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ANNOTATIONS

UPON

KING JOHN.

1 In my behaviour,] THE word behaviour seems here to have a signification that I have never found in any other author. The king of France, says the envoy, thus speaks in my behaviour to the majesty of England; that is, the king of France speaks in the character which I here assume. I once thought that these two lines, in my behaviour, &c. had been uttered by the ambassador as part of his master's message, and that behaviour had meant the conduct of the king of France towards the king of England; but the ambassador's speech, as continued after the interruption, will not admit this meaning.

JOHNSON.

2 -PHILIP, his bastard brother.] Though Shakspeare adopted this character of Philip Faulconbridge from the old play, it is not improper to mention that it is compounded of two distinct personages.

Matthew Paris says:-" Sub illius temporis cur"riculo, Falcasius de Brente, Neusteriensis, et spurius ex parte matris, atque Bastardus, qui in vili jumento

"manticato ad Regis paulo ante clientelam descen"derat," &c.

Matt. Paris, in his History of the Monks of St. Albans, calls him Falco, but in his General History Falcasius de Brente, as above.

Holinshead says, that Richard I. had a natural son named Philip, who in the year following killed the viscount De Limoges to revenge the death of his father.

STEEVENS.

a trick of Caur-de-lion's face,] The trick or tricking is the same as the tracing of a drawing, meaning that peculiarity of face which may be sufficiently shewn by the slightest outline. This expression is used by Heywood and Rowley in their comedy called Fortune by Land and Sea.-" Her face the trick "of her eye, her leer." The following passages may more evidently prove the expression to be borrowed from delineation. Ben Jonson's Every Man out of

his Humour,

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“O ay,

-You can blazon the rest, Signior?

I have it in writing here o' purpose, it oost me two shillings the tricking." So again in Cynthia's Revels.

"-the parish-buckets with his name at length trick'd upon them."

-my face so thin,

That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose,

STEEVENS.

Lest men should say, Look, where three-farthings goes!] In this very obscure passage our poet is anticipating the date of another coin; humorously to rally a thin

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face, eclipsed, as it were, by a full-blown rose. must observe, to explain this allusion, that queen Elizabeth was the first, and indeed the only prince, who coined in England three-half-pence, and threefarthing pieces. She at one and the same time coined shillings, sixpences, groats, three-pences, two-pences, three-half-pence, pence, three-farthings, and halfpence. And these pieces all had her head, and were alternately with the rose behind, and without the rose. The shilling, groat, two-pence, penny, and half-penny had it not: the other intermediate coins, viz. the six-pence, three-pence, three-half-pence, and three-farthings had the rose.

THEOBALD.

So, in The Shoemaker's Holiday, &c. 1610: "Here's a three-penny piece for thy tidings." "Firk. 'Tis but three-half-pence I think; yes, 'tis "three-pence, I smell the rose."

STEEVENS.

That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose, The sticking roses about them was then all the courtfashion, as appears from this passage of the Confession Catholique du S. de Sancy, 1. 2. c. 1. Je luy ay appris à mettre des ROSES par tous les coins, i. e. in every place about him, says the speaker, of one to whom he had taught all the court-fashions.

WARBURTON.

These roses were, I believe, only roses composed of ribbands. In Marston's What you will is the following passage:

"Dupatzo, the elder brother, the fool, he that

"bought the half-penny ribband, wearing it in his "ear," &c.

Again, in Every Man in his Humour, "-This “ribband in my ear, or so." I think I remember, among Vandyck's pictures in the duke of Queensbury's collection at Amesbury, to have seen one with the locks nearest the ear ornamented with ribbands, which terminate in roses.

STEEVENS.

5 Madam, by chance, but not by truth: what though?] I am your grandson, madam, by chance, but not by honesty-what then?

JOHNSON.

6 Something about, a little from the right,] This speech, composed of allusive and proverbial sentences, is obscure. I am, says the spritely knight, your grandson, a little irregularly, but every man cannot get what he wishes the legal way. He that dares not go about his designs by day must make his motions in the night; he, to whom the door is shut, must climb the window, or leap the hatch. This, however, shall not depress me; for the world never enquires how any man got what he is known to possess, but allows that to have is to have however it was caught, and that he who wins, shot well, whatever was his skill, whether the arrow fell near the mark, or far off it.

JOHNSON.

7 Now your traveller,-] It is said in All's well that ends well, that a traveller is a good thing after dinner. In that age of newly excited curiosity, one of the entertainments at great tables seems to have been the discourse of a traveller.

JOHNSON.

He and his tooth-pick-] Among Gascoigne's poems I find one entitled, Councell given to Maister Bartholomew Withipoll a little before his latter Journey to Geane, 1572. The following lines may perhaps be acceptable to the reader who is curious enough to enquire about the fashionable follies imported in that age: "Now, sir, if I shall see your mastership,

"Come home disguis'd, and clad in quaint array ;— "As with a pike-tooth byting on your lippe ; "Your brave mustachios turn'd the Turkie way; "A coptankt hat made on a Flemish blocke; "A night-gowne cloake down trayling to your toes; "A slender slop close couched to your dock; "A curtolde slipper, and a short silk hose," &c.

STEEVENS.

9 My picked man of countries:] The word picked may not refer to the beard, but to the shoes, which were once worn of an immoderate length. To this fashion our author has alluded in King Lear, where the reader may find a more ample explanation of this passage. Picked may, however, mean only spruce in dress.

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Chaucer says in one of his prologues-" Fresh and her geare ypiked was." And in The Merchaunt's Tale: "He kempeth him, and proineth him, and "piketh." In Hyrd's translation of Vives's Instruction of a Christian Woman, printed in 1591, we meet with "picked and apparelled goodly-goodly and "pickedly arrayed.-Licurgus, when he would have

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