ACT FOURTH SCENE I Yorkshire. Gaultree Forest. Enter the Archbishop of York, Mowbray, Hastings, and others. Arch. What is this forest call'd? Hast. "Tis Gaultree Forest, an 't shall please your grace. 'Arch. Here stand, my lords; and send discoverers forth To know the numbers of our enemies. "Tis well done. ers 10 As might hold sortance with his quality, 11. "hold sortance with"; sort with, be in keeping with.-C. H. H. That your attempts may overlive the hazard Mowb. Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground And dash themselves to pieces. Hast. Enter a Messenger. Now, what news? 20 Mess. West of this forest, scarcely off a mile, Upon or near the rate of thirty thousand. Mowb. The just proportion that we gave them out. Let us sway on and face them in the field. Arch. What well-appointed leader fronts us here? Enter Westmoreland. Mowb. I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland. West. Health and fair greeting from our general, The prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster. Arch. Say on, my Lord of Westmoreland, in peace: What doth concern your coming? West. Then, my lord, 30 The substance of my speech. If that rebellion 25. "well-appointed"; completely accoutered.-H. N. H. 34. "bloody; guarded"; Baret carefully distinguishes between I And countenanced by boys and beggary; 40 With your fair honors. You, lord Archbishop, Whose learning and good letters peace hath Whose white investments figure innocence, The dove and very blessed spirit of peace, Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war; 50 Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine To a loud trumpet and a point of war? Arch. Wherefore do I this? so the question stands. Briefly to this end: we are all diseased, bloody, full of blood, sanguineous, and bloody, desirous of blood, sanguinarius. In this speech Shakespeare uses the word in both senses.- -"Guarded" is a metaphor taken from dress; to guard being to ornament with guards or facings.-H. N. H. 45. "investments"; formerly all bishops wore white, even when they traveled. This white investment was the episcopal rochet.— H. N. H. 50. "graves"; Warburton proposed glaives, Steevens greaves; which latter Singer approves and remarks "that greaves, or leg-armour, is sometimes spelt graves." Mr. Verplanck concurs in the same emendation.-H. N. H. And with our surfeiting and wanton hours Troop in the throngs of military men; 60 And purge the obstructions which begin to stop And find our griefs heavier than our offenses. And have the summary of all our griefs, We are denied access unto his person 55-79. Omitted in Q.-I. G. 60. “I take not on me as"; I do not assume the part of.-C. H. H. 71. "our most quiet there"; our perfect acquiescence in its course. The idea is that of smoothly running waters suddenly diverted by the inrush of a turbulent torrent.-C. H. H. "there"; the reading of the Ff.; Hanmer conjectured "sphore”; Collier "chair."-I. G. Even by those men that most have done us wrong. 80 The dangers of the days but newly gone, Whose memory is written on the earth With yet appearing blood, and the examples Of every minute's instance, present now, Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms, Not to break peace or any branch of it, But to establish here a peace indeed, Concurring both in name and quality. West. When ever yet was your appeal denied? Wherein have you been galled by the king? 89 What peer hath been suborn'd to grate on you, That you should seal this lawless bloody book Of forged rebellion with a seal divine, And consecrate commotion's bitter edge? 82. "examples of every minute's instance"; are examples which every minute instances or supplies.-H. N. H. 93. That is, the edge of bitter strife and commotion; the sword of rebellion.-H. N. H. Neither this line nor 95 is to be found in the Ff., and they are omitted in some copies of the Q. To some corruption of the text is due the obscurity of 11. 94–96, which Clarke paraphrases: “The grievances of my brother general, the commonwealth, and the home cruelty to my born brother, cause me to make this quarrel my own." The archbishop's brother had been beheaded by the king's order.-I. G. This most obscure passage seems quite incapable of a satisfactory explanation. Perhaps the best is that proposed by Monck Mason: "My brother-general makes the commonwealth his cause of quarrel; an household cruelty to one born my brother I make my quarrel in particular"; which, however unsatisfactory otherwise, has the merit of agreeing very well with what Worcester says in The First Part, Act i. sc. 3: "The archbishop, who bears hard his brother's death at Bristol, the lord Scroop." Dr. Johnson would read, “My quarrel general," which is perhaps worth considering, as it makes a sort of antithesis between general and particular, where something of the kind seems intended. The meaning in that case would be,-The |