PURS. God hold it, to your honour's good con tent! HAST. Gramercy, fellow: There, drink that for [Throwing him his Purse. me. PURS. I thank your honour. (Exit Pursuivant, Enter a Prieft. PR. Well met, my lord; I am glad to fee your honour. HAST. I thank thee, good fir John, with all my heart. I am in your debt for your last exercise;5 Come the next Sabbath, and I will content you. 3 4 Enter BUCKINGHAM.6 Buck. What, talking with a priest, lord cham berlain? -hold it,] That is, continue it. JOHNSON. - good fir John,] Sir was formerly the usual address to the inferior clergy. See Vol. V. p. 7, n. 1. MALONE. 5 -exercise;] Performance of divine service. JOHNSON. I rather imagine it meant for attending him in private to hear his confeffion. So, in fc. vii : "To draw him from his holy exercise." MALONE. Exercise, I believe, means only religious exhortation, or lecture. So, in Othello : "Much caftigation, exercise devout." STEEVENS. • Enter Buckingham.] From the Continuation of Harding's Chronicle, 1543, where the account given originally by Sir Thomas More is transcribed with some additions, it appears that the person who held this conversation with Haftings was Sir Thomas Howard, who is introduced in the last Act of this play as Earl of Surrey : "The fame morning ere he [Hastings] were up from his bed Your friends at Pomfret, they do need the prieft; Your honour hath no fhriving work in hand." HAST. 'Good faith, and when I met this holy man, The men you talk of came into my mind. What, go you toward the Tower? BUCK. I do, my lord; but long I cannot stay there: I shall return before your lordthip thence. HAST. Nay, like enough, for I stay dinner there. Buck. And fupper too, although thou know'st it not. Come, will you go? [Afide. I'll wait upon your lordship. [Exeunt. where Shore's wife lay with him all night, there came to him fir Thomas Haward, [Howard] fonne to the lord Haward, -as it were of courtesaie, to accoumpaignie him to the counsaill; but forasmuche as the lord Haftings was not ready, he taried a while for him, and hafted him away. This fir Thomas, while the lord Hastings stayed a while commonyng with a prieft whom he met in the Tower strete, brake the lordes tale, faying to him merily, What, my lorde, I pray you come on; wherefore talke you so long with the prieft? You have no nede of a prieft yet:' and laughed upon him, as though he would faye, you shall have nede of one fone." Fol. 59. MALONE. 7 -shriving work in hand.] Shriving work is confeffion. JOHNSON. So, in Hamlet: - the bearers put to fudden death, ! SCENE III. Pomfret. Before the Cafile. Enter RATCLIFF, with a Guard, conducting RIVERS, GREY, and VAUGHAN, to Execution. RAT. Come, bring forth the prisoners.9 RIV. Sir Richard Ratcliff, let me tell thee this,To-day, fhalt thou behold a subject die, For truth, for duty, and for loyalty. GREY. God keep the prince from all the pack of you! A knot you are of damned blood-fuckers. 7 VAUGH. You live, that shall cry woe for this hereafter. RAT. Despatch; the limit of your lives is out. fon, Fatal and ominous to noble peers! 8 -Grey.] Queen Elizabeth Grey is deservedly pitied for lofing her two fons; but the royalty of their birth has fo engroffed the attention of hiftorians, that they never reckon into the number of her misfortunes the murder of this her fecond fon, Sir Richard Grey. It is as remarkable how flightly the death of our Earl Rivers is always mentioned, though a man invested with such high offices of truft and dignity; and how much we dwell on the execution of the Lord Chamberlain Haftings, a man in every light his inferior. In truth, the generality draw their ideas of English story, from the tragick rather than the hiftorick authors, WALPOLE. • Come, bring forth the prisoners.] This speech is wanting in the folio, and might (as it has neither use, nor pretenfions to metre, be as well omitted as retained. STEEVENS. the limit - For the limited time. See Vol. XI. p. 184, n. 9. MALONE. Within the guilty closure of thy walls, GREY. Now Margaret's curse is fallen upon our heads, When the exclaim'd on Haftings, you, and I, Riv. Then curs'd she Haftings, then curs'd she Buckingham, Then curs'd the Richard :-O, remember, God, RAT. Make haste, the hour of death is expiate. * Make hafte, the hour of death is expiate.] Thus the folio. The quarto furnishes a line that has occurred already : Despatch; the limit of your lives is out." " Expiate is used for expiated; so confiscate, contaminate, confummate, &c. &c. It seems to mean, fully completed, and ended. Shakspeare has again used the word in the same sense in his 22d Sonnet: "Then look I death my days should expiate." So, in Locrine, 1595: " Lives Sabren yet, to expiate my wrath." The editor of the second folio, who altered whatever he did not understand, reads arbitrarily Despatch; the hour of death is now expir'd." and he has been followed by all the modern editors. MALONE. - the hour of death is expiate.) As I cannot make sense of this, I should certainly read, with the second folio: " the hour of death is now expired, meaning the hour appointed for his death. The paffage quoted by Mr. Malone from Locrine, is nothing to the purpose, for there, to expiate means to atone for, or fatisfy. M. MASON. I do not well understand the reading which Mr. Malone pre Riv. Come, Grey, -come, Vaughan, let us here embrace: Farewell, until we meet again in heaven. [Exeunt. SCENE IV. London. A Room in the Tower. BUCKINGHAM, STANLEY, HASTINGS, the Bishop of Ely,3 CATESBY, LOVEL, and Others, fitting at a Table: Officers of the Council attending. HAST. Now, noble peers, the cause why we are inet Is to determine of the coronation: BUCK. Are all things ready for that royal time? fers, though I have left it in the text. Perhaps we should read: " - the hour of death is expirate." which accords with Shakspeare's phraseology, and needs no explanation. Thus, in Romeo and Juliet : 3 " - and expire the term "Of a despised life-." STEEVENS. -Bishop of Ely,] Dr. John Morton; who was elected to that fee in 1478. He was advanced to the fee of Canterbury in 1486, and appointed Lord Chancellor in 1487. He died in the year 1500. This prelate, Sir Thomas More tells us, first devised the scheme of putting an end to the long conteft between the houses of York and Lancaster, by a marriage between Henry Earl of Richmond, and Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Edward IV. and was a principal agent in procuring Henry when abroad to enter into a covenant for that purpose. MALONE. 4 - and wants but nomination.] i. e. the only thing wanting, is appointment of a particular day for the ceremony. STEEVENS. |