North. Why should the gentleman, that rode by Travers, Give then such instances of loss? Who, he? Bard. Spoke at a venture. Look, here comes more news. Enter MORTON. North. Yea, this man's brow, like to a title-leaf, Foretells the nature of a tragick volume: So looks the strond, whereon the imperious flood Hath left a witness'd usurpation. Say, Morton, didst thou come from Shrewsbury? Mor. I ran from Shrewsbury, my noble lord; Where hateful death put on his ugliest mask, To fright our party. North. How doth my son, and brother ? Thou tremblest; and the whiteness in thy cheek Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand. Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone8, Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night, And would have told him, half his Troy was burn'd: But Priam found the fire, ere he his tongue, And I my Percy's death, ere thou report'st it. This thou would'st say, - Your son did thus, and thus; Your brother, thus; so fought the noble Douglas; Stopping my greedy ear with their bold deeds: 6 i. e. Hilderling, base, low fellow. 7 An attestation of its ravage. 8 Dr. Bentley is said to have thought this passage corrupt; and therefore (with a greater degree of gravity than the reader will probably express) proposed the following emendation : So dead, so dull in look Ucalegon, Drew Priam's curtain,' &c. The name of Ucalegon occurs in the third Iliad, and in the Æneid. But in the end, to stop mine ear indeed, Mor. Douglas is living, and your brother, yet: But, for my lord your son, North. Why, he is dead. See, what a ready tongue suspicion hath! North. Yet, for all this, say not that Percy's dead. 9 So in Shakspeare's seventy-first Sonnet :- Milton has adopted this expressive epithet :- The bell anciently was rung before the dying person had expired, and thence was called the passing bell. Mr. Douce thinks it probable that this bell might have been originally used to drive away demons, who were supposed to watch for the parting Bard. I cannot think, my lord, your son is dead. Mor. I am sorry, I should force you to believe That, which I would to heaven I had not seen : But these mine eyes saw him in bloody state, Rend'ring faint quittance 10, wearied and outbreath'd, To Harry Monmouth: whose swift wrath beat down The never daunted Percy to the earth, From whence with life he never more sprung up. In few, his death (whose spirit lent a fire Even to the dullest peasant in his camp), Being bruited 11 once, took fire and heat away From the best temper'd courage in his troops : For from his metal was his party steel'd; Which once in him abated, all the rest Turn'd on themselves, like dull and heavy lead. And as the thing that's heavy in itself, Upon enforcement, flies with greatest speed; So did our men, heavy in Hotspur's loss, Lend to this weight such lightness with their fear, That arrows fled not swifter toward their aim, Than did our soldiers, aiming at their safety, Fly from the field: Then was that noble Worcester Too soon ta'en prisoner: and that furious Scot, The bloody Douglas, whose well labouring sword Had three times slain the appearance of the king, 'Gan vail1o his stomach, and did grace the shame. Of those that turn'd their backs; and, in his flight, soul. 10 By faint quittance a faint return of blows is meant. So in King Henry V: We shall forget the office of our hand 11 i. e. reported, noised abroad. Vide Macbeth, Act v. Sc. 7. 12 i. e. began to fall his courage, to let his spirits sink under his fortune. To vail is to lower, to cast down. So in The Taming of the Shrew, Act v: Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot, And place your hands below your husband's foot.'. Stumbling in fear, was took. The sum of all North. For this I shall have time enough to mourn. crutch; A scaly gauntlet now, with joints of steel, 13 Grief, in the latter part of this line, is used, in its present sense, for sorrow; in the former part for bodily pain. 14 Steevens explains nice here by trifling; but Shakspeare, like his cotemporaries, uses it in the sense of effeminate, delicate, tender. Vide note on As You Like It, Act iv. Sc. 1. p. 182. 15 The conclusion of this noble speech (says Johnson) is extremely striking. There is no need to suppose it exactly philosophical; darkness, in poetry, may be absence of eyes, as well as privation of light. Yet we may remark that, by an ancient opinion, it has been held that if the human race, for whom the world was made, were extirpated, the whole system of sublunary nature would cease at once.' Mr. Boswell remarks that a passage resembling this, but feeble in comparison, is found in The Double Marriage of Beaumont and Fletcher: Tra. This strained passion doth you wrong, my lord 16. Bard. Sweet earl, divorce not wisdom from your honour. Mor. The lives of all your loving complices Lean on your health; the which, if you give o'er To stormy passion, must perforce decay. You cast the event of war, my noble lord 17, And summ'd the account of chance, before you said, Let us make head. It was your presurmise, That we might fall, And in our ruins swallow up this kingdom, 16 This line in the quarto is by mistake given to Umfreville, who is spoken of in this very scene as absent. It is given to Travers at Steevens's suggestion. 17 The fourteen following lines, and a number of others in this play, were not in the quarto edition. 18 Dealing, or distribution. 19 So in King Henry IV. Part I: ' As full of peril and adventurous spirit, 20 That is, you were warned or aware. |