed the following emendation: So dead so dull in look, Ucalegon, Drew Priam's curtain &c. The name of Ucalegon is found in the third Book of the Iliad, and the second of the Eneid. STEEVENS. |