We make your grace lord regent o'er the French. PET. Alas, my lord, I cannot fight; * for God's *fake, pity my cafe! the fpite of man prevaileth against me. O, Lord have mercy upon me! I * fhall never be able to fight a blow: O Lord, my * heart! GLO. Sirrah, or you must fight, or else be hang'd. 'K. HEN. Away with them to prison: and the day tion of what Glofter had faid. Shakspeare therefore not having introduced the following speech, which is found in the firft copy, we have no right to infert it. That it was not intended to be preferved, appears from the concluding line of the present scene, in which Henry addreffes Somerfet; whereas in the quarto, Somerset goes out, on his appointment. This is one of those minute circumftances which may be urged to show that these plays, however afterwards worked up by Shakspeare, were originally the production of another author, and that the quarto edition of 1600 was printed from the copy originally written by that author, whoever he was. MALONE. After the lines inserted by Theobald, the King continues his fpeech thus: over the French; "And to defend our rights 'gainst foreign foes, "And fo do good unto the realm of France. "Make hafte, my lord; 'tis time that you were gone : "The time of truce, I think, is full expir'd. "Som. I humbly thank your royal majefty, " "And take my leave, to poft with speed to France. [Exit Somerfet. "Madam, your hawk, they fay, is fwift of flight, [Exeunt omnes. STEEVENS. 'Of combat fhall be the laft of the next month. * Come, Somerfet, we'll fee thee fent away. Exeunt. SCENE IV. The fame. The Duke of Glofter's Garden. Enter MARGERY JOURDAIN, HUME, SOUTHWELL, and BOLINGBROKE. * HUME. Come, my mafters; the duchefs, I tell * you, expects performance of your promises. *BOLING. Mafter Hume, we are therefore pro* vided: Will her ladyship behold and hear our ex* orcifms ?9 * *HUME. Ay; What else? fear you not her cou rage. * BOLING. I have heard her reported to be a wo Enter &c.] The quarto reads: Enter Eleanor, Sir John Hum, Roger Bolingbrook a conjurer, and Margery Jourdaine a witch. "Eleanor. Here, fir John, take this fcroll of paper here, "Wherein is writ the questions you fhall afk: "And I will ftand upon this tower here, "And hear the spirit what it says to you; "And to my questions write the answers down." [She goes up to the tower. STEEVENS. →our exorcifms?] The word exorcife, and its derivatives, are used by Shakspeare in an uncommon fenfe. In all other writers it means to lay fpirits, but in thefe plays it invariably means to raise them. So, in Julius Cæfar, Ligarius fays— "Thou, like an exorcift, haft conjur'd up My mortified fpirit." M. MASON. See Vol. VIII. p. 407, n. 3. Malone. man of an invincible spirit: But it shall be con*venient, mafter Hume, that you be by her aloft, while we be busy below; and fo, I pray you, go * in God's name, and leave us. [Exit HUME.] Mo'ther Jourdain, be you proftrate, and grovel on the ' earth :-* John Southwell, read you; and let us *to our work. Enter Duchefs, above. * DUCH. Well faid, my mafters; and welcome *all. To this geer; the fooner the better. * BOLING. Patience, good lady; wizards know their times: Deep night, dark night, the filent of the night,' Deep night, dark night, the filent of the night,] The filent of the night is a claffical expreffion, and means an interlunar night.-Amica filentia luna. So, Pliny, Inter omnes verò convenit, utiliffimè in coitu ejus fterni, quem diem alii interlunii, alii filentis lunæ appellant. Lib. XVI. cap. 39. In imitation of this language, Milton fays: "The fun to me is dark, "Hid in her vacant interlunar cave." WARBURTON. I believe this display of learning might have been spared. Silent, though an adjective, is used by Shakspeare as a fubftantive. So, in The Tempeft, the vaft of night is used for the greatest part of it. The old quarto reads, the filence of the night. The variation between the copies is worth notice: "Bol. Dark night, dread night, the filence of the night, "Wherein the furies matk in hellish troops, "Send up, I charge you, from Cocytus' lake "The spirit Afcalon to come to me; "To pierce the bowels of this centrick earth, The time of night when Troy was fet on fire; howl,2 And fpirits walk, and ghosts break up their graves, That time beft fits the work we have in hand. Madam, fit you, and fear not; whom we raise, We will make faft within a hallow'd verge. [Here they perform the Ceremonies appertaining, and make the Circle; Bolingbroke, or Southwell, reads, Conjuro te, &c. It thunders and lightens terribly; then the Spirit rifeth. 66 In a fpeech already quoted from the quarto, Eleanor says, they have caft their spells in filence of the night." And in the ancient Interlude of Nature, bl. 1. no date, is the fame expreffion : "Who taught the nyghtyngall to recorde befyly "Her strange entunes in fylence of the nyght?" Again, in The Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher: 66 Through ftill filence of the night, "Guided by the glow-worm's light." STEEVENS. Steevens's explanation of this paffage is evidently right; and Warburton's obfervations on it, though long, learned, and laborious, are nothing to the purpose. Bolingbroke does not talk of the filence of the moon, but of the filence of the night; nor is he defcribing the time of the month, but the hour of the night. M. MASON. 2 -ban-dogs howl,] I was unacquainted with the etymology of this word, till it was pointed out to me by an ingenious correfpondent in the Supplement to The Gentleman's Magazine, for 1789, who figns himself D. T: Shakspeare's ban-dog (fays he) is fimply a village-dog, or maftiff, which was formerly called a band-dog, per fyncopen, bandog." In fupport of this opinion he quotes Caius de canibus Britannicis: "Hoc genus canis, etiam catenarium, à catena vel ligamento, qua ad januas interdiu detinetur, ne lædat, & tamen latratu terreat, appellatur. -Rufticos, Shepherds' dogs, maftives, and bandogs, nominavi-、 mus." STEEVENS. Ban-dog is furely a corruption of band-dog; or rather the first dis fuppreffed here, as in other compound words. Cole, in his Dift. 1679, renders ban-dog, canis catenatus. MALONE. SPIR. Adfum. * M. JOURD. Asmath, * By the eternal God, whofe name and power * Thou trembleft at, answer that I fhall afk; *For, till thou speak, thou shalt not pass from hence. *SPIR. Afk what thou wilt:-That I had faid and done !3 become 24 BOLING. Firft, of the king. What shall of him [Reading out of a Paper, SPIR. The duke yet lives, that Henry fhall de pofe ; But him outlive, and die a violent death. 3 [As the Spirit Speaks, SOUTHWELL writes the anfwer. That I had faid and done!] It was anciently believed that fpirits, who were raised by incantations, remained above ground, and answered queftions with reluctance. See both Lucan and Statius. STEEVENS. So the Apparition fays in Macbeth: "Difmifs me.— -Enough!" The words "That I had faid and done!" are not in the old play. MALONE. 4 What shall of him become ?] Here is another proof of what has been already fuggefted. In the quarto 1600, it is concerted between Mother Jourdain and Bolingbroke that he should frame a circle, &c. and that the fhould "fall proftrate to the ground," to "whisper with the devils below." (Southwell is not introduced in that piece.) Accordingly, as foon as the incantations begin, Bolingbroke reads the questions out of a paper, as here. But our poet has exprefsly faid in the preceding part of this scene that Southwell was to read them. Here, however, he inadvertently follows his original as it lay before him, forgetting that confiftently with what he had already written, he 1hould have deviated from it. He has fallen into the fame kind of inconfiftency in Romeo and Juliet, by fometimes adhering to and sometimes deserting the poem on which he formed that tragedy. MALONE. |