As I upon advantage did remove,
Were in the washes, all unwarily,

Devoured by the unexpected flood." [The King dies.
SAL. You breathe these dead news in as dead an

ear.

My liege! my lord!-But now a king,-now thus.

P. HEN. Even so must I run on, and even so stop. What furety of the world, what hope, what stay, When this was now a king, and now is clay!

BAST. Art thou gone fo? I do but stay behind, To do the office for thee of revenge;

And then my foul fhall wait on thee to heaven,
As it on earth hath been thy fervant ftill..

Now, now, you stars, that move in your right spheres,

Where be your powers? Show now your mended faiths;

And inftantly return with me again,

To push destruction, and perpetual shame,
Out of the weak door of our fainting land:
Straight let us feek, or straight we shall be fought;
The Dauphin rages at our very heels.

SAL. It seems, you know not then so much as we:
The cardinal Pandulph is within at rest,
Who half an hour fince came from the Dauphin;
And brings from him fuch offers of our peace
As we with honour and respect may take,
With purpose presently to leave this war.

BAST. He will the rather do it, when he sees Ourfelves well finewed to our defence.

6 Were in the washes, all unwarily, &c.] This untoward aceident really happened to King John himself. As he passed from Lynn to Lincolnshire, he loft by an inundation all his treasure, carriages, baggage, and regalia. MALONE.

SAL. Nay, it is in a manner done already;
For many carriages he hath despatch'd
To the feafide, and put his caufe and quarrel
To the difpofing of the cardinal:

With whom yourself, myself, and other lords,
If you think meet, this afternoon will post
To cónfummate this business happily.

BAST. Let it be so:-And you, my noble prince,
With other princes that may best be fpar'd,
Shall wait upon your father's funeral.

P. HEN. At Worcester must his body be interr'd; For fo he will'd it.

BAST.

Thither fhall it then.
And happily may your fweet felf put on
The lineal state and glory of the land!
To whom, with all fubmiffion, on my knee,
I do bequeath my faithful fervices
And true fubjection everlastingly.

SAL. And the like tender of our love we make, To reft without a spot for evermore.

P. HEN. I have a kind foul, that would give you' thanks,

And knows not how to do it, but with tears. BAST. O, let us pay the time but needful woe," Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.

7

that would give you-] You, which is not in the old copy, was added for the fake of the metre, by Mr. Rowe. MALONE. 8 let us pay the time but needful voe,

Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.] Let us now indulge in forrow, fince there is abundant caufe for it. England has been long in a fcene of confufion, and its calamities have anticipated our tears. By those which we now shed, we only pay her what is her due. MALONE.

I believe the plain meaning of the paffage is this:-As previously we have found fufficient caufe for lamentation, let us not waste the present time in fuperfluous forrow. STEEVENS.

This England never did, (nor never shall,)
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,

But when it firft did help to wound itself.
Now these her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms,

And we shall shock them: Nought fhall make us

rue,

If England to itself do rest but true.'

[Exeunt.

9 If England to itself do reft but true.] This fentiment feems borrowed from the conclufion of the old play :

"If England's peers and people join in one,

"Nor pope, nor France, nor Spain, can do them wrong." Again, in K. Henry VI, Part III:

66

of itself

"England is fafe, if true within itself." STEEVENS.

Shakspeare's conclufion feems rather to have been borrowed. from thefe two lines of the old play:

"Let England live but true within itself,

"And all the world can never wrong her state."

MALONE.

"Brother, brother, we may be both in the wrong;" this fentiment might originate from A Difcourfe of Rebellion, drawne forth for to warne the wanton Wittes how to kepe their Heads on their Shoulders, by T. Churchyard, 12mo. 1570:

"O Britayne bloud, marke this at my defire-
"If that you fticke together as you ought
"This lyttle yle may fet the world at nought."

STIEVENS.

The tragedy of King John, though not written with the utmost power of Shakspeare, is varied with a very pleafing interchange of incidents and characters. The lady's grief is very affecting; and the character of the Bastard contains that mixture of greatness and levity which this author delighted to exhibit. JOHNSON.

KING RICHARD II.*

*THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING RICHARD II.] But this history comprises little more than the two last years of this prince. The action of the drama begins with Bolingbroke's appealing the duke of Norfolk, on an accufation of high treafon, which fell out in the year 1398; and it clofes with the murder of King Richard at Pomfret-caftle towards the end of the year 1400, or the beginning of the enfuing year. THEOBALD.

It is evident from a paffage in Camden's Annals, that there was an old play on the fubject of Richard the Second; but I know not in what language. Sir Gillie Merick, who was concerned in the hare-brained bufinefs of the Earl of Effex, and was hanged for it, with the ingenious Cuffe, in 1601, is accufed, amongst other things,quod exoletam tragoediam de tragicâ abdicatione regis Ricardi Secundi in publico theatro coram conjuratis datà pecuniâ agi curaffet."

I have fince met with a paffage in my Lord Bacon, which proves this play to have been in English. It is in the arraignments of Cuffe and Merick, Vol. IV. p. 412. of Mallet's edition: "The afternoon before the rebellion, Merick, with a great company of others, that afterwards were all in the action, had procured to be played before them the play of depofing King Richard the Second;

- when it was told him by one of the players, that the play was old, and they should have lofs in playing it, becaufe few would come to it, there was forty fhillings extraordinary given to play, and fo thereupon played it was."

of

It may be worth enquiry, whether fome of the rhyming parts the prefent play, which Mr. Pope thought of a different hand, might not be borrowed from the old one. Certainly however, the general tendency of it must have been very different; fince, as Dr. Johnfon obferves, there are fome expreffions in this of Shakfpeare, which strongly inculcate the doctrine of indefeasible right. FARMER.

It is probable, I think, that the play which Sir Gilly Merick procured to be reprefented, bore the title of HENRY IV. and not of RICHARD II.

Camden calls it "exoletam tragediam de tragica abdicatione regis Ricardi fecundi;" and (Lord Bacon in his account of The Effect of that which paffed at the arraignment of Merick and others) fays, "That the afternoon before the rebellion, Merick had procured to be played before them, the play of depofing King Richard the Second." But in a more particular account of the proceeding againft Merick, which is printed in the State Trials, Vol. VII. p. 60, the matter is ftated thus: "The ftory of HENRY IV. being fet forth in a play, and in that play there being fet forth the killing of the king upon a ftage; the Friday before, Sir Gilly