To render up the great seal presently 8 Stay, that the time of this play is from 1521, just before the Duke of Buckingham's commitment, to the year 1533, when Queen Elizabeth was born and christened. The Duke of Norfolk, therefore, who is introduced in the first scene of the first Act, or in 1522, is not the same person who here, or in 1529, demands the great seal from Wolsey; for Thomas Howard, who was created Duke of Norfolk, 1514, died, we are informed by Holinshed, p. 891, at Whitsuntide, 1525. As our author has here made two persons into one, so, on the contrary, he has made one person into two. The Earl of Surrey here is the same with him who married the Duke of Buckingham's daughter, as appears from his own mouth : "I am joyful Again: "To meet the least occasion that may give me "Thy ambition, "Thou scarlet sin, robb'd this bewailing land "Far from his succour, But Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, who married the Duke of Buckingham's daughter, was at this time the individual above mentioned Duke of Norfolk. The reason for adding the third or fourth person as interculators in this scene is not very apparent, for Holinshed, p. 909, mentions only the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk being sent to demand the great seal, and all that is spoken would proceed with sufficient propriety out of their mouths. The cause of the Duke of Norfolk's animosity to Wolsey is obvious, and Cavendish mentions that an open quarrel at this time subsisted between the Cardinal and Charles Brandon, Duke of Suf folk. Reed. 7 To Asher-house,] Thus the old copy. Asher was the ancient name of Esher; as appears from Holinshed: "—— and everie man took their horses and rode strait to Asher." Holinshed, Vol. II, p. 909. Warner. 8 my lord of Winchester's,] Shakspeare forgot that Wolsey was himself Bishop of Winchester, unless he meant to say, you must confine yourself to that house which you possess as Bishop of Winchester. Asher, near Hampton-Court, was one of the houses belonging to that bishoprick. Malone. Fox, Bishop of Winchester, died Sept. 14, 1528, and Wolsey held this see in commendam. Esher therefore was his own house. Reed. Where's your commission, lords? words cannot carry Authority so weighty." Who dare cross them? Suf. Wol. Till I find more than will, or words, to do it, As if it fed ye? and how sleek and wanton (Mine, and your master,) with his own hand gave me: Wol. It must be himself then. Proud lord, thou liest; Sur. Thou art a proud traitor, priest. 9so weighty.] The editor of the third folio changed weighty to mighty, and all the subsequent editors adopted his capricious alteration. Malone. I believe the change pointed out, was rather accidental than capricious; as, in the proof sheets of this republication, the words -weighty and mighty have more than once been given instead of each other. Steevens. 1 Till I find more than will, or words, to do it, words cannot carry Authority so weighty." To which they reply: "Who dare cross them?" &c. Wolsey, answering them, continues his own speech, Till I find more than will or words (I mean more than your malicious will and words) to do it; that is, to carry authority so mighty; I will deny to return what the King has given me. Johnson. 2 Within these forty hours-] Why forty hours? But a few minutes have passed since Wolsey's disgrace. I suspect that Shakspeare wrote—within these four hours,—and that the person who VOL. XI. Dd Have burnt that tongue, than said so. Sur. Thy ambition, Thou scarlet sin, robb'd this bewailing land (With thee, and all thy best parts bound together,) Far from his succour, from the king, from all That might have mercy on the fault thou gavʼst him; Whilst your great goodness, out of holy pity, Absolv'd him with an axe. Wol. His noble jury and foul cause can witness. Dare mate a sounder man than Surrey can be, Sur. By my soul, revised and tampered with this play, not knowing that hours was used by our poet as a dissyllable, made this injudicious alteration. Malone. I adhere to the old reading. Forty (I know not why) seems anciently to have been the familiar number on many occasions, where no very exact reckoning was necessary. In a former scene, the Old Lady offers to lay Anne Bullen a wager of "forty pence;" Slender, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, says "I had rather than forty shillings" and in The Taming of the Shrew, "the humour of forty fancies” is the ornament of Grumio's hat. Thus, also, in Coriolanus: "on fair ground "I could beat forty of them." Steevens. 8 That I, in the way &c.] Old copy-That in the way. Steevens. Mr. Theobald reads: That I in the way &c. and this unnecessary emendation has been adopted by all the subsequent editors. Malone. As this passage is to me obscure, if not unintelligible, without Mr. Theobald's correction, I have not discarded it. Steevens. Your long coat, priest, protects you; thou should'st feel. And from this fellow? If we live thus tamely, Wol. Is poison to thy stomach. Sur. All goodness Yes, that goodness Of gleaning all the land's wealth into one, Into your own hands, cardinal, by extortion; You writ to the pope, against the king: your goodness, 6 Who, if he live, will scarce be gentlemen,- Worse than the sacring bell, when the brown wench.8 4 To be thus jaded-] To be abused and ill treated, like a worthless horse: or perhaps to be ridden by a priest;—to have him mounted above us. Malone. The same verb (whatever its precise meaning may be) occurs in Antony and Cleopatra, Act III, sc. i: "The ne'er-yet-beaten horse of Parthia "We have jaded out o' the field." Steevens. And dare us with his cap, like larks.] So, in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, edit. 1632, p. 656: "never Hobie so dared a lark." It is well known that the hat of a cardinal is scarlet; and that one of the methods of daring larks was by small mirrors fastened on scarlet cloth, which engaged the attention of these birds while the fowler drew his net over them. The same thought occurs in Skelton's Why come ye not to Court? i. e. a satire on Wolsey: "The red hat with his lure, "Bringeth al thinges under cure." Steevens. 6 Who,] Old copy-Whom. Corrected in the second folio. Malone. 7 Worse than the sacring bell,] The little bell, which is rung to give notice of the Host approaching when it is carried in proces Lay kissing in your arms, lord cardinal. Wol. How much, methinks, I could despise this But that I am bound in charity against it! man, Nor. Those articles, my lord, are in the king's hand: But, thus much, they are foul ones. So much fairer, Wol. Sur. This cannot save you: I thank my memory, I yet remember Some of these articles; and out they shall. Now, if you can blush, and cry guilty, cardinal, Wol. Speak on, sir; I dare your worst objections: if I blush, It is, to see a nobleman want manners. Sur. I'd rather want those, than my head. Have at you. First, that, without the king's assent, or knowledge, sion, as also in other offices of the Romish church, is called the sacring, or consecration bell; from the French word, sacrer. Theobald. The Abbess, in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, 1608, says: you shall ring the sacring bell, 66 "Keep your hours, and toll your knell." Again, in Reginald Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584: "He heard a little sacring bell ring to the elevation of a to-morrow mass." The now obsolete verb to sacre, is used by P. Holland, in his translation of Pliny's Natural History, Book X, ch. vi. And by Chapman, in his version of Homer's Hymn to Diana: 8 "Sacring my song to every deity." Steevens. when the brown wench &c.] The amorous propensities of Cardinal Wolsey are much dwelt on in the ancient satire already quoted, p. 259, n. 2: Again: "By his pryde and faulce treachery, "Whoardom and baudy leachery, "The goodes that he thus gaddered 66 "In causes nothynge expedient. "A grett parte thereof is spent." And still more grossly are his amours spoken of in many other parts of the same poem. Steevens. |