Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

Lascivious metres;1 to whose venom sound
The open ear of youth doth always listen:
Report of fashions in proud Italy;2
Whose manners still our tardy apish nation
Limps after, in base imitation.

Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity,
(So it be new, there's no respect how vile,)
That is not quickly buzz'd into his ears?
Then all too late comes counsel to be heard,
Where will doth mutiny with wit's regard.3
Direct not him, whose way himself will choose;
'Tis breath thou lack'st, and that breath wilt thou lose.
Gaunt. Methinks, I am a prophet new inspir'd;
And thus, expiring, do foretel of him:-
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last;

For violent fires soon burn out themselves:

[ocr errors]

Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
He tires betimes, that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding, food doth choke the feeder:
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,

Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,

1 Lascivious metres;] The old copies have-meeters; but I believe we should read metres for verses. Thus the folio spells the

word metre in The First Part of King Henry IV:

[ocr errors]

one of these same meeter ballad-mongers." Venom sound agrees well with lascivious ditties, but not so commodiously with one who meets another; in which sense the word appears to have been generally received. Steevens.

2 Report of fashions in proud Italy;] Our author, who gives to all nations the customs of England, and to all ages the manners of his own, has charged the times of Richard with a folly not perhaps known then, but very frequent in Shakspeare's time, and much lamented by the wisest and best of our ancestors.

Johnson. 3 Where will doth mutiny with wit's regard.] Where the will rebels against the notices of the understanding. Johnson.

4

whose way himself will choose;] Do not attempt to guide him, who, whatever thou shalt say, will take his own course.

5

rash] That is, hasty, violent. Johnson.

So, in King Henry IV, Part I:

"Like aconitum, or rash gunpowder." Malone.

Johnson.

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise;

This fortress, built by nature for herself,
Against infection, and the hand of war:
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands;7

8

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
(For Christian service, and true chivalry,)
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son:

Against infection,] I once suspected that for infection we might read invasion; but the copies all agree, and I suppose Shakspeare meant to say, that islanders are secured by their situation both from war and pestilence. Johnson.

In Allot's England's Parnassus, 1600, this passage is quoted: "Against intestion," &c. Perhaps the word might be infestion, if such a word was in use.

7

Farmer.

less happier lands;] So read all the editions, except Sir T. Hanmer's, which has less happy. I believe, Shakspeare, from the habit of saying more happier, according to the custom of his time, inadvertently writ less happier. Johnson.

8 Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth,] The first edition in quarto, 1598, reads:

Fear'd by their breed, and famous for their birth. The quarto, in 1615:

Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth.

The first folio, though printed from the second quarto, reads as the first. The particles in this author seem often to have been printed by chance. Perhaps the passage, which appears a little disordered, may be regulated thus:

royal kings,

Fear'd for their breed, and famous for their birth,
For Christian service, and true chivalry;
Renowned for their deeds as far from home

As is the sepulchre Johnson.

The first folio could not have been printed from the second quarto, on account of many variations as well as omissions. The quarto, 1608, has the same reading with that immediately preceding it. Steevens.

Fear'd by their breed,] i. e. by means of their breed. Malone.

This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leas'd out (I die pronouncing it)
Like to a tenement, or pelting farm:9
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots,' and rotten parchment bonds;2
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself:
O, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!

4

Enter King RICHARD and Queen; 3 AUMERLE, BUSHY, GREEN, BAGOT, Ross,5 and WILLOUGHBY."

York. The king is come: deal mildly with his youth; For young hot colts, being rag'd, do rage the more.7

9 This land

Is now leas'd out (I die pronouncing it)

Like to a tenement or pelting farm:] "In this 22d yeare of King Richard (says Fabian) the common fame ranne, that the kinge had letten to farm the realme unto Sir William Scrope, earle of Wiltshire, and then treasurer of England, to Syr John Bushey, Sir John Bagot, and Sir Henry Grene, knightes."

Malone.

1 With inky blots,] I suspect that our author wrote-inky bolts. How can blots bind in any thing? and do not bolts correspond better with bonds? Inky bolts are written restrictions. So, in The Honest Man's Fortune, by Beaumont and Fletcher, Act IV, sc. i: manacling itself

[ocr errors]

"In

Steevens.

gives of parchment." 2 rotten parchment bonds;] Alluding to the great sums raised by loans and other exactions, in this reign, upon the English subjects. Grey.

Gaunt does not allude, as Grey supposes, to any loans or exactions extorted by Richard, but to the circumstances of his having actually farmed out his royal realm, as he himself styles it. In the last scene of the first Act he says:

"And, for our coffers are grown somewhat light, "We are enforc'd to farm our royal realm." And it afterwards appears that the person who farmed the realm was the Earl of Wiltshire, one of his own favourites.

3

M. Mason..

Queen;] Shakspeare, as Mr. Walpole suggests to me, has deviated from historical truth in the introduction of Richard's queen as a woman in the present piece; for Anne,, his first.

Queen. How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster?

K. kich. What comfort, man? How is 't with aged
Gaunt?

Gaunt. O, how that name befits my composition!
Old Gaunt, indeed; and gaunt in being old:
Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast;
And who abstains from meat, that is not gaunt?
For sleeping England long time have I watch'd;
Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt:
The pleasure, that some fathers feed upon,
Is my strict fast, I mean-my children's looks;
And, therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt:
Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,
Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones.

K. Rich. Can sick men play so nicely with their names?
Gaunt. No, misery makes sport to mock itself:
Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me,
I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee.

K. Rich. Should dying men flatter with those that live? Gaunt. No, no; men living flatter those that die. K. Rich. Thou, now a dying, sayʼst-thou flatter'st me. Gaunt. Oh! no; thou diest, though I the sicker be. K. Rich. I am in health, I breathe, and see thee ill. Gaunt. Now, He that made me, knows I see thee ill; Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill. Thy death-bed is no lesser than thy land, Wherein thou liest in reputation sick:

wife, was dead before the play commences, and Isabella, his second wife, was a child at the time of his death.

Malone.

Aumerle,] was Edward, eldest son of Edmund Duke of York, whom he succeeded in the title. He was killed at Agincourt. Walpole.

5 Ross,] was William Lord Roos, (and so should be printed) of Hamlake, afterwards Lord Treasurer to Henry IV.

6

Walpole.

Willoughby.] was William Lord Willoughby of Eresby, who afterwards married Joan, widow of Edmund Duke of York.

Walpole.

7 For young hot colts, being rag'd, do rage the more.] Read: being rein'd, do rage the more.

Ritson.

8 Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill.] I cannot help supposing that the idle words-to see, which destroy the measure, should be omitted. Steevens.

And thou, too careless patient as thou art,
Commit'st thy anointed body to the cure
Of those physicians that first wounded thee:
A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,
Whose compass
is no bigger than thy head;
And yet, incaged in so small a verge,

The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.

O, had thy grandsire, with a prophet's eye,
Seen how his son's son should destroy his sons,
From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame;
Deposing thee before thou wert possess'd,
Which art possess'd now to depose thyself.9
Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world,
It were a shame, to let this land by lease:
But, for thy world, enjoying but this land,
Is it not more than shame, to shame it so?
Landlord of England art thou now, not king:
Thy state of law is bondslave to the law;1

9 Which art possess'd now to depose thyself.] Possess'd, in this second instance, was, I believe, designed to mean-afflicted with madness occasioned by the internal operation of a dæmon. So, in The Comedy of Errors" Both man and master is possess'd."

Steevens.

1 Thy state of law is bondslave to the law;] State of law, i. e. legal sovereignty. But the Oxford editor alters it to state o'er law, i. e. absolute sovereignty. A doctrine, which, if ever our poet learnt at all, he learnt not in the reign when this play was written, Queen Elizabeth's, but in the reign after it, King James's. By bondslave to the law, the poet means his being inslaved to his favourite subjects. Warburton.

This sentiment, whatever it be, is obscurely expressed. I understand it differently from the learned commentator, being perhaps not quite so zealous for Shakspeare's political reputation. The reasoning of Gaunt, I think, is this: By setting the royalties to farm thou hast reduced thyself to a state below sovereignty, thou art now no longer king but landlord of England, subject to the same restraint and limitations as other landlords: by making thy condition a state of law, a condition upon which the common rules of law can operate, thou art become a bondslave to the law; thou hast made thyself amenable to laws from which thou wert originally exempt. Whether this explanation be true or no, it is plain that Dr. Warburton's explanation of bondslave to the law, is not true.

Johnson.

Warburton's explanation of this passage is too absurd to require confutation; and his political observation is equally ill-founded. The doctrine of absolute sovereignty might as well have

« AnteriorContinuar »