Then check'd and rated by Northumberland,-
Did speak these words, now prov'd a prophecy?
Northumberland, thou ladder, by the which
My cousin Bolingbroke ascends my throne;
Though then, heaven knows, I had no such intent;
But that necessity so bow'd the state,
That I and greatness were compell'd to kiss :-
The time shall come, thus did he follow it,
The time will come, that foul sin, gathering head,
Shall break into corruption :-so went on,
Foretelling this same time's condition,
And the division of our amity.

WAR. There is a history in all men's lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceas'd:
The which observ'd, a man may prophecy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life; which in their seeds,
And weak beginnings, lie intreasured.

3

Such things become the hatch and brood of time; And, by the necessary form of this,*

3

I had no such intent ;] He means, "I should have had no such intent, but that necessity" &c. or Shakspeare has here also forgotten his former play, or has chosen to make Henry forget his situation at the time mentioned. He had then actually accepted the crown. See King Richard II. Act IV. sc. i;

"In God's name, I'll ascend the regal thr"

MALONE,

* And, by the necessary form of this,] I think we might better read:

the necessary form of things.

The word this has no very evident antecedent. JOHNSON,
If any change were wanting, I would read:

And, by the necessary form of these,

i. e. the things mentioned in the preceding line. STEEVENS.

And, by the necessary form of this, is, I apprehend, to be understood this history of the times deceased. HENLEY.

King Richard might create a perfect guess,
That great Northumberland, then false to him,
Would, of that seed, grow to a greater falseness;
Which should not find a ground to root upon,
Unless on you.

K. HEN.

Are these things then necessities ?5 Then let us meet them like necessities: 6

And that same word even now cries out on us;
They say, the bishop and Northumberland
Are fifty thousand strong.

WAR.

It cannot be, my lord;

Rumour doth double, like the voice and echo,
The numbers of the fear'd:-Please it your grace,
To go to bed; upon my life, my lord,
The powers that you already have sent forth,
Shall bring this prize in very easily.

To comfort you the more, I have receiv'd

A certain instance, that Glendower is dead."

5

Are these things then necessities?] I suspect that-things then are interpolated words. They corrupt the measure, do not improve the sense, and the anticipation of then diminishes the force of the same adverb in the following line. STEEVENS.

Then let us meet them like necessities:] I am inclined to read:

Then let us meet them like necessity.

That is, with the resistless violence of necessity; then comes more aptly the following line:

And that same word even now cries out on us.

That is, the word necessity. JOHNSON.

That is, let us meet them with that patience and quiet temper with which men of fortitude meet those events which they know to be inevitable.-I cannot approve of Johnson's explanation. M. MASON.

7

that Glendower is dead.] Glendower did not die till after King Henry IV.

Shakspeare was led into this error by Holinshed, who places Owen Glendower's death in the tenth year of Henry's reign. See Vol. XI. p. 324, n. 5. MALone.

Your majesty hath been this fortnight ill;
And these unseason'd hours, perforce, must add
Unto your sickness.

K. HEN.

I will take your counsel: And, were these inward wars once out of hand, We would, dear lords, unto the Holy Land.s [Exeunt.

SCENE II.

Court before Justice Shallow's House in Gloucestershire.9

Enter SHALLOW and SILENCE, meeting; MOULDY, SHADOW, WART, FEEBLE, BULL-CALF, and Servants, behind.

SHAL. Come on, come on, come on; give me your hand, sir, give me your hand, sir: an early

8

3 unto the Holy Land.] This play, like the former, proceeds in one unbroken tenor through the first edition, and there is therefore no evidence that the division of the Acts was made by the author. Since, then, every editor has the same right to mark the intervals of action as the players, who made the present distribution, I should propose that this scene may be added to the foregoing Act, and the remove from London to Gloucestershire be made in the intermediate time, but that it would shorten the next Act too much, which has not, even now, its due proportion to the rest. JOHNSON.

9 Justice Shallow's House in Gloucestershire.] From the following passage in The Return from Parnassus, 1606, we may conclude that Kempe was the original Justice Shallow.—Burbage and Kempe are introduced, instructing some Cambridge students to act. Burbage makes one of the students repeat some lines of Hieronymo and King Richard III. Kempe says to another, "Now for you,-methinks you belong to my tuition; and your face methinks would be good for a foolish

stirrer, by the rood.' And how doth my good cousin Silence?

SIL. Good morrow, good cousin Shallow.

SHAL. And how doth my cousin, your bedfellow? and your fairest daughter, and mine, my goddaughter Ellen?

SIL. Alas, a black ouzel, cousin Shallow.

SHAL. By yea and nay, sir, I dare say, my cousin William is become a good scholar: He is at Oxford, still, is he not?

Mayor, or a foolish Justice of Peace."-And again: "Thou wilt do well in time if thou wilt be ruled by thy betters, that is, by myselfe, and such grave aldermen of the play-house as I am." It appears from Nashe's Apologie of Pierce Penniless, 1593, that he likewise played the Clown: "What can be made of a ropemaker more than a clowne. Will. Kempe, I mistrust it will fall to thy lot for a merriment one of these dayes." MALONE.

1

by the rood.] i. e. the cross. POPE.

Hearne, in his Glossary to Peter Langtoft, p. 544, under the word cross, observes, that although the cross and the rood are commonly taken for the same, yet the rood properly signified formerly the image of Christ on the cross; so as to represent both the cross and figure of our blessed Saviour, as he suffered upon it. The roods that were in churches and chapels were placed in shrines that were called rood lofts. "Roodloft, (saith Blount,) is a shrine whereon was placed the cross of Christ. The rood was an image of Christ on the cross, made generally of wood, and erected in a loft for that purpose, just over the passage out of the church into the chancel.” REED.

Bullokar, however, is a better authority than any of these, being contemporary with Shakspeare. In his English Expositor, 8vo. 1616, he defines roode thus: "In land it signifies a quarter of an acre. It is sometimes taken for the picture of our Saviour upon the cross." MALONE.

2

Sil.] The oldest copy of this play was published in 1600. It must however have been acted somewhat earlier, as in Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, which was performed in 1599, is the following reference to it: "No, lady, this is a kinsman to Justice Silence." STEEVENS.

SHAL. He must then to the inns of court shortly: I was once of Clement's-inn; where, I think, they will talk of mad Shallow yet.

SIL. You were called-lusty Shallow, then, cousin.

SHAL. By the mass, I was called any thing; and I would have done any thing, indeed, and roundly too. There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Bare, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele a Cotswold man,3-you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the inns of court

:

3

Will Squele a Cotswold man,] The games at Cotswold were, in the time of our author, very famous. Of these I have seen accounts in several old pamphlets; and Shallow, by distinguishing Will Squele, as a Cotswold man, meant to have him understood as one who was well versed in manly exercises, and consequently of a daring spirit, and an athletic constitution.

STEEVENS.

The games of Cotswold, I believe, did not commence till the reign of James I. I have never seen any pamphlet that mentions them as having existed in the time of Elizabeth. Randolph speaks of their revival in the time of Charles I.; and from Dover's book they appear to have been revived in 1636. But this does not prove that they were exhibited in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. They certainly were in that of King James, and were probably discontinued after his death. However, Cotswold might have been long famous for meetings of tumultuous swinge-bucklers. See Vol. V. p. 16, n. 6. MALONE.

swinge-bucklers-] Swinge-bucklers and swash-bucklers were words implying rakes or rioters in the time of Shak

speare.

Nash, addressing himself to his old opponent Gabriel Harvey, 1598, says: Turpe senex miles, 'tis time for such an olde foole

to leave playing the swash-buckler."

Again, in The Devil's Charter, 1607, Caraffa says, "when I was a scholar in Padua, faith, then I could have swinged a sword and buckler," &c. STEEvens.

"West Smithfield (says the Continuator of Stowe's Annals,