P. 618. (50)

"Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,

But he'll remember with advantages

What feats he did that day: then shall our names,
Familiar in their mouths as household words,-
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloster,—

Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.”

In the third line the folio has "Familiar in his mouth as," &c.-I adopt, with Malone, Mr. Collier, &c., the far more natural reading of the 4tos. Mr. Knight prefers that of the folio: Shakespeare, he says, "altered their mouths' of the quarto to his mouth.' How beautifully he preserves the continuity of the picture of the one old man remembering his feats, and his great companions in arms, by this slight change! His mouth names 'Harry the king' as a household word; though in their cups the name shall be freshly remembered." For my own part, I believe that Shakespeare did not make the alteration; but that it must be attributed to the transcriber or printer,—the text of this play in the folio being by no means immaculate. Nor can I regard Mr. Knight's criticism on the passage as any thing else than mere sophistry: the NAMES at least of the chief warriors who fought at Agincourt must have been quite as familiar to the veteran's "neighbours" as to himself.

Since the preceding note was written, Mr. John Forster has remarked to me "that the familiar utterance and the fresh remembrance of the names constitute one and the same act, and that it is manifestly wrong to assign the former to a single person and the latter to many."

P. 620. (51)

"Hen. I fear thou wilt once more come again for ransom.”

The folio has " - for a Ransome;"—which is given by Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight: but compare the words of Henry a little above, "Come thou no more for ransom," &c.; and at p. 526, “Com'st thou again for ransom ?”—This is not in the 4tos. (Here, as frequently elsewhere, "thou wilt" is to be read as

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thou❜lt.")

P. 621. (52)

"I will have forty moys;

Or I will fetch thy rim out at thy throat," &c.

The folio has "For I will fetch," &c.-The second of these lines is not in the

4tos.

P. 623. (53)

Let us die in honour: once more back again," &c.

The folio has "Let vs dye in once more backe againe," &c.-I adopt the reading of Mr. Knight, which is probably the true one, since the words "Lets die with honour" occur in the corresponding scene of the quartos.

P. 624. (*)

“In which array, brave soldier, doth he lie,
Larding the plain."

Need I observe that the alteration made here by Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector, "Loading the plain," is utterly wrong, and that “Larding” means, as Mr. Singer explains it (Shakespeare Vindicated, &c. p. 132), “enriching, manuring the plain with his blood?"-(In The Tempest, act i. sc. 2, the Ms. Corrector, with equal impropriety, changes “He being thus lorded," &c. to “He being thus loaded,” &c.)

P. 627. (5)

"That we may wander o'er this bloody field
To book our dead, and then to bury them.”

Here Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector substitutes "To look our dead;" and, with-
out meaning to advocate the insertion of that reading in the text, I must say
that it is a very plausible one,—the more so, as the Herald subjoins,
"O, give us leave, great king,

To view the field in safety," &c.

(Mr. Singer (Shakespeare Vindicated, &c. p. 133) remarks that, “unless Shakespeare meant to make Montjoy here speak broken English, to look our dead would be indeed a strange phrase." But so far from being strange, the phrase was common enough. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, act iv. sc. 2, we have; "Mistress Page and I will look some linen for your head." And compare Beaumont and Fletcher;

- why dost thou peep so? Short. I am looking birds' nests.”

Wit without Money, act ii. sc. 4.

i.e. who, if alive and he ever, &c. The more recent editors alter the first “alive” to “’a live,”—how improperly, the repetition of the word might have shown them.

P. 629. (7) “I would fain see the man,

..that is all; but I would

that

fain see it once, an please Got of his grace that I might see.”

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It is not safe to meddle with the language of Fluellen: but qy. is all; I would fain but see it once," &c.? The corresponding passage in the 4tos is,

"I would see that man now that wold challenge this gloue
And it please God of his grace I would but see him,
That is all."

P. 633. (58)

"and of such as have," &c.

The "of"" has been altered to "to" and to "for."

P. 633. (59)

"with wives," &c.

The "with" was added in the second folio.

P. 634. (60)

"Now in London place him;

(As yet the lamentation of the French
Invites the King of England's stay at home;
The emperor's coming," &c.

A passage evidently corrupt,—probably mutilated.

This can hardly be right, though Mr. Collier passes it over without a note, and Mr. Knight is at no loss for an explanation.-It has been altered to "I eat and swear — -" and (not unhappily) to "I eat, and eke I swear —

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The old copies have "Doll,”'—an odd mistake; nor is Mr. Collier's defence of it less odd. See my Remarks on Mr. Collier's and Mr. Knight's eds. of Shakespeare, p. 120.

And patches will I get unto these scars,

And swear I got them in the Gallia wars."

So the couplet stands in the 4tos.-The folio has,

"And patches will I get vnto these cudgeld scarres," &c.,—

a reading which had been long discarded when Mr. Knight and Mr. Collier brought it back. "The editors," says Mr. Knight, "leave cudgell'd out, without any apology for deviating from the text. True, the word is not in the quarto: but the whole scene has been remodelled." Now, if Henry the Fifth had come down to us only in the folio, I should not have thought myself at liberty to reject the word "cudgell'd,"-I should have been content with stating in a note that I believed it to be an interpolation: but since that word is omitted in the quartos,-and since the quartos, imperfect as they are, enable us elsewhere in this play to correct some decided errors of the folio,I have no hesitation in being indebted to them here. (Earlier in the present speech, the folio has “Of a malady of France;” yet Mr. Knight and Mr. Collier silently omit "a" with the quartos.)

P. 637. (1)

"The venom of such looks, we fairly hope,
Have lost their quality.”

See note on Love's Labour's lost, vol. ii. p. 169.

The folio has "withall uncorrected," &c.-This is not in the 4tos.

The folio has "And all our Vineyards," &c.—This is not in the 4tos.

P. 641. (67)

in other paces:"

“because he hath not the gift to woo in other places.” It has been suggested to me that the right reading is ". but the old text is quite right.

P. 645. (68)

"that war hath never entered."

Here the word “never,” which is necessary for the sense, was inserted by Rowe. (“Modern editors," says Mr. Collier, "have invariably inserted 'never;' but the true word was probably not, because the old [Ms.] Corrector places it in the margin :"-if Mr. Collier had looked into Capell's edition, he would have found "not.")

P. 645. (69) “His daughter first; and, in sequel, all,” &c.

The second folio gives

P. 645. (70)

Should, of course, be “Præcarissimus filius," &c.: but Shakespeare copied the mistake from Holinshed.

END OF VOL. III.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY ROBSON, LEVEY, AND FRANKLYN,
Great New Street and Fetter Lane.

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