SCENE IV. The Palace at Greenwich. Enter Trumpets, sounding; then two Aldermen, Lord Mayor, Garter, CRANMER, Duke of NORFOLK, with his Marshal's staff, Duke of SUFFOLK, two Noblemen bearing great standing bowls for the christening gifts: then, four Noblemen bearing a canopy, under which the Duchess of NORFOLK, godmother, bearing the Child richly habited in a mantle, &c. Train borne by a Lady: then follows the Marchioness of DORSET, the other godmother, and Ladies. The troop pass once about the stage, and Garter speaks. Gart. Heaven, from thy endless goodness, send prosperous life, long, and ever happy, to the high and mighty princess of England, Elizabeth! K. Hen. My noble gossips, ye have been too prodigal. I thank ye heartily: so shall this lady, Cran. Than this pure soul shall be: all princely graces, Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, In her days, every man shall eat in safety And by those claim their greatness, not by blood. As great in admiration as herself; So shall she leave her blessedness to one, (When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness) Who, from the sacred ashes of her honour, Cran. She shall be, to the happiness of England, An aged princess; many days shall see her, And yet no day without a deed to crown it. Would I had known no more! but she must die, (She must, the saints must have her,) yet a virgin, A most unspotted lily shall she pass To the ground, and all the world shall mourn her. Thou hast made me now a man: never, before Ye must all see the queen, and she must thank ye; EPILOCUE 'Tis ten to one, this play can never please All that are here. Some come to take their ease, And sleep an act or two; but those, we fear, clear, They'll say, 'tis naught: others, to hear the city "To rank our chosen truth with such a show, As fool and fight is, besides forfeiting," etc. "This is not the only passage in which Shakespeare has discovered his conviction of the impropriety of battles represented on the stage. He knew that five or six men with swords, gave a very unsatisfactory idea of an army; and therefore, without much care to excuse his former practice, he allows that a theatrical fight would destroy all opinion of truth, and leave him never an understanding friend. Magnis ingeniis et multa nihilominus habituris simplex convenit erroris confessio. Yet I know not whether the coronation shown in this play may not be liable to all that can be objected against a battle."-JOHNSON. "the OPINION that we bring"-" Opinion" in the sense of reputation, as in HENRY IV.:-"Thou hast redeemed thy lost opinion." Malone, who thus explains the sense, adds, with less reason, This sentiment could never have fallen from the modest Shakespeare." He therefore pronounces, that he has no doubt that the whole prologue was written by Ben Jonson, when the piece was revived, in 1613. "HAPPIEST hearers of the town"-"Happy" is here used in one of its ancient Roman significations, for propitious, favourable; as in Virgil, Eclogue V.-" Sis bonus, O, felix que tuis." This Stevens pronounces to have been a sense of the word "unknown to Shakespeare, and familiar to Jonson," and therefore conclusive to show "that old Ben was the author of the prologue." Frequent occasion has been taken, in this edition, to point out the numerous and original Latinisms used by Shakespeare, which prove conclusively that he had at least that acquaintance with the Latin language and poetry, that was acquired in the ordinary grammarschools of his day-" small Latin," as Ben Jonson calls it, but still a little. (See at end of notes on MIDSUMMERNIGHT'S DREAM.) ACT I.-SCENE I. "Those suns of glory"-Pope has borrowed this phrase, in his Imitation of Horace's Epistle to Augus tus," (verse xxii. :) Incorporate then they seem; face grows to face. "Each following day Became the next day's master," etc. "Dies diem docet. Every day learned something from the preceding, till the concluding day collected all the splendour of all the former shows."-JOHNSON. "All CLINQUANT"-i. e. All glittering, shining. Clarendon uses the word in the same application, in his account of a Spanish Fête; and the Poet's contemporary, the moralist Owen Feltham, exhorts against "those clinquant sparklings that dance and dangle in the rays and jubilations of human life." "-wag his tongue in CENSURE"-Modern use of words would give this line a different sense from that which it bore in the author's time; "censure" being used for opinion, judgment, whether favourable or adverse. The meaning is this:-"No critical observer would venture to pronounce his judgment in favour of either king." 11 - Bevis was believ'd"-The story of the old romance of "Bevis of Southampton." Bevis (or Beavois) was a Saxon, who was for his prowess created, by William the Conqueror, Earl of Southampton. "As I belong to worship"-i. e. As I am of the more worthy and honoured class, and in that honour love and seek honesty, so I assure you that "the course of these triumphs, however well related, must lose in the description part of that spirit and energy which were expressed in the real action. The commission for regulating them was well executed, and gave exactly to every particular person and action the proper place." "Order gave each thing view; the office did Distinctly his full function. Who did guide?" Knight alone, of the modern editors, preserves the old distribution of the dialogue, which is adhered to in the present edition. All other editors, from Theobald to Collier, give to Norfolk the sentence beginning " All was royal," and then make Buckingham ask the question, "Who did guide?" etc. Theobald made the change, and Warburton says it was improperly given to Buckingham, "for he wanted information, having kept his chamber during the solemnity." But (remarks Knight) what information does he communicate? After the eloquent description by Norfolk of the various shows of the pageant, he makes a general observation that "order" must have presided over these complicated arrangements-" gave each thing view." He then asks, "Who did guide ?"-who made the body and the limbs work together? Norfolk then answers" As you guess," (which words have been transferred to Buckingham by the revisers of the text,)-according to your guess, one did guide:-" one, certes," etc. "-that promises no ELEMENT"-" Elements" are the first principles of things, or rudiments of knowledge; and Wolsey did not give reason to think that he had any talent or skill, of the most imperfect sort, for such business. “— such a KEECH can, with his very bulk”—“ Stevens thinks this term has a peculiar application to Wolsey, as the son of a butcher;-as a butcher's wife is called in HENRY IV., (Part II.,) Goody Keech.' But Falstaff, in the First Part, is called by Prince Henry a greasy tallow keech." A keech' is a lump of fat; and it appears to us that Buckingham here denounces Wolsey, not as a butcher's son, but as an overgrown, bloated favourite, that— Take up can, with his very bulk, the rays o' the beneficial sun." KNIGHT. "Out of his self-drawing web,-O! GIVE us note!The force of his own merit makes his way," etc. This passage is ordinarily printed thus:spider-like, 66 Out of his self-drawing web, he gives us note, O! give us note!' the original reading, is one of Shakespeare's happy parentheses to break a long sentence, and meaning only, mark what I say. The whole speech is intended to render the ironical close emphatic. Wolsey is without ancestry, without the credit of great service, without eminent assistants; but, spider-like, deriving everything from himself, the force of his own self-sustained merit makes his way-his course-his good fortune-a gift from heaven, which buys, etc. If we were to receive the passage in the sense of the revisers of the text, we ought to read his own merit makes its way.' To make way,' in SHAKESPEARE, is to go away, as in the TAMING OF THE SHREW:— 6 While I make way from hence to save my life. To make way, in the colloquial sense of to get on in the world, is, we think, a forced and unauthorized meaning of the words before us. That Wolsey should give note that he made way only by his own merit would have been utterly at variance with the stately pomp and haughtiness of his ambition."-KNIGHT. Collier adopts the alteration "He gives us note," and supposes that, in the original manuscript, it had been written "A gives us note," 'a being a familiar abbreviation of he, in old dialogue. Still this does not make out any appropriate sense, equally clear with that of the older reading. "To whom as great a charge as little honour," etc. "This is ordinarily read Too, whom as great a charge as little honour, etc. To,' the preposition of the original, appeared to the editors a redundancy, because we have lay upon.' But if lay upon has not here the force of a compound (The honourable board of council out,) Must fetch him in he papers." "The construction of this passage is difficult; the meaning is in Hollingshed:- The peers of the realm, receiving letters to prepare themselves to attend the king in this journey, and no apparent necessary cause expressed, why or wherefore, seemed to grudge that such a costly journey should be taken in hand, without consent of the whole board of the council.' In Wolsey's letter the board of council' was out,' (omitted;) the letter alone must fetch him in [whom] he papers,— whom he sets down in the paper. Ben Jonson, in his English Grammar,' gives examples of a similar 'want of the relative,' adding, in Greek and Latin this want were barbarous.' Among other instances he has the passage of the 118th Psalm- the stone the builders refused:'-a parallel case with the sentence before us." KNIGHT. "What did this vanity"-i. e. "What effect had this pompous show, but the production of a wretched conclusion."-JOHNSON. "the hideous storm that follow'd"-" Monday the xviii of June was such an hideous storme of winde and weather, that many conjectured it did prognosticate trouble and hatred shortly after to follow between princes."-HOLLINGSHED. "both full of disdain"-This is the old explanatory stage-direction. "This butcher's cur"-The common rumour ran that Wolsey was the son of a butcher; but his faithful biographer, Cavendish, says nothing of his father being in that trade: he tells us that he was an "honest poor man's son." That is, "The literary qualifications of a bookish beggar are more prized than the high descent of hereditary greatness. This is a contemptuous exclamation very naturally put into the mouth of one of the ancient, unlettered, martial nobility."-JOHNSON. Although the Duke is afterwards called by the King "a learned gentleman," and is known from contemporary authority to have had a taste for letters, yet it is not out of character that he should here use the insolent and narrow tone of his order in those times. "He BORES me with some trick"-The ancient colloquial figurative meaning of "bore" was very different from its modern use. It signified, to defraud by some trick. Thus, in the "Life and Death of Lord Cromwell," 1602-(a play attributed, without any show of reason or authority, to Shakespeare,)-we find, "One that hath gulled you, that hath bored you, sir.” "SUGGESTS the king"-i. e. Tempts or incites the king; as Shakespeare often uses "suggest." 66 66 Something MISTAKEN in't"-i. e. Misapprehended; 'mistaken" by you. device and PRACTICE"-i. e. Artifice. So in OTHELLO, (act v.): Fallen in the practice of a cursed slave. The original reads thus: "this instant cloud puts on." This is retained by Collier, who thus attempts to show its meaning:-"The meaning seems to be merely this, |