Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

ORL. Rien puis? l'air et le feu

DAU. Ciel! cousin Orleans.

Enter Constable.

Now, my

lord Constable!

CON. Hark, how our steeds for present service

neigh.

DAU. Mount them, and make incision in their

hides;

That their hot blood may spin in English eyes, And dout them' with superfluous courage: Ha!

It is not easy to determine the import of the Dauphin's words. I do not, however, think the foregoing explanation right, because it excludes variety, by presuming that what has been already said in one language, is repeated in another. Perhaps this insignificant sprig of royalty is only capering about, and uttering a "rhapsody of words" indicative of levity and high spirits, but guiltless of any precise meaning. STEEVENS.

And dout them-] The first folio reads-doubt, which, perhaps, may have been used for to make to doubt; to terrifie. TYRWHITT.

To doubt, or (as it ought to have been spelled) dout, is a word still used in Warwickshire, and signifies to do out, or extinguish. See a note on Hamlet, Act I. sc. iv. For this information I was indebted to my late friend, the Reverend H. Homer.

STEEVENS.

In the folio, where alone this passage is found, the word is written doubt. To dout, for to do out, is a common phrase at this day in Devonshire and the other western counties; where they often say, dout the fire, that is, put out the fire. Many other words of the same structure are used by our author; as, to don, i. e. to do on, to doff, i. e. to do off, &c. In Hamlet he has used the same phrase:

[blocks in formation]

“Doth all the noble substance of worth dout," &c. The word being provincial, the same mistake has happened in both places; doubt being printed in Hamlet instead of dout.

RAM. What, will you have them weep our horses'

blood?

How shall we then behold their natural tears?

Enter a Messenger.

MESS. The English are embattled, you French. peers.

CON. To horse, you gallant princes! straight to horse!

Do but behold yon poor and starved band,
And your fair show shall suck away their souls,"
Leaving them but the shales and husks of men.
There is not work enough for all our hands;
Scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins,
To give each naked curtle-ax a stain,

That our French gallants shall to-day draw out,
And sheath for lack of sport: let us but blow on

them,

The vapour of our valour will o'erturn them.
'Tis positive 'gainst all exceptions, lords,
That our superfluous lackeys, and our peasants,-
Who, in unnecessary action, swarm

Mr. Pope for doubt substituted daunt, which was adopted in the subsequent editions. For the emendation now made I imagined I should have been answerable; but on looking into Mr. Rowe's edition I find he has anticipated me, and has printed the word as it is now exhibited in the text. MALONE.

2- suck away their souls,] This strong expression did not escape the notice of Dryden and Pope; the former having (less chastely) employed it in his Don Sebastian, King of Portugal:

[ocr errors]

Sucking each others' souls while we expire:" and the latter, in his Eloisa to Abelard:

"Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul."

STEEVENS.

About our squares of battle,3-were enough
To purge this field of such a hilding foe;4
Though we, upon this mountain's basis by
Took stand for idle speculation:
But that our honours must not.
A very little little let us do,

What's to say?

And all is done. Then let the trumpets sound The tucket-sonuance, and the note to mount: For our approach shall so much dare the field, That England shall couch down in fear, and yield.

About our squares of battle,] So, in Antony and Cleopatra: no practice had

66

"In the brave squares of war.'

STEEVENS.

a hilding foe;] Hilding, or hinderling, is a low wretch.

So, in King Henry IV. Part II:

sc. vii:

"He was some hilding fellow, that had stole
"The horse he rode on."

66

STEEVENS.

JOHNSON.

upon this mountain's basis by-] See Henry's speech,

Take a trumpet, herald;

"Ride thou unto the horsemen on yon hill." MALone. • The tucket-sonuance, &c.] He uses terms of the field as if they were going out only to the chace for sport. To dare the field is a phrase in falconry. Birds are dared when by the falcon in the air they are terrified from rising, so that they will be sometimes taken by the hand.

Such an easy capture the lords expected to make of the English. JOHNSON.

The tucket-sonuance was, I believe, the name of an introductory flourish on the trumpet, as toccata in Italian is the prelude of a sonata on the harpsichord, and toccar la tromba is to blow the trumpet.

In The Spanish Tragedy, (no date,) "a tucket afar off.”
Again, in The Devil's Law-case, 1623:

"2 tuckets by several trumpets."

Sonance is a word used by Heywood, in his Rape of Lucrece,

1630:

"Or, if he chance to endure our tongues so much
"As but to hear their sonance." STEEVENS.

Enter GRANDPRE.

GRAND. Why do you stay so long, my lords of France?

8

Yon island carrions, desperate of their bones,
Ill-favour'dly become the morning field:
Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,
And our air shakes them passing scornfully.
Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggar'd host,
And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps.
Their horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks,
With torch-staves in their hand:9 and their poor
jades

7 Yon island carrions, &c.] This and the preceding description of the English is founded on the melancholy account given by our historians, of Henry's army, immediately before the battle of Agincourt:

"The Englishmen were brought into great misery in this journey [from Harfleur to Agincourt]; their victual was in manner spent, and now could they get none:-rest could they none take, for their enemies were ever at hand to give them alarmes: daily it rained, and nightly it freezed; of fewel there was great scarcity, but of fluxes great plenty; money they had enough, but wares to bestowe it upon, for their relief or comforte, had they little or none." Holinshed. MALONE.

Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,] By their ragged curtains, are meant their colours. M. MASON.

The idea seems to have been taken from what every man must have observed, i. e. ragged curtains put in motion by the air, when the windows of mean houses are left open. STEEVENS. 9 Their horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks,

With torch-staves in their hand:] Grandpré alludes to the form of ancient candlesticks, which frequently represented human figures holding the sockets for the lights in their extended hands.

-he

A similar image occurs in Vittoria Corombona, 1612: " showed like a pewter candlestick, fashioned like a man in armour, holding a tilting staff in his hand little bigger than a candle.”

Lob down their heads, dropping the hides and hips; The gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes; And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit'

The following is an exact representation of one of these candlesticks, now in the possession of Francis Douce, Esq. The receptacles for the candles are wanting in the original. The sockets in which they were to be placed are in the outstretched hands of the figure.

[graphic]

The form of torch-staves may be ascertained by a wooden cut in Vol. IX. p. 359. STEEVENS.

gimmal bit-] Gimmal is, in the western counties, a ring; a gimmal bit is therefore a bit of which the parts played one within another. JOHNSON.

« ПредишнаНапред »