Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

This fortress, built by nature for herself,
Against infection, and the hand of war:
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious ftone set in the filver sea,
Which ferves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defenfive to a house,
Againft the envy of less happier lands;7
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this Eng-

land,

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth,

Against infection, I once suspected that for infection we might read invasion; but the copies all agree, and I suppose Shakspeare meant to say, that islanders are fecured by their situation both from war and pestilence. JOHNSON.

In Allot's England's Parnassus, 1600, this passage is quoted: "Against intestion," &c. Perhaps the word might be infestion, if fuch a word was in use. FARMER.

7-less happier lands;] So read all the editions, except Sir T. Hanmer's, which has less happy. I believe, Shakspeare, from the habit of faying more happier, according to the custom of his time, inadvertently writ less happier. JOHNSON.

$ Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth,] The first edition in quarto, 1598, reads:

Fear'd by their breed, and famous for their birth.

The quarto, in 1615 :

Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth. The first folio, though printed from the second quarto, reads as the first. The particles in this author seem often to have been printed by chance. Perhaps the paffage, which appears a little difordered, may be regulated thus :

royal kings,

Fear'd for their breed, and famous for their birth,
For Chriftian service, and true chivalry;
Renowned for their deeds as far from home
As is the fepulchre-. JOHNSON.

The first folio could not have been printed from the second quarto, on account of many variations as well as omiffions. The

Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
(For Christian service, and true chivalry,)
As is the fepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's fon :
This land of fuch dear fouls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leas'd out (I die pronouncing it,)
Like to a tenement, or pelting farm : 9
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious fiege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots,1 and rotten parchment bonds;2

quarto 1608 has the famereading with that immediately preceding it. STEEVENS.

Fear'd by their breed,] i. e. by means of their breed.

This land

Is now leas'd out (I die pronouncing it,)

MALONE.

Like to a tenement, or pelting farm:] " In this 22d yeare of King Richard (says Fabian,) the common fame ranne, that the kinge had letten to farm the realme unto Sir William Scrope, earle of Wiltshire, and then treasurer of England, to Syr John Bushey, Sir John Bagot, and Sir Henry Grene, knightes."

MALONE.

* With inky blots,] I suspect that our author wrote-inky bolts. How can blots bind in any thing? and do not bolts correspond better with bonds? Inky bolts are written restrictions. So, in The Honest Man's Fortune, by Beaumont and Fletcher, Act IV. se. i:

2

"-manacling itself

" In gyves of parchment." STEEVENS.

rotten parchment bonds;] Alluding to the great fums raised by loans and other exactions, in this reign, upon the English subjects. GREY.

Gaunt does not allude, as Grey supposes, to any loans or exactions extorted by Richard, but to the circumstances of his having actually farmed out his royal realm, as he himself styles it. In the last scene of the first Act he says :

"And, for our coffers are grown somewhat light,
"We are enfore'd to farm our royal realm."

That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself:
O, would the scandal vanish with my life,

How happy then were my ensuing death!

Enter King RICHARD, and Queen;3 AUMERLE, BUSHY, GREEN, BAGOT, Ross,5 and WILLOUGHBY.6

YORK. The king is come: deal mildly with his youth;

For young hot colts, being rag'd, do rage the more.7 QUEEN. How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster ? K. RICH. What comfort, man? How is't with aged Gaunt?

GAUNT. O, how that name befits my composition! Old Gaunt, indeed; and gaunt in being old : Within me grief hath kept a tedious faft;

And it afterwards appears that the person who farmed the realm was the Earl of Wiltshire, one of his own favourites.

3

M. MASON.

-Queen;] Shakspeare, as Mr. Walpole suggests to me, has deviated from historical truth in the introduction of Richard's queen as a woman in the present piece; for Anne, his first wife, was dead before the play commences, and Isabella, his second wife, was a child at the time of his death. MALONE.

4

-Aumerle,] was Edward, eldest son of Edmund Duke of York, whom he fucceeded in the title. He was killed at Agincourt. WALPOLE.

5

- Ross,] was William Lord Roos, (and so should be printed,) of Hamlake, afterwards Lord Treasurer to Henry IV. WALPOLE.

-Willoughby.] was William Lord Willoughby of Eresby, who afterwards married Joan, widow of Edmund Duke of York.

WALPOLE.

For young hot colts, being rag'd, do rage the more.] Read:

-being rein'd, do rage the more. RITSON.

:

And who abstains from meat, that is not gaunt ?
For fleeping England long time have I watch'd;
Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt :
The pleasure, that some fathers feed upon,
Is my ftrict fast, I mean-my children's looks;
And, therein fafting, haft thou made me gaunt:
Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,
Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones.

F

K. RICH. Can fick men play so nicely with their names?

GAUNT. No, misery makes sport to mock itself: Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me, I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee.

K. RICH. Should dying men flatter with those that live?

GAUNT. No, no, men living flatter those that

die.

K. RICH. Thou, now a dying, fay'st-thou flatter'st me.

GAUNT. Oh! no; thou diest, though I the ficker be.

K. RICH. I am in health, I breathe, and fee thee ill.

GAUNT. Now, He that made me, knows I fee

thee ill;

Ill in myself to fee, and in thee seeing ill.
Thy death-bed is no lesser than the land,
Wherein thou lieft in reputation fick :
And thou, too careless patient as thou art,
Commit'st thy anointed body to the cure

Ill in myself to fee, and in thee feeing ill.] I cannot help fuppofing that the idle words to fee, which destroy the measure, should be omitted. STEEVENS...

Of those physicians that first wounded thee :
A thousand flatterers fit within thy crown,
Whose compass is no bigger than thy head;
And yet, incaged in so small a verge,
The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.
O, had thy grandfire, with a prophet's eye,
Seen how his fon's fon should destroy his fons,
From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame;
Depofing thee before thou wert possess'd,
Which art possess'd now to depose thyself.9
Why, coufin, wert thou regent of the world,
It were a shame, to let this land by lease :
But, for thy world, enjoying but this land,
Is it not more than shame, to shame it so ?
Landlord of England art thou now, not king:
Thy state of law is bondslave to the law;1

Which art possess'd now to depose thyself.] Possess'd, in this second instance, was, I believe, defigned to mean-afflicted with madness occafioned by the internal operation of a dæmon. So, in The Comedy of Errors:-" Both man and mafter is poffefs'd." STEEVENS.

1

Thy state of law is bondslave to the law;] State of law, i. e. legal fovereignty. But the Oxford editor alters it to state o'er law, i. e. abfolute Sovereignty. A doctrine, which, if ever our poet learnt at all, he learnt not in the reign when this play was written, Queen Elizabeth's, but in the reign after it, King James's. By bondslave to the law, the poet means his being inflaved to his favourite subjects. WARBURTON.

This sentiment, whatever it be, is obfcurely expressed. I understand it differently from the learned commentator, being perhaps not quite so zealous for Shakspeare's political reputation. The reasoning of Gaunt, I think, is this: By Setting the royalties to farm thou hast reduced thyself to a state below fovereignty, thou art now no longer king but landlord of England, Subject to the fame restraint and limitations as other landlords: by making thy condition a state of law, a condition upon which the common rules of law can operate, thou art become a bondslave to the law; thou hast made thyself amenable to laws from which thou wert originally exempt.

« AnteriorContinuar »