WOL. Now, madam, may his highness live in freedom, And this man out of prifon? 2. KATH. God mend all! K. HEN. There's something more would out of thee; What say'st? SURV. After the duke his father, with the knife, He stretch'd him, and, with one hand on his dagger, Does an irrefolute purpose. K. HEN. To sheath his knife in us. There's his period, He is attach'd; Call him to present trial: if he may Find mercy in the law, 'tis his; if none, East. Term, 13 Hen. VIII. in the year books published by authority, fol. 11 and 12, edit. 1597. After in the most exact manner fetting forth the arrangement of the Lord High Steward, the Peers, the arraignment, and other forms and ceremonies, it says: "Et iffint fuit arreine Edward Duc de Buckingham, le derrain jour de Terme le xij jour de May, le Duc de Norfolk donques eftant Grand seneschal: la cause fuit, pur ceo que il avoit entend l' mort de noftre Sir. le Roy. Car premierment un Moine del' Abbey de Henton in le countie de Somerset dit a lui que il sera Roy & command' luy de obtenir le benevolence del' communalte, & fur ceo il doña certaines robbes a cest entent. A que il dit que le moine ne onques dit ainsi a lui, & que il ne dona ceux dones a cest intent. Donques auterfoits il dit, fi le Roy morust sans issue male, il voul' estre Roy: & auxi que il difoit, fi le Roy avoit lui commis al' prifon, donques il voul' lui occire ove son dagger. Mes touts ceux matters il denia in effect, mes fuit trove coulp: Et pur ceo il avoit jugement comme traitre, et fuit decolle le Vendredy devant le Fefte del Pentecoft que fuit le xiij jour de May avant dit. Dieu à sa ame grant mercy-car il fuit tres noble prince & prudent, et mirror de tout courtefie." VAILLANT. Let him not seek't of us: By day and night, SCENE III. A Room in the Palace. [Exeunt. Enter the Lord Chamberlain and Lord SANDS.' CHAM. Is it possible, the spells of France should juggle Men into fuch strange mysteries?" 3 By day and night,] This, I believe, was a phrafe anciently fignifying-at all times, every way, completely. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff, at the end of his letter to Mrs. Ford, styles himself: "Thine own true knight, By day or night," &c. Again, (I must repeat a quotation I have elsewhere employed) in the third book of Gower, De Confessione Amantis : "The sonne cleped was Machayre, "The daughter eke Canace hight, By daie bothe and eke by night." The King's words, however, by some criticks, have been confidered as an adjuration. I do not pretend to have determined the exact force of them. STEEVENS. 4 Lord Chamberlain-] Shakspeare has placed this scene in 1521. Charles Earl of Worcester was then Lord Chamberlain; but when the king in fact went in masquerade to Cardinal Wolfey's house, Lord Sands, who is here introduced as going thither with the Chamberlain, himself possessed that office. MALONE. Lord Chamberlain) Charles Somerset, created Earl of Worcester 5 Henry VIII. He was Lord Chamberlain both to Henry VII. and Henry VIII. and continued in the office until his death, 1526. REED. 5 Lord Sands.] Sir William Sands, of the Vine near Bafingstoke in Hants, was created a peer 1524. He became Lord Chamberlain upon the death of the Earl of Worcester in 1526. REED. Is it poffible, the spells of France should juggle Men into fuch strange mysteries?) Mysteries were allegorical : SANDS. New customs, Though they be never so ridiculous, CHAM. As far as I fee, all the good our English Have got by the late voyage, is but merely A fit or two o'the face; but they are shrewd ones; For when they hold them, you would fwear di rectly, Their very noses had been counsellors To Pepin, or Clotharius, they keep ftate fo. SANDS. They have all new legs, and lame ones; one would take it, That never faw them pace before, the spavin, shows, which the mummers of those times exhibited in odd fantastick habits. Mysteries are used, by an easy figure, for those that exhibited mysteries; and the sense is only, that the travelled Englishmen were metamorphofed, by foreign fashions, into fuch an uncouth appearance, that they looked like mummers in a mystery. JOHNSON. That mysteries is the genuine reading, [Dr. Warburton would read-mockeries] and that it is used in a different sense from the one here given, will appear in the following instance from Drayton's Shepherd's Garland : " - even so it fareth now with thee, The context of which shows, that by wisards are meant poets, and by mysterie their poetic skill, which was before called " mister artes." Hence the mysteries in Shakspeare fignify those fantastick manners and fashions of the French, which had operated as spells or enchant ments. HENLEY. 1 A fit or two o' the face ;) A fit of the face feems to be what we now term a grimace, an artificial caft of the countenance. JOHNSON. Fletcher has more plainly expressed the fame thought in The Elder Brother : learnt new tongues " To vary his face as seamen do their compass." STEEVENS. 8 That never saw them -) Old copy-fee 'em. Corrected by Mr. Pope. MALONE. Death! my lord, 2 Their clothes are after such a pagan cut too, now? What news, fir Thomas Lovell? Enter Sir THOMAS LOVELL. Lor. 'Faith, my lord, I hear of none, but the new proclamation CHAM. What is't for? Lor. The reformation of our travell'd gallants, That fill the court with quarrels, talk, and tailors. CHAM. I am glad, 'tis there; now I would pray our monfieurs To think an English courtier may be wife, Lor. They must either (For fo run the conditions,) leave these remnants 9 A springhalt reign'd among them.] The stringhalt, or springhalt, (as the old copy reads,) is a disease incident to horses, which gives them a convulfive motion in their paces. So, in Muleaffes the Turk, 1610; Spring-halt and debility in their hams." - by reason of a general Again, in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair: "Poor foul, she has had a ftringhalt." STEEVENS, Mr. Pope and the subsequent editors, without any neceffity, I think, for A springhalt, read-And springhalt. MALONE. 2 - cut too,] Old copy-cut to't. Corrected in the fourth folio. MALONE. Both the first and second folio read cut too't, so that for part of this correction we are not indebted to the fourth folio. STEEVENS. Of fool, and feather, that they got in France, With all their honourable points of ignorance Pertaining thereunto, (as fights, and fireworks;* 9 leave these remnants Of fool, and feather,) This does not allude to the feathers anciently worn in the hats and caps of our countrymen, (a circumstance to which no ridicule could justly belong,) but to an effeminate fashion recorded in Greene's Farewell to Folly, 16173 from whence it appears that even young gentlemen carried fans of feathers in their hands: we ftrive to be counted womanish, by keeping of beauty, by curling the hair, by wearing plumes of feathers in our hands, which in wars, our ancestors wore on their heads." Again, in his Quip for an upstart Courtier, 1620: "Then our young courtiers strove to exceed one another in vertue, not in bravery; they rode not with fannes to ward their faces from the wind," &c. Again, in Lingua, &c. 1607, Phantastes, who is a male character, is equipped with a fan. STEEVENS. The text may receive illustration from a passage in Nashe's Life of lacke Wilton, 1594: "At that time [viz. in the court of King Henry VIII.] I was no common squire, no undertroden torchbearer, I had my feather in my cap as big as a flag in the foretop, my French doublet gelte in the belly, as though (lyke a pig readie to be spitted) all my guts had been pluckt out, a paire of fide paned hose that hung down like two scales filled with Holland cheeses, my long stock that fate close to my dock,-my rapier pendant like a round sticke, &c. my blacke cloake of black cloth, ouerspreading my backe lyke a thornbacke or an elephantes eare; and in confummation of my curiofitie, my handes without gloves, all a more French," &c. RITSON. In Rowley's Match at Midnight, Act I. fc. i. Sim says: "Yes, yes, she that dwells in Blackfryers next to the fign of the fool laughing at a feather." But Sir Thomas Lovell's is rather an allusion to the feathers which were formerly worn by fools in their caps. See a print on this subject from a painting of Jordaens, engraved by Voert; and again, in the ballad of News and no News : 2 " And feathers wagging in a fool's cap." DOUCE. - fireworks;] We learn from a French writer quoted in Montfaucon's Monuments de la Monarchie Françoise, Vol. IV. that fome very extraordinary fireworks were played off on the evening of the last day of the royal interview between Guynes and Ardres. Hence, our "travelled gallants," who were present at this exhibition, might have imbibed their fondness for the Pyrotechnic art. STEEVENS. |