ELI. My bleffing go with thee! K. JOHN. Hubert fhall be your man, attend on you For England, coufin:* [Exeunt. With all true duty.-On toward Calais, ho! SCENE IV. The fame. The French King's Tent. Enter King PHILIP, LEWIS, PANDULPH, and Attendants. K. PHI. So, by a roaring tempeft on the flood, A whole armado3 of convicted fail + Is fcatter'd, and disjoin'd from fellowship. promifed a lafting commendation. Art could add little to its perfection, and time itself can substract nothing from its beauties. STEEVENS. 2 For England, coufin:] The old copy For England, coufin, go: eye I have omitted the laft ufelefs and redundant word, which the of the compofitor feems to have caught from the preceding hemiftich. STEEVENS. King John, after he had taken Arthur prifoner, fent him to the town of Falaife in Normandy, under the care of Hubert, his Chamberlain; from whence he was afterwards removed to Rouen, and delivered to the cuftody of Robert de Veypont. Here he was fecretly put to death. MALONE. 3 A whole armado-] This fimilitude, as little as it makes for the purpose in hand, was, I do not question, a very taking one when the play was firft reprefented; which was a winter or two at moft after the Spanish invafion in 1588. It was in reference likewife to that glorious period that Shakspeare concludes his play in that triumphant manner: "This England never did, nor never fhall, "Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror," &c. But the whole play abounds with touches relative to the then pofture of affairs. WARBURTON. This play, fo far as I can difcover, was not played till a long time after the defeat of the armado. The old play, I think, wants PAND. Courage and comfort! all shall yet go well. K. PHI. What can go well, when we have run Are we not beaten? Is not Angiers loft? LEW. What he hath won, that hath he forti- So hot a speed with fuch advice difpos'd, K. PHI. Well could I bear that England had this So we could find fome pattern of our shame. this fimile. The commentator fhould not have affirmed what he can only guefs. JOHNSON. Armado is a Spanish word fignifying a fleet of war. The armado in 1588 was called fo by way of diftinction. STEEVENS. 4 of convicted fail-] Overpowered, baffled, destroyed. To convict and to convince were in our author's time fynonymous. See Minfheu's Dict. 1617: "To convict, or convince, a Lat. convictus, overcome,' So, in Macbeth: - their malady convinces "The great affay of art." Mr. Pope, who ejected from the text almoft every word that he did not understand, reads-collected fail; and the change was too haftily adopted by the fubfequent editors. See alfo Florio's Italian Dict. 1598. convicted, convinced." MALONE. "Convitto. Vanquished, 5 in fo fierce a caufe,] We fhould read courfe, i. e. march. The Oxford editor condefcends to this emendation. WARBURTON. Change is needlefs. A fierce caufe is a caufe conducted with precipitation." Fierce wretchedness," in Timon, is, hafty, fudden mifery. STEEVENS. Enter CONSTANCE. Look, who comes here! a grave unto a foul; 6 a grave unto a foul; Holding the eternal spirit, against her will, In the vile prifon of afflicted breath:] I think we should read earth. The paffage feems to have been copied from Sir Thomas More: "If the body be to the foule a prifon, how strait a prifon maketh he the body, that ftuffeth it with riff-raff, that the foule can have no room to ftirre itself-but is, as it were, enclosed not in a prison, but in a grave." FARMER. Perhaps the old reading is juftifiable. So, in Meafure for Meafure: "To be imprifon'd in the viewless winds." STEEVENS. It appears from the amendment propofed by Farmer, and by the quotation adduced by Steevens in fupport of the old reading, that they both confider this paffage in the fame light, and fuppofe that King Philip intended to fay, "that the breath was the prison of the foul; but I think they have mistaken the sense of it; and that by "the vile prifon of afflicted breath," he means the fame vile prifon in which the breath is confined; that is, the body. In the fecond fcene of the fourth act, K. John fays to Hubert, fpeaking of what paffed in his own mind: Nay, in the body of this fleshly land, "This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath, 66 And Hubert fays in the following fcene: "If I, in act, confent, or fin of thought, "Be guilty of the ftealing that fweet breath May hell want pains enough to torture me!" It is evident that, in this laft paffage, the breath is confidered as embounded in the body; but I will not venture to affert that the fame inference may with equal certainty be drawn from the former. M. MASON. There is furely no need of change. "The vile prifon of afflicted breath," is the body, the prison in which the distressed soul is confined. CONST. Lo, now! now fee the iffue of your peace! K. PHI. Patience, good lady! comfort, gentle Conftance! CONST. No, I defy' all counsel, all redress, But that which ends all counsel, true redress, Death, death:-O amiable lovely death! Thou odoriferous ftench! found rottennefs! Arife forth from the couch of lafting night, Thou hate and terror to prosperity, And I will kifs thy déteftable bones; And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows; And ring these fingers with thy household worms ; And stop this gap of breath with fulfome duft, And be a carrion monfter like thyself: 8 Come, grin on me; and I will think thou smil’st, We have the fame image in K. Henry VI. Part III: "Now my foul's palace is become her prison.” Again, more appofitely, in his Rape of Lucrece: "Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast 66 A harmful knife, that thence her foul unfheath'd; "That blow did bail it from the deep unrest "Of that polluted prifon where it breath'd." MALONE. 7 No, I defy, &c.] To defy anciently fignified to refuse. So, in Romeo and Juliet: "I do defy thy commiferation." STEEVENS. And ftop this gap of breath-] The gap of breath is the mouth; the outlet from whence the breath iffues. MALONE. 9 And bufs thee as thy wife!] Thus the old copy. The word bufs, however, being now only used in vulgar language, our modern editors have exchanged it for kifs. The former is used by Drayton, in the third canto of his Barons' Wars, where Queen Ifabel fays: "And we by figns fent many a fecret buss." Again, in Spenfer's Faery Queen, B. III. c. x: "But every fatyre firft did give a busse "To Hellenore; fo buffes did abound." K. PHI. O fair affliction, peace. CONST. No, no, I will not, having breath to cry : O, that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth! PAND. Lady, you utter madnefs, and not for row. 5 CONST. Thou art not holy to belie me fo; Again, Stany hurt the tranflator of Virgil, 1582, renders ofcula libavit natæ ——— "Buft his prittye parrat prating," &c. STEEVENS. Mifery's love, &c.] Thou, death, who art courted by Mifery to come to his relief, O come to me. So before: "Thou hate and terror to profperity." MALONE. · modern invocation.] It is hard to fay what Shakspeare means by modern: it is not oppofed to ancient. In All's well that ends well, fpeaking of a girl in contempt, he ufes this word: "her modern grace." It apparently means fomething flight and inconfiderable. JOHNSON. Modern, is trite, ordinary, common, So, in As you Like it: "Full of wife faws, and modern inftances." Again, in Antony and Cleopatra: "As we greet modern friends withal." STEEVENS. 5 Thou art not holy-] The word not, which is not in the old copy, (evidently omitted by the carelefinefs of the transcriber, or compofitor,) was inferted in the fourth folio. MALONE. |
