And let thy blows, doubly redoubled, Fall like amazing thunder on the casque" Rouse up thy youthful blood, be valiant and live. 8 BOLING. Mine innocency, and Saint George to [He takes his seat. thrive! NOR. [Rising.] However heaven, or fortune, cast my lot, There lives or dies, true to king Richard's throne, Cast off his chains of bondage, and embrace Go I to fight; Truth hath a quiet breast. 7 Fall like amazing thunder on the casque-] To amaze, in ancient language, signifies to stun, to confound. Thus, in Arthur Hall's translation of the third Iliad, 4to. 1581: "And striking him upon the helme, his foe amazed makes." See also, King John, Act IV. sc. iii. STEEVEns. • Mine innocency,] Old copies-innocence. Corrected by Mr. Steevens. MALONE. • This feast of battle-] "War is death's feast," is a proverbial saying. See Ray's Collection. STEEVENS. 1 As gentle and as jocund, as to jest,] Not so neither. We should read to just; i. e. to tilt or tourney, which was a kind of sport too. WARBURTON. The sense would perhaps have been better if the author had written what his commentator substitutes; but the rhyme, to which sense is too often enslaved, obliged Shakspeare to write jest, and obliges us to read it. JOHNSON. The commentators forget that to jest sometimes signifies in old language to play a part in a mask. Thus, in Hieronymo: K. RICH. Farewell, my lord: securely I espy Virtue with valour couched in thine eye. Order the trial, marshal, and begin. [The King and the Lords return to their seats. MAR. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby, Receive thy lance; and God defend the right! BOLING. [Rising.] Strong as a tower in hope, I cry-amen. MAR. Go bear this lance [To an Officer.] to Thomas duke of Norfolk. 1 HER. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby, Stands here for God, his sovereign, and himself, On pain to be found false and recreant, To prove the duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray, 2 HER. Here standeth Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, On pain to be found false and recreant, MAR. Sound, trumpets; and set forward, com batants. [A Charge sounded. Stay, the king hath thrown his warder down.2 "He promised us in honour of our guest, "To grace our banquet with some pompous jest." and accordingly a mask is performed. FARMER. Dr. Farmer has well explained the force of this word. So, in The Third Part of King Henry VI: as if the tragedy "Were play'd in jest by counterfeited actors." TOLLET. -hath thrown his warder down.] A warder appears to K. RICH. Let them lay by their helmets and their spears, And both return back to their chairs again Withdraw with us:-and let the trumpets sound, While we return these dukes what we decree. [A long flourish. [To the Combatants. Draw near, [And for we think the eagle-winged pride To wake our peace, which in our country's cradle Draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep ;] Which so rous❜d up with boisterous untun'd drums, With harsh resounding trumpets' dreadful bray, And grating shock of wrathful iron arms, have been a kind of truncheon carried by the person who presided at these single combats. So, in Daniel's Civil Wars, &c. B. I: "When lo, the king, suddenly chang'd his mind, STEEVENS. With that dear blood which it hath fostered;] The quartos read With that dear blood which it hath been foster'd. I believe the author wrote. With that dear blood with which it hath been foster'd, The quarto, 1608, reads, as in the text. STEEvens. And for we think the eagle-winged pride &c.] These five verses are omitted in the other editions, and restored from the first of 1598. POPE. 5 set you on-] The old ed by Mr. Pope. MALONE. copy reads- -on you. Correct 6 Might from our quiet confines fright fair peace, And make us wade even in our kindred's blood; To wake our peace, Which so rous'd ир Might fright fair peace,] Thus the sentence stands in the common reading absurdly enough; which made the Oxford editor, instead of fright fair peace, read, be affrighted; as if these latter words could ever, possibly, have been blundered into the former by transcribers. But his business is to alter as his fancy leads him, not to reform errors, as the text and rules of criticism direct. In a word then, the true original of the blunder was this: the editors, before Mr. Pope, had taken their editions from the folios, in which the text stood thus: the dire aspect Of civil wounds plough'd up with neighbour swords; fright fair peace. This is sense. But Mr. Pope, who carefully examined the first printed plays in quarto, (very much to the advantage of his edition,) coming to this place, found five lines, in the first edition. of this play printed in 1598, omitted in the first general collection of the poet's works; and, not enough attending to their agreement with the common text, put them into their place. Whereas, in truth, the five lines were omitted by Shakspeare himself, as not agreeing to the rest of the context; which, on revise, he thought fit to alter. On this account I have put them into hooks, not as spurious, but as rejected on the author's revise; and, indeed, with great judgment; for To wake our peace, which in our country's cradle as pretty as it is in the image, is absurd in the sense: for peace awake is still peace, as well as when asleep. The difference is, that peace asleep gives one the notion of a happy people sunk in sloth and luxury, which is not the idea the speaker would raise, and from which state the sooner it was awaked the better. WARBURTON. To this note, written with such an appearance of taste and judgment, I am afraid every reader will not subscribe. It is true, that peace awake is still peace, as well as when asleep; but peace awakened by the tumults of these jarring nobles, and peace indulging in profound tranquillity, convey images sufficiently opposed to each other for the poet's purpose. To wake peace, is, to introduce discord. Peace asleep, is peace exerting Therefore, we banish you our territories :- But tread the stranger paths of banishment. BOLING. Your will be done: This must my comfort be, That sun, that warms you here, shall shine on me; And those his golden beams, to you here lent, Shall point on me, and gild my banishment. K. RICH. Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom, Which I with some unwillingness pronounce: NOR. A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege, And all unlook'd for from your highness' mouth: its natural influence, from which it would be frighted by the clamours of war. STEEVENS. 7 The fly-slow hours-] The old copies read-The sly-slow hours. Mr. Pope made the change; whether it was necessary or not, let the poetical reader determine. In Chapman's version of the second Book of Homer's Odyssey, we have: and those slie hours "That still surprise at length." It is remarkable, that Pope, in the 4th Book of his Essay on Man, v. 226, has employed the epithet which, in the present instance, he has rejected: "All sly slow things, with circumspective eyes." See Warton's edit. of Pope's Works, Vol. III. p. 145. STEEVENS. The latter word appears to me more intelligible:-" the thievish minutes as they pass." "" MALONE. |