GAUNT. O, but they say, the tongues of dying men Enforce attention like deep harmony: Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain; For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain. He, that no more must say, is listen'd more, Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose; More are men's ends mark'd, than their lives before: The setting sun, and musick at the close As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last; Writ in remembrance more than things long past : Though Richard my life's counsel would not hear, My death's sad tale may yet undeaf his ear. YORK. No; it is stopp'd with other flattering sounds, As, praises of his state: then, there are found * * Quarto 1597, As praises of whose taste the wise are found. 9 at the CLOSE,] This I suppose to be a musical term. So, in Lingua, 1607: "I dare engage my ears, the close will jar." STEEVens. '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. : one of these same meeter ballad-mongers." 66 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. Whose manners still our tardy apish nation Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity, His rash 5 fierce blaze of riot cannot last; He tires betimes, that spurs too fast betimes; Consuming means, soon preys upon itself. This fortress, built by nature for herself, 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. -- rash-] That is, hasty, violent. JOHNSON. So, in King Henry IV. Part I.: JOHNSON. “Like aconitum, or rash gunpowder." MALONE. 6 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. FARMER. This happy breed of men, this little world; For the substitution of the word infestion, which was suggested by Dr. Farmer, and differs from the original word but by a single letter, I am answerable. Since the year 1665, this happy island has been entirely free from the plague; and if ever we should be again molested by that fatal malady, it will unquestionably arise from infection communicated from foreign parts. A poet therefore of the present day, in speaking of Great Britain, might naturally mention its being, by its insular situation, exempt from that contagion to which the natives of the continent are exposed; and also from the hostile incursions of its enemies. But in our poet's time there was in London every year an indigenous plague, if I may use the expression, from May till October; and a considerable number of the inhabitants were annually destroyed by this malignant disease. Shakspeare, therefore, I conceive, would never mention the circumstance of our being secured, by our insular situation, from foreign infection, as a fortunate circumstance, knowing that such security availed nothing; since, notwithstanding our being possessed of a fortress built by nature for herself, our own native pestilence was annually extremely destructive. I think, therefore, that in both parts of this line, he had only one circumstance in his thoughts, our not being exposed to foreign hostile incursions; and the copulative and seems to countenance this supposition. I may add, that the preceding verse strongly supports this notion; for a natural fortress, such as is here described, is opposed properly and immediately to the open hostile attacks of an enemy, and not to the lurking infection of the plague, which seems here entirely out of place. Though I have not met with an example of the use of the word infestion, in the sense of infestation, similar abbreviations occur in other places in our author's plays: thus we have probal for probable in Othello, and captious for capacious in All's Well That Ends Well. In like manner, Bishop Hall, in his Cases of Conscience, 8vo. p. 202, edit. 1651, uses acception for acceptation: "Against infestion, and the hand of warriors; against the infesting or assailing force of an enemy." I shall only add, that Bacon employs the word infestation in the same sense. "Touching the infestation of pirates he hath been careful, and is." Speech in the Star-chamber, 1617. Works, iv. 278, Mallet's edition. MALONE. Against the envy of less happier lands'; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this Eng land, This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son: 7 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. • 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: 66 royal kings, "Fear'd for their breed, and famous for their birth, "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. Dr. Johnson was in an error in supposing the quarto of 1598 to be the first. The original copy was printed in 1597, and reads "Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth." "By their breed," i. e. by means of their breed. There is some resemblance in the mode of expression between this passage and the following in The Farewell to Follie, one of the tracts of his predecessor Green's, which appeared in 1598: "My lordes and worthy peeres of Buda, feared for your valour and famous for your victories, let not the private will of one be the ruin of such a mighty kingdom." MALONE. Dear for her reputation through the world, 9 This land 2 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. "For every pelting petty officer, MALONE. 1 With inky BLOTS,] I suspect that our author wrote-inky bolts? How can blots bind 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. : 2 66 manacling itself "In gyves of parchment." STEEVENS. Inky blots," is a contemptuous term for writings. Boswell. 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. M. MASON. |