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His overmounting spirit; and there died
My Icarus, my blossom, in his pride.

Enter Soldiers, bearing the Body of JOHN TALBOT.

Serv. O my dear lord! lo, where your son is borne !

Tal. Thou antick death, which laugh'st us here to scorn 3,

Anon, from thy insulting tyranny,

Coupled in bonds of perpetuity,

4

Two Talbots, winged through the lither sky,
In thy despite shall 'scape mortality.—

O thou whose wounds become hard-favour'd death,
Speak to thy father, ere thou yield thy breath:
Brave death by speaking, whether he will, or no;
Imagine him a Frenchman, and thy foe.-

say

Poor boy! he smiles, methinks; as who should
Had death been French, then death had died to-day.
Come, come, and lay him in his father's arms;
My spirit can no longer bear these harms.
Soldiers, adieu! I have what I would have,
Now my old arms are young John Talbot's grave.

3 In King Richard II. we have the same image :

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within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps death his court: and there the antick sits
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp.'

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▲ Lither is flexible, pliant, yielding. In much the same manner Milton says:

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Where buxom is used in its old original sense of pliant, yielding. Blount, in his Glossography, points out the perversion of buxom to its modern meaning.

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Alarums. Exeunt Soldiers and Servant, leaving the two Bodies. Enter CHARLES, ALENÇON, BURGUNDY, Bastard, LA PUCELLE, and Forces.

Char. Had York and Somerset brought rescue in,
We should have found a bloody day of this.
Bast. How the young whelp of Talbot's, raging-
wood 5,

Did flesh his puny sword in Frenchmen's blood!
Puc. Once I encounter'd him, and thus I said,
Thou maiden youth, be vanquish'd by a maid:
But with a proud, majestical high scorn,-
He answer'd thus; Young Talbot was not born
To be the pillage of a giglot wench :

So, rushing in the bowels of the French",
He left me proudly, as unworthy fight.

Bur. Doubtless, he would have made a noble knight:

See, where he lies inhersed in the arms

Of the most bloody nurser of his harms.

Bast. Hew them to pieces, hack their bones asunder;

Whose life was England's glory, Gallia's wonder. Char. O, no; forbear: for that which we have fled During the life, let us not wrong it dead.

5 Wood signified furious as well as mad: raging-wood is certainly here furiously raging.

6 A giglot is a wanton wench. A minx, gigle (or giglet), flirt, callet, or gixie,' says Cotgrave. The word occurs again in Measure for Measure.

'Whose choice is like that Greekish giglot's love,
That left her lord, prince Menelaus.'

Orlando Furioso, 1594.

7 We have a similar expression in the First Part of Jeronimo, 1605:

'Meet, Don Andrea! yes, in the battle's bowels.'

Enter SIR WILLIAM LUCY, attended, a French Herald preceding.

Lucy. Herald,

Conduct me to the Dauphin's tent; to know 8
Who hath obtain'd the glory of the day.

Char. On what submissive message art thou sent?
Lucy. Submission, Dauphin? 'tis a mere French
word;

We English warriors wot not what it means.
I come to know what prisoners thou hast ta'en,
And to survey the bodies of the dead.

Char. For prisoners ask'st thou? hell our prison is. But tell me whom thou seek'st?

Lucy. Where is the great Alcides of the field, Valiant Lord Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury?

Created, for his rare success in arms,

Great earl of Washford9, Waterford, and Valence; Lord Talbot of Goodrig and Urchinfield,

Lord Strange of Blackmere, Lord Verdun of Alton,
Lord Cromwell of Wingfield, Lord Furnival of
Sheffield,

The thrice victorious lord of Falconbridge;
Knight of the noble order of Saint George,
Worthy Saint Michael, and the golden fleece;
Great mareschal to Henry the Sixth,

Of all his wars within the realm of France?

8 Lucy's 's message implied that he knew who had obtained the victory therefore Hanmer reads:

Herald, conduct me to the Dauphin's tent.'

9 Wexford, in Ireland, was anciently called Weysford. In Crompton's Mansion of Magnanimitie, 1599, it is written as here, Washford. This long list of titles is from the epitaph formerly existant on Lord Talbot's tomb at Rouën. It is to be found in the work above cited with one other, Lord Lovetoft of Worsop,' which would not easily fall into the verse. It concludes as here, and adds, who died in the battle of Burdeaux, 1453.' Malone was not acquainted with any older book in which this epitaph was to be found, and the play is of prior date to Crompton's book.

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Puc. Here is a silly stately style indeed!
The Turk, that two and fifty kingdoms hath,
Writes not so tedious a style as this.-
Him, that thou magnifiest with all these titles,
Stinking and flyblown, lies here at our feet.

Lucy. Is Talbot slain; the Frenchman's only

scourge,

Your kingdom's terror and black Nemesis?

O, were mine eyeballs into bullets turn'd,
That I, in rage, might shoot them at
your faces!
O, that I could but call these dead to life!
It were enough to fright the realm of France:
Were but his picture left among you here,
It would amaze 10 the proudest of you all.
Give me their bodies; that I may bear them hence,
And give them burial as beseems their worth.

Puc. I think, this upstart is old Talbot's ghost, He speaks with such a proud commanding spirit. For God's sake, let him have 'em; to keep them here, They would but stink, and putrefy the air.

Char. Go, take their bodies hence.
Lucy.

I'll bear them hence:

But from their ashes shall be rear'd 11

A phoenix that shall make all France afeard.

Char. So we be rid of them, do with 'em what thou

wilt.

And now to Paris, in this conquering vein;

All will be ours, now bloody Talbot's slain.

[Exeunt.

'A

10 To amaze is to dismay, to throw into consternation. citie amazed or astonied with feare. Urbs lymphata horroribus.' BARET. Thus in Cymbeline :

'I am amaz'd with matter.'

11 A word is wanting to complete the metre, which Hanmer thus supplied:

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But from their ashes, Dauphin, shall be rear'd.'

ACT V.

SCENE I. London. A Room in the Palace.

Enter KING HENRY, GLOSTER, and EXETER. K. Hen. Have you perus'd the letters from the pope, The emperor, and the earl of Armagnac ?

Glo. I have, my lord; and their intent is this,They humbly sue unto your excellence,

To have a godly peace concluded of,

Between the realms of England and of France.

K. Hen. How doth your grace affect their motion? Glo. Well, my good lord; and as the only means To stop effusion of our Christian blood, And 'stablish quietness on every side.

K. Hen. Ay, marry, uncle; for I always thought, It was both impious and unnatural,

That such immanity1 and bloody strife
Should reign among professors of one faith.

Glo. Beside, my lord,-the sooner to effect,
And surer bind, this knot of amity,-

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The earl of Armagnac-near knit to Charles,
A man of great authority in France,-
Proffers his only daughter to your grace

In marriage, with a large and sumptuous dowry.
K. Hen. Marriage, uncle! alas! my years are
young 2;

And fitter is my study and my books,

Than wanton dalliance with a paramour.

1 Immanity (immanitas, LAT.) outrageousness, cruelty, excess. BLOUNT. A belluine kind of immanity never raged so amongst Howell's Letters, iii. 15.

men.

2 The king was, however, twenty-four years old.

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