ridge's was communicated to me by a friend of the poet, and himself no mean critic, Mr. H. C. Robinson. IV. 7. CADE. Ye shall have a hempen caudle then, and the help of a hatchet. Dr. Farmer's emendation ought, I think, to be advanced into the text; pap with a hatchet, a vulgar phrase of the time. The word "caudle" suggested "pap;" and it was perhaps intended by the writer that it should be pronounced in such a manner as to suggest the idea of a "cord," something like "cordial." In reading Shakespeare we should never forget that he wrote lines to be delivered by the human voice. Shakespeare, who knew human nature well, marks the vulgar character of Cade by representing him as sneering, an infallible sign of innate vulgarity, and often of a mean and base disposition. IV. 7. DICK. My lord, when shall we go to Cheapside, and take up commodities upon our bills? Here is no difficulty. To take up commodities upon bills, was an ordinary phrase of the time, equivalent to getting goods on credit. But the armed mob would go to Cheapside and take up goods upon bills of another kind, those with which they were armed. We have had similar equivoques from this character before. IV. 8. CADE. Hath my sword therefore broke through London Gates, that you should leave me at the WHITE HART in Southwark? Some one has conjectured that we have here again an equivoque, White Hart and White Heart, which is not improbable. Shakespeare, however, did not invent the sign for the sake of the pun, since there was a veritable White Hart in Southwark at the time. See the Paston Letters, vol. i. p. 61. IV. 8. CLIFFORD. I see them lording it in London streets Crying-Villageois! unto all they meet. To this the following note is appended:-" Villageois! Old copy, Villiago. Corrected by Mr. Theobald.—MALONE.” And neither Mr. Theobald nor Mr. Malone deserve any thanks for this mis-called correction. It spoils the melody and the sense, as Villiago, as given by Florio in his dictionary, suits the passage quite as well as any sense of Villageois :— viz. "a rascal; a villain; a base, vile, abject, scurvy, fellow; a scoundrel." IV. 9. K. HENRY. Then heaven, set ope thy EVERLASTING GATES The "everlasting doors" is come down to us from an age of poetry antecedent even to that of Homer. membered both passages when he wrote his Heaven opened wide her ever-during gates; Milton re Where the substitution of "during" for "lasting," has a beautiful effect, suggesting the idea of the slight sound attending the throwing open of well-hung gates. Mason, whose poetry, like that of Gray, abounds in "recollected terms," falls far short of both in melody, Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high, but approaches nearer to the remote and august original of all; Lift up your heads, O! ye gates, And be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors. Why, how now, sons and brother at a strife! THIS is said to Edward and Richard, York's sons, and to the character here called Montague, who, as is shewn in Act ii. sc. 1, is the Neville Marquis Montacute or Montague, brother to Richard Earl of Warwick. This Montague was not, however, brother to the Duke of York, but nephew to his Duchess. Neither was he created Marquis Montacute till some time after. Shakespeare elsewhere makes them brothers. Perhaps he thought they were so. I. 2. RICHARD. No, God forbid your grace should be forsworn. Here is the opening of the character of Richard, specious, plausible, sanctimonious. But Shakespeare has departed entirely from the truth of history in making him so prominent at this period, since he was born only in 1452, on the second day of October, at Fotheringhay Castle. We have an exact account of the births of all the sons of the Duke of York in the Chronicle of William of Worcester. I. 3. RUTLAND. But 'twas ere I was born. Shakespeare probably thought so, since he represents Rutland as quite a child at the time of this battle, and has in this been followed by writers of veritable history. Rutland was born on the seventeenth of May 1443; the father of Clifford was slain in 1455; and the battle of Wakefield was fought in December 1460. In King Richard the Third, Act i. sc. 3, Shakespeare calls him a "babe." Henry, Prince of Wales, at the battle of Shrewsbury, was younger than Rutland at the battle of Wakefield. I. 4. Q. Margaret. Was't you that revell'd in our parliament, And made a preachment of your high descent. The allusion here is to the Bill exhibited in Parliament by the Duke of York, in 1460, 39 Henry VI., shewing at large his descent through father and mother from King Edward the Third, and still higher from King Henry the Third. may be seen on the printed Rolls, vol. v. p. 375. II. 1. WARWICK. From your kind AUNT, Duchess of Burgundy. It Here, again, is a genealogical mistake. The Duchess of Burgundy was sister not aunt to the young princess, for Margaret Duchess of Burgundy, in all probability, was in the mind of the writer of this scene, who was, perhaps, not Shakespeare. II. 5. Q. Margaret. Edward and Richard, like a brace of grey-hounds. Grey-hounds was commonly written grewnds, and pronounced as a monosyllable. There are numerous instances in Golding and Harington. This preserves the metre, and, what is more, the melody. V. 7. K. EDWARD. Once more we sit in England's royal throne, Three dukes of Somerset! threefold renown'd For hardy and undoubted champions: Two Cliffords, as the father and the son; And two Northumberlands; two braver men Ne'er spurred their coursers at the trumpet's sound : And made the forest tremble when they roar'd. Shakespeare is true to history in this enumeration of peers fallen in the contest of the two houses: The three Dukes of Somerset were Edmund, slain at St. Alban's, 1455. great Henry, his son and heir, beheaded after the battle of Edmund, his brother, beheaded after the battle of Two Cliffords Thomas, slain at St. Alban's, 1455. John, his son, slain near Ferrybridge, 1461. Two Northumberlands Henry, slain at St. Alban's, 1455. Henry, his son, slain at Towton, 1461. Warwick and Montague, brothers, slain at Barnet, 1471. Many more might have been placed on this bloody file. The temptation to historical notes, such as these, it is not easy to resist; but they might be multiplied without number. |