And one, already, of the privy-council. Yes, without all doubt. You may command us, sir. [Exeunt. SCENE II." Kimbolton. Enter KATHARINE, Dowager, sick; led between Grif. How does your grace? O, Griffith, sick to death: Kath. 8 Didst thou not tell me, Griffith, as thou led'st me, For my example.9 6 Scene II.] This scene is above any other part of Shakspeare's tragedies, and perhaps above any scene of any other poet, tender and pathetick, without gods, or furies, or poisons, or precipices, without the help of romantick circumstances, without improbable sallies of poetical lamentation, and without any throes of tumultuous misery. Johnson. 7 child of honour,] So, in King Henry IV, Part I: "That this same child of honour and renown Steevens. I think,] Old copy-I thank. Corrected in the second folio. Malone. 8 9- •he stepp'd before me, happily, For my example.] Happily seems to mean on this occasionperadventure, haply. I have been more than once of this opinion, when I have met with the same word thus spelt in other pas sages. Steevens. Mr. M. Mason is of opinion that happily here means fortunately, Grif. Well, the voice goes, madam: For after the stout earl Northumberland1 Arrested him at York, and brought him forward (As a man sorely tainted) to his answer, He fell sick suddenly, and grew so ill, He could not sit his mule.2 Kath. Alas, poor man! Grif. At last, with easy roads, he came to Leicester, Lodg'd in the abbey; where the reverend abbot, With all his convent, honourably receiv'd him; To whom he gave these words,-O father abbot, An old man, broken with the storms of state, Mr. Steevens's interpretation is, I think, right. 1 So, in King "Thy fortune, York, hadst thou been regent there, "A vow to God did make" &c. Steevens. 2 He could not sit his mule.] In Cavendish's Life of Wolsey, 1641, it is said that Wolsey poisoned himself; but the words-" at which time it was apparent that he had poisoned himself,” which appear in p. 108 of that work, were an interpolation, inserted by the publisher for some sinister purpose; not being found in the two manuscripts now preserved in the Museum. See a former note, p. 300. Malone. Cardinals generally rode on mules. "He rode like a cardinal, sumptuously upon his mule." Cavendish's Life of Wolsey. Reed. In the representation of the Champ de Drap d'Or, published by the Society of Antiquaries, the Cardinal appears mounted on one of these animals very richly caparisoned. This circumstance also is much dwelt on in the ancient Satire quoted p. 259, n. 2: "Wat What yf he will the devils blisse? "Jef They regarde it no more be gisse "Then waggynge of his mule's tayle, "Wat. Doth he then use on mule's to ryde? Jef. Ye, and that with so shamful pryde That to tell it is not possible." Again: Again: 3 66 "Then foloweth my lorde on his mule "The bosses of his mulis brydles with Steevens. easy roads,] i. Is come to lay his weary bones among ye; So went to bed: where eagerly his sickness Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking 4 Of an unbounded stomach,] i. e. of unbounded pride, or haughtiness. So, Holinshed, speaking of King Richard III: "Such a great audacitie and such a stomach reigned in his bodie." Steevens. 5-- one, that by suggestion Ty'd all the kingdom:] The word suggestion, says the critick, [Dr. Warburton] is here used with great propriety and seeming knowledge of the Latin tongue: and he proceeds to settle the sense of it from the late Roman writers and their glossers. But Shakspeare's knowledge was from Holinshed, whom he follows verbatim: "This cardinal was of a great stomach, for he computed himself equal with princes, and by craftie suggestions got into his hands innumerable treasure: he forced little on simonie, and was not pitifull, and stood affectionate in his own opinion: in open presence he would lie and seie untruth, and was double both in speech and meaning; he would promise much and perform little: he was vicious of his bodie, and gave the clergie euil example.” Edit. 1587, p. 922. Perhaps, after this quotation, you may not think, that Sir Thomas Hanmer, who reads tyth'd-instead of ty'd all the kingdom, deserves quite so much of Dr. Warburton's severity.-Indisputably the passage, like every other in the speech, is intended to express the meaning of the parallel one in the chronicle; it cannot therefore be credited, that any man, when the original was produced, should still choose to defend a cant acceptation, and inform us, perhaps, seriously, that in gaming language, from I know not what practice, to tye is to equal! A sense of the word, as I have yet found, unknown to our old writers; and, if known, would not surely have been used in this place by our author. But let us turn from conjecture to Shakspeare's authorities. Hall, from whom the above description is copied by Holinshed, His own opinion was his law: I' the presence is very explicit in the demands of the cardinal: who having ins lently told the lord mayor and aldermen, "For sothe I thinke, that halfe your substance were too little," assures them, by way of comfort, at the end of his harangue, that, upon on average, the tythe should be sufficient: "Sirs, speake not to breake that thyng that is concluded, for some shall not paie the tenth parte, and some more." And again: "Thei saied, the cardinall by visitacions, makyng of abbottes, probates of testamentes, graunting of faculties, licences, and other pollyngs in his courtes legantines, had made his threasure egall with the kynges." Edit. 1548, p. 138, and 143. Farmer. In Storer's Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey, a poem, 1599, the Cardinal says: "I car'd not for the gentrie, for I had "Tithe-gentlemen, yong nobles of the land," &c. Steevens. Ty'd all the kingdom:] i. e. he was a man of an unbounded stomach, or pride, ranking himself with princes, and by suggestion to the King and the Pope, he ty'd, i. e. limited, circumscribed, and set bounds to the liberties and properties of all persons in the kingdom. That he did so, appears from various passages in the play. Act II, sc. ii, "free us from his slavery,"-" or this imperious man will work us all from princes into pages: all men's honours," &c. Act III, sc. ii. "You wrought to be a legate, by which power you maim'd the jurisdiction of all bishops." See also Act I, sc. i, and Act III, sc. ii. This construction of the passage may be supported from D'Ewes's Journal of Queen Elizabeth's Parliaments, p. 644: "Far be it from me that the state and prerogative of the prince should be tied by me, or by the act of any other subject." Dr. Farmer has displayed such eminent knowledge of Shakspeare, that it is with the utmost diffidence I dissent from the alteration which he would establish here. He would read tyth'd, and refers to the authorities of Hall and Holinshed about a tax of the tenth, or tythe of each man's substance, which is not taken notice of in the play. Let it be remarked that it is Queen Katharine speaks here, who, in Act I, sc. ii, told the King it was a demand of the sixth part of each subject's substance, that caused the rebellion. Would she afterwards say that he, i. e. Wolsey, had tythed all the kingdom, when she knew he had almost double-tythed it? Still Dr. Farmer insists that "the passage, like every other in the speech, is intended to express the meaning of the parallel one in the Chronicle:" i. e. The cardinal "by craftie suggestion got into his hands innumerable treasure." This passage does not relate to a publick tax of the tenths, but to the Cardinal's own private acquisitions. If in this sense I admitted the alteration, tyth'd, I would suppose that, as the Queen is descanting on the Cardinal's own acquirements, she borrows her term from the principal emolument or payment due to priests; and means to inti. Both in his words and meaning: He was never, His promises were, as he then was, mighty; Grif. 7 Noble madam, Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues mate that the Cardinal was not content with the tythes legally accruing to him from his own various pluralities, but that he extorted something equivalent to them throughout all the kingdom. So, Buckingham says, Act I, sc. i, "No man's pie is freed from his ambitious finger." So, again, Surrey says, Act III, sc. ult. Yes, that goodness of gleaning all the land's wealth into one, into your own hands, cardinal, by extortion:” and ibidem, “You have sent innumerable substance (by what means got, I leave to your own conscience) to the mere undoing of all the kingdom.” This extortion is so frequently spoken of, that perhaps our author purposely avoided a repetition of it in the passage under consideration, and therefore gave a different sentiment declarative of the consequence of his unbounded pride, that must humble all others. Tollet. 6 — as he is now, nothing.] So, in Massinger's Great Duke of Florence: Great men, "Till they have gain'd their ends, are giants in "Their promises; but those obtain'd, weak pygmies 7 Of his own body he was ill,] A criminal connection with women was anciently called the vice of the body. Thus, in The Manciple's Tale, by Chaucer: "If of hire body dishonest she be." Again, in Holinshed, p. 1258: "- - he laboured by all meanes to cleare mistresse Sanders of committing evill of her bodie with him." Steevens. So, the Protector says of Jane Shore, Hall's Chronicle, Edw. IV, p. 16: "She was naught of her bodye." Malone. We write in water.] Beaumont and Fletcher have the same thought in their Philaster: all your better deeds Steevens. "Shall be in water writ, but this in marble." This reflection bears a great resemblance to a passage in Sir Thomas More's History of Richard III, whence Shakspeare undoubtedly formed his play on that subject. Speaking of the ungrateful turns which Jane Shore experienced from those whom |