You ftand upon the rivage, and behold Holding due courfe to Harfleur. Follow, follow! With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur. The offer likes not: and the nimble gunner [Alarum; and chambers go off. And down goes all before them. Still be kind, And eke out our performance with your mind. 5-rivage,-] The bank or fhore. JOHNSON. Pactolus with his waters there [Exit. "Throws forth upon the rivage round about him nere." STIV. Grapple your minds to fternage of this navy;] The ftern being the hinder part of the fhip, the mean ng is, let your minds follow close after the navy. STEEVENS. I fufpect, that the author wrote, freerage. So, in Pericles: "So with his feer age fhall your thoughts grow on, "To fetch his daughter home." MALONE. linflock-] The staff to which the match is fixed when ordnance is fired. JOHNSON. And eke-] This word is in the first folio written eech; as it was, fometimes at leaft, pronounced -So, in Pericles, 1609: "And time that is fo briefly spent, "With your fine fancies quaintly each; What's dumb in fhew I'll plain with speech." MALONE. SCENE SCENE I. The fame. Before Harfleur. 505 Alarums. Enter King HENRY, EXETER, BEDFORD, K. Hen. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead! But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Let it pry through the portage of the head 3, 9 Or clofe the wall, &c.] Here is apparently a chafm. One line at leaft is loft, which contained the other part of a disjunctive propofition. The king's fpeech is, dear friends, either win the town, or close up the wall with dead. The old quarto gives no help. JOHNSON. when the blaft of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tyger,] Sir Tho. Hanmer has obferved on the following paffage in Troilus and Creffida, that in ftorms and bigb winds the ger roars and rages moft furiously. 2 << even fo "Doth valour's fhew and valour's worth divide "In ftorms of fortune: for, in her ray and brightness, "And flies flee under fhade, why then the thing of courage, STEEVENS. fummon up the blood,] Old Copy-Commune, &c. Corrected by Mr. Rowe. MALONE. 3-portage of the bead,] Portage, open fpace, from port, a gate. Let the eye appear in the head as cannon through the battlements, or embrafures, of a fortification. JOHNSON. So we now fay-the port-boles of a ship. MASON. O'er-hang and jutty his confounded base 4, Have, in these parts, from morn till even fought, That thofe, whom you call'd fathers, did beget you! And teach them how to war!-And you, good yeomen, That you are worth your breeding: which I doubt not; I fee you ftand like greyhounds in the flips, Cry-God for Harry! England! and faint George! 4 [Exeunt. Alarum, and chambers go off. bis confounded base,] His worn or wafted bafe. JOHNSON. One of the fenfes of to confound, in our author's time, was, to defiroy. See Minfheu's DICT. in v. MALONE. - bend up every fpirit-] A metaphor from the bow. JoHNSON. So again, in Hamlet: "-they fool me to the top of my bent." Again, in Macbeth: "I am settled, and bend up "Each corporal agent to this terrible feat." MALONE. -you noble English,] The folio (where alone this speech is found,) has-you neblifh English. For the prefent correction I am answerable. The editor of the fecond folio reads-nobleft. MALONE. 6 Whofe blood is fet from fathers of war proof!] Thus the folio 1623, and rightly. So Spenter's Faery Queen, B. III. "Whom strange adventure did from Britain fet." Again, in Lord Surrey's tranflation of the second book of Virgil's Eneid: "And with that winde had fet the land of Grece." The facred writings afford many inftances to the fame purpose. STEEV. argument.] is matter, or fubject. JOHNSON. 7 8 Straining upon the fart.] The old copy reads Straying. Corrected by Mr. Rowe. MALONE, SCENE SCENE II. The fame. Forces pass over; then enter NYM, BARDOLPH, PISTOL, and Boy. Bard. On, on, on, on, on! to the breach, to the breach! Nym. 'Pray thee, corporal, ftay; the knocks are too hot; and, for mine own part, I have not a cafe of lives': the humour of it is too hot, that is the very plain-fong of it. Pift. The plain-fong is moft juft; for humours do abound; Knocks go and come; God's vaffals drop and die ; And fword and shield, In bloody field, Doth win immortal fame, Boy. 'Would I were in an ale-house in London! I would give all my fame for a pot of ale, and fafety. Pift. And I: If wishes would prevail with me 2, corporal,] We fhould read lieutenant. It is Bardolph to whom he fpeaks. STEEVENS. Though Bardolph is only a corporal in K. Henry IV. as our author has in this play, from inadvertence or defign, made him a lieutenant, I think with Mr. Steevens, that we fhould read lieutenant. See a former note, p. 477. The truth is, I believe, that the variations in his title proceeded merely from Shakspeare's inattention. MALONE. 1-a cafe of lives:] A fet of lives, of which, when one is worn out, another may ferve. JOHNSON. Perhaps only two; as a case of pistols; and in Ben Jonson, a case of mafques. WHALLEY. I believe Mr. Whalley's explanation is the true one. A cafe of piftols, which was the current phrase for a pair or brace of piftols, in our author's time, is at this day the term always ufed in Ireland, where much of the language of the age of Elizabeth is yet retained. MALONE. 2 If wishes, &c.] This paffage, I have replaced from the first folio, which is the only authentick copy of this play. Thefe lines, which perhaps are part of a fong, Mr. Pope did not like, and therefore changed them in conformity to the imperfect play in quarto, and was followed by the fucceeding editors. For prevail I should read avail. JOHNSON. Boy. Boy. As duly, but not as truly, as bird doth fing on bough 3. Enter Fluellen. Flu. Got's plood!-Up to the preaches*, you rascals! will you not up to the preaches? [driving them forward. Pift. Be merciful, great dukes, to men of mould! Abate thy rage, abate thy manly rage! Abate thy rage, great duke! Good bawcock, bate thy rage! ufe lenity, fweet chuck! Nym. Thefe be good humours!-your honour wins bad humours". [Exeunt NYM, PISTOL, and BARDOLPH, followed by FLUELLEN. Boy. 3 As duly, &c.] This fpeech I have restored from the folio. STEEV. 4-up to the preaches, &c.] Thus the quarto, with only the difference of breaches instead of preaches. Modern editors have been very liberal of their Welch dialect. The folio reads, Up to the breach, you dogges; avaunt, you cullions. STEEVENS. 5 Be merciful, great duke,] That is, great commander. So, in Harrington's Orlando Furioso, 1591: "And as herfelf the dame of Carthage kill'd, "When as the Trojan duke did her forfake,-." The Trojan duke is only a translation of dux Trojanus. So, alfo in many of our old poems, Duke Thefeus, Duke Hannibal, &c. See Vol. II. p. 441, n. 1. In Piftol's mouth the word has here peculiar propriety. The author of REMARKS, &c. on the last edition of Shakspeare, fays, that "in the folio it is the duke of Exeter, and not Fluellen, who enters [here], and to whom Piftol addrefies himself." It is fufficient to fay, that in the only folio of any authority, that of 1623, this is not the cafe. When the king retired before the entry of Bardolph, &c. the duke of Exeter certainly accompanied him, with Bedford, Glofter, &c. though in the folio the word Exeunt is accidentally omitted. In the quarto, before the entry of Bardolph, Fluellen, &c. we find EXIT OMNES. In the quarto, Nym, on Fluellen's treating him fo roughly, fays, "abate thy rage, fweet knight." Had thefe words been preferved, I fuppofe this Remarker would have contended, that Nym's addrefs was not to the honest Welchman, but to old Sir Thomas Erpingham. I should not have taken the trouble to refute this tafteless and unfounded remark, had I not feared that my readers, in consequence of the above-mentioned mifrepresentation of the state of the old copy, might be led to fuppofe that some arbitrary alteration had here been made in the text. MALONE. 6 to men of mould!] Tomen of earth, to poor mortal men. JoHNSON. So, in the Countess of Pembroke's Ywychurch: "At length man was made of mould by crafty Prometheus." STEEVENS. wins bad bumours.] In a former fcene Nym fays, "the king hath ran bad humours on the knight." We should therefore perhaps read |