Have done me fhame:-Brave foldier, pardon me, That any accent, breaking from thy tongue, Should 'fcape the true acquaintance of mine ear. BAST. Come, come; fans compliment, what news abroad? HUB. Why, here walk I, in the black brow of night, To find you out. BAST. Brief, then; and what's the news? HUB. O, my fweet fir, news fitting to the night, Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible. BAST. Show me the very wound of this ill news; I am no woman, I'll not fwoon at it. HUB. The king, I fear, is poifon'd by a monk:" I left him almoft fpeechlefs, and broke out To acquaint you with this evil; that you might The better arm you to the fudden time, Than if you had at leifure known of this." endless is inadmiffible, becaufe, if understood literally, it is false. On the other hand eyelefs is peculiarly applicable. The emendation is alfo fupported by our author's Rape of Lucrece: "Poor grooms are fightless night; kings, glorious day." MALONE. 9 The king, I fear, is poifon'd by a monk:] Not one of the hiftorians who wrote within fixty years after the death of King John, mentions this very improbable ftory. The tale is, that a monk, to revenge himself on the king for a faying at which he took offence, poifon'd a cup of ale, and having brought it to his majefty, drank fome of it himself to induce the king to tafte it, and foon afterwards expired. Thomas Wykes is the firft who relates it in his Chronicle, as a report. According to the best accounts John died at Newark, of a fever. MALONE. that you might The better arm you to the fudden time, Than if you had at leifure known of this.] That you might be able to prepare inftantly for the fudden revolution in affairs which the king's death will occafion, in a better manner than you could have done, if you had not known of it till the event had actually happened, and the kingdom was reduced to a state of compofure and quiet. MALONE. BAST. How did he take it? who did tafte to him? And brought prince Henry in their company; ' BAST. Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven, And tempt us not to bear above our power!- SCENE VII. The Orchard of Swinftead-Abbey. Enter Prince HENRY, SALISBURY, and BIGOT. P. HEN. It is too late; the life of all his blood Is touch'd corruptibly; and his pure brain 3 Why, know you not? the lords, &c.] Perhaps we ought to point thus: Why know you not, the lords are all come back, And brought prince Henry in their company? MALONE. 4 Is touch'd corruptibly;] i. e. corruptively. Such was the phrafeology of Shakspeare's age. So, in his Rape of Lucrece: "The Romans plaufibly did give confent-." i. e. with acclamations. Here we fhould now fay-plaufively. MALONE. (Which fome fuppofe the foul's frail dwellinghouse,) Doth, by the idle comments that it makes, Enter PEMBROKE. PEMB. His highness yet doth speak; and holds belief, That, being brought into the open air, Of that fell poifon which affaileth him. P. HEN. Let him be brought into the orchard here. Doth he still rage? [Exit BIGOT. PEMB. P. HEN. O vanity of fickness! fierce extremes, In their continuance,' will not feel themselves. Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts, Leaves them infenfible; and his fiege is now Against the mind," the which he pricks and wounds 5 In their continuance,] I fufpect our author wrote-In thy continuance. In his Sonnets the two words are frequently confounded. If the text be right, continuance means continuity. Bacon uses the word in that fenfe. MALONE. 6 Leaves them infenfible; and his fiege is now Against the mind,] The old copy reads-invifible. STEEVENS. As the word invifible has no fenfe in this paffage, I have no doubt but the modern editors are right in reading infenfible, which agrees with the two preceding lines: - fierce extremes, In their continuance, will not feel themselves. Against the mind, &c. The last lines are evidently intended as a paraphrafe, and confirmation of the two firft. M. MASON. With many legions of ftrange fantasies; Invifible is here ufed adverbially. Death, having glutted himfelf with the ravage of the almoft wafted body, and knowing that the disease with which he has affailed it is mortal, before its difsolution, proceeds, from mere fatiety, to attack the mind, leaving the body invifibly; that is, in fuch a fecret manner that the eye cannot precifely mark his progrefs, or fee when his attack on the vital powers has ended, and that on the mind begins; or in other words, at what particular moment reafon ceases to perform its function, and the understanding, in confequence of a corroding and mortal malady, begins to be disturbed. Our poet in his Venus and Adonis calls Death, "invisible commander." Henry is here only purfuing the fame train of thought which we find in his firft fpeech in the present scene. Our author has, in many other paffages in his plays used adjectives adverbially. So, in All's well that ends well: "Was it not meant damnable in us," &c. Again, in K. Henry IV. Part I: ten times more dishonourable ragged than an old faced ancient." See Vol. VI. p. 318, n. 9. and K. Henry IV. A&t IV. sc. ii. Mr. Rowe reads her fiege-, an error derived from the corruption of the fecond folio. I fufpect, that this ftrange mistake was Mr. Gray's authority for making Death a female; in which, I believe, he has neither been preceded or followed by any poet: "The painful family of Death, "More hideous than their queen.” The old copy, in the paffage before us, reads-Against the wind; an evident error of the prefs, which was corrected by Mr. Pope, and which I should scarcely have mentioned, but that it justifies an emendation made in Measure for Meafure, [Vol. IV. p. 247, n. 9.] where by a fimilar mistake the word flawes appears in the old copy inftead of flames. MALONE. Mr. Malone reads: Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts, Leaves them invifible; &c. As often as I am induced to differ from the opinions of a gentleman whose laborious diligence in the cause of Shakspeare is without example, I fubject myself to the moft unwelcome part of editorial duty. Succefs, however, is not in every instance proportionable to zeal and effort; and he who fhrinks from controverfy, should also have avoided the veftibulum ipfum, primafque fauces of the fchool of Shakspeare. Sir Thomas Hanmer gives us—insensible, which affords a meaning fufficiently commodious. But as invisible and infenfible are not VOL. VIII. N Confound themselves.' 'Tis ftrange, that death fhould fing. words of exacteft confonance, the legitimacy of this emendation has been difputed. It yet remains in the text, for the fake of thofe who difcover no light through the ancient reading. Perhaps (I fpeak without confidence) our author wrote-invinci ble, which, in found, fo nearly refembles invifible, that an inattentive compofitor might have fubftituted the one for the other. All our modern editors (Mr. Malone excepted) agree that invincible in King Henry IV. P. II. Act III. fc. ii. was a mifprint for invisible; and fo (vice versa) invisible may here have ufurped the place of invincible. If my fuppofition be admitted, the Prince muft defign to say, that Death had battered the royal outworks, but, feeing they were invincible, quitted them, and directed his force against the mind. In the prefent inftance, the King of Terrors is defcribed as a befieger, who, failing in his attempt to ftorm the bulwark, proceeded to undermine the citadel. Why elfe did he change his mode and object of attack?The Spanish ordnance fufficiently preyed on the ramparts of Gibraltar, but ftill left them impregnable.-The fame metaphor, though not continued fo far, occurs again in Timon of Athens: 66 - Nature, "To whom all fores lay fiege." Again, in All's well that ends well: and yet my heart "Will not confefs he owes the malady "That does my life befiege." Mr. Malone, however, gives a different turn to the paffage before us; and leaving the word fiege out of his account, appears to reprefent Death as a gourmand, who had fatiated himself with the King's body, and took his intellectual part by way of change of provifion. Neither can a complete acquiefcence in the fame gentleman's examples of adjectives ufed adverbially, be well expected; as they chiefly occur in light and familiar dialogue, or where the regular full-grown adverb was unfavourable to rhyme or metre. Nor indeed are thefe docked adverbs (which perform their office, like the witch's rat, "without a tail,") discoverable in any folemn narrative like that before us. A portion of them alfo might be no other than typographical imperfections; for this part of speech, fhorn of its termination, will neceffarily take the form of an adjective.I may fubjoin, that in the beginning of the prefent fcene, the adjective corruptible is not offered as a locum tenens for. |