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K. John. O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye:
The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burn'd;
And all the shrouds, wherewith my life should sail,
Are turned to one thread, one little hair:
My heart hath one poor string to stay it by,
Which holds but till thy news be uttered;
And then all this thou see'st is but a clod,
And model (58) of confounded royalty.

Bast. The Dauphin is preparing hitherward,
Where heaven he knows how we shall answer him;

For in a night the best part of my power,
As I upon advantage did remove,

Were in the washes all unwarily

Devourèd by the unexpected flood.

[King John dies.

Sal. You breathe these dead news in as dead an ear.

My liege! my lord!-but now a king,-now thus.

P. Hen. Even so must I run on, and even so stop.

What surety of the world, what hope, what stay,
When this was now a king, and now is clay ?

Bast. Art thou gone so? I do but stay behind
To do the office for thee of revenge,
And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven,
As it on earth hath been thy servant still.-
Now, now, you stars that move in your right spheres,
Where be your powers? show now your mended faiths;
And instantly return with me again,

To push destruction and perpetual shame
Out of the weak door of our fainting land.
Straight let us seek, or straight we shall be sought;
The Dauphin rages at our very heels.

Sal. It seems you know not, then, so much as we:
The Cardinal Pandulph is within at rest,
Who half an hour since came from the Dauphin,
And brings from him such offers of our peace
As we with honour and respect may take,
With purpose presently to leave this war.

Bast. He will the rather do it when he sees
Ourselves well sinewed to our defence.

Sal. Nay, it is in a manner done already;

For many carriages he hath dispatch'd

To the sea-side, and put his cause and quarrel
To the disposing of the cardinal :

With whom yourself, myself, and other lords,
If you think meet, this afternoon will post

To cónsummate this business happily.

Bast. Let it be so :-and you, my noble prince,

With other princes that may best be spar'd,
Shall wait upon your father's funeral.

P. Hen. At Worcester must his body be interr'd;

For so he will'd it.

Bast.

Thither shall it, then:

And happily may your sweet self put on
The lineal state and glory of the land!
To whom, with all submission, on my knee,
I do bequeath my faithful services
And true subjection everlastingly.

Sal. And the like tender of our love we make,
To rest without a spot for evermore.

P. Hen. I have a kind soul that would give you thanks, And knows not how to do it but with tears.

Bast. O, let us pay the time but needful woe,
Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.-
This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.
Now these her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them: naught shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true.

[Exeunt.

P. 185. (1)

"Why, what a madcap hath heaven lent us here!"

Mr. W. N. Lettsom informs me that the late Mr. Sydney Walker would read

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sent us here!"-very unnecessarily, I apprehend.

P. 186.

"With that half-face would he have all my land."

Theobald's correction. -The folio has "With half that face," &c. (which Mr. Collier retains:-see my Remarks on Mr. Collier's and Mr. Knight's eds. of Shakespeare, p. 87, and my Few Notes, &c. p. 83).

P. 187.

"but arise more great,

Arise Sir Richard and Plantagenet."

The folio has "but rise more great," &c.

P. 189.

"Sir Robert could do well: marry, to confess,

Could not get me; Sir Robert could not do it," &c.

The folio has "Could get me sir Robert could not doe it," &c. The usual modern reading is "Could he get me? Sir Robert," &c. But there is no mark of interrogation in the old copy; and it seems better to insert, with Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector, " not."

P. 190. (5)

"Thou art the issue of my dear offence," &c.

The folio has "That art the," &c. (The words "thou" and "that," - being often written "9" and "y," - were not unfrequently confounded.)

P. 191. (5)

"But with a heart full of unstainèd love," &c.

"

Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector reads unstrained love," &c.;-against which plausible alteration Mr. Knight (Spec. of the Stratford Shakspere, p. 2) has adduced from Pericles, act i. sc. 1, "my unspotted fire of love." Compare, too, a passage towards the close of the present play, p. 256,

"And the like tender of our love we make,

To rest without a spot for evermore."

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Mason would read "And his is Geffrey's" (i.e. whatever was Geffrey's is now his (Arthur's).

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P. 195. (8)

"Aust. What cracker is this same that deafs our ears With this abundance of superfluous breath?

The folio has;

K. Phi. Louis, determine what we shall do straight.
Lou. Women and fools, break off," &c.

"Aust. What cracker is this same that deafes our eares
With this abundance of superfluous breath?

King Lewis, determine what we shall doe strait.
Lew. Women & fooles, breake off," &c.:-

and the late Mr. Sydney Walker (Shakespeare's Versification, &c. p. 4), after remarking that in our poet "Lewis [Louis] is always a monosyllable," declares that Mr. Knight has here "properly restored" the reading of the folio, -the punctuation altered to "King,-Lewis, determine," &c. But, since Mr. Walker wrote, Mr. Knight has agreed with the more recent editors that the word "King" is the prefix to the third line :-nor are reasons wanting for considering it as such. In the first place, the folio prefixes "King" to the three earliest speeches of Philip in this scene. Secondly, if Austria were here addressing Philip, he would not term him simply "King," but "King Philip," as he afterwards does, p. 213,

"King Philip, listen to the cardinal."

"Do so, King Philip; hang no more in doubt."

Thirdly, if Austria had called on Philip and Louis to determine what was to be done, we can hardly suppose that the Dauphin would take upon himself to speak before his father had uttered a word.--Theobald left Austria in possession of the third line, altering it to "King Philip, determine what we shall do straight;" and prefixed "K. Philip" to the next speech, -the commencement of which, however, is more suited to the young and impetuous Dauphin than to his father.

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"Of this oppressed boy: this is thy eldest son's son," &c. Ritson and Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector would shorten the line thus,

"Of this oppressed boy, thy eld'st son's son," &c.

(We at least must not read "oppress'd:" compare, in the next page, "In the relief of this oppressèd child," &c.)

P. 197. (11)

"All preparation for a bloody siege

And merciless proceeding by these French
Confronts your city's eyes," &c.

The folio has "Comfort yours Citties eies," &c. (the s appended to the second of these words belonging, it would seem, to the preceding misprinted one). Rowe gave "Confront;" Capell "Confronts:"-" preparation," Mr. Knight observes, "is here the nominative."

P. 198.

"But if you fondly pass our proffer'd offer," &c.

Mr. W. N. Lettsom informs me that the late Mr. Sydney Walker proposed to read " proffer'd love," &c.

P. 198. (13)

"'Tis not the rondure of your old-fac'd walls," &c.

Here the spelling of the folio is "rounder:" but in our author's 21st Sonnet we have

"and all things rare That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems."

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To this and to the subsequent speeches of the same person the folio prefixes "Hubert;"-which Mr. Knight chooses to retain. "Possibly," as Mr. Collier remarks ad l., "the actor of the part of Hubert also personated the Citizen, and this may have led to the insertion of his name in the Ms." That the doubling of parts was formerly not unusual, we have evidence in the early eds. of various old plays.

P. 200. (15)

"Say, shall the current of our right run on?
A peaceful progress to the ocean."

So the second folio. - The first has "
rome on?" (a misprint, I presume,
for "runne," which is the spelling of the folio in act iii. sc. 4, act v. sc. 1,-or
perhaps for "ronne," since the Ms. might have had that spelling.-In defence
of "roam," Malone inappositely quotes from The Tempest, "the wandering
brooks;" and Mr. Knight strangely calls the reading of the second folio "a
fancied improvement." Steevens well observes; "The King would rather
describe his right as running on in a direct than in an irregular course, such as
would be implied by the word roam."-Compare a later passage of this play,
p. 251;

"And calmly run on in obedience,

Even to our ocean, to our great King John."

P. 201. (") "And till it be undoubted, we do lock

Our former scruple in our strong-barr'd gates;

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