Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deaf'ning clamours in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly3, death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
And, in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Enter WARWICK and SURREY.

War. Many good morrows to your majesty!
K. Hen. Is it good morrow, lords?

War. 'Tis one o'clock, and past.

K. Hen. Why then, good morrow to you all 5, my lords,

Have you read o'er the letters that I sent you?
War. We have, my liege.

K. Hen. Then you perceive, the body of our
kingdom

2 Some of the officious modern editors altered clouds to shrouds, meaning the rope ladders of a ship, thus marring the poet's noble image. Steevens judiciously opposed himself to this alteration, but was wrong in asserting that 'shrowds had anciently the same meaning as clouds.' Shrowdes were covertures, hiding places of any kind, ærial or otherwise. This will be found the meaning of the word in all the passages cited by Steevens. That clouds was the poet's word there can be no doubt. Thus in Julius Cæsar:

I have seen

The ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam,

To be exalted with the threatening clouds.'

3 Hurly is a noise or tumult. As hurly-burly in the first scene of Macbeth. See note there.

4 Warburton's conjecture, that this is a corrupt reading for happy lowly clown, deserves attention.

5 This mode of phraseology, where only two persons are addressed, is not very correct; but Shakspeare has used it again in King Henry VI. Part II. where York addresses his two friends Salisbury and Warwick.

How foul it is; what rank diseases grow,
And with what danger, near the heart of it.
War. It is but as a body, yet, distemper'd,
Which to his former strength may be restor❜d,
With good advice, and little medicine:-
My Lord Northumberland will soon be cool'd.
K. Hen. O heaven! that one might read the book
of fate;

And see the revolution of the times

Make mountains level, and the continent
(Weary of solid firmness) melt itself

Into the sea! and, other times, to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean.

Too wide for Neptune's hips7; how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration

With divers liquors! O, if this were seen3,

The happiest youth,-viewing his progress through, What perils past, what crosses to ensue,

Would shut the book, and sit him down and die. "Tis not ten years gone,

Since Richard, and Northumberland, great friends,
Did feast together, and, in two years after,
Were they at wars: It is but eight years since
This Percy was the man nearest my soul;

6 Distempered means disordered, sick; being only in that state which foreruns or produces diseases.

7

When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main,

Increasing store with loss, and loss with store,
When I have seen such interchange of state,' &c.

Shakspeare's sixty-fourth Sonnet. 8 This and the three following lines are from the quarto copy. Johnson having misunderstood the line:

"What perils past, what crosses to ensue ;'

it may be necessary to remark that the perils are spoken of prospectively, as seen by the youth in the book of fate.

The con

struction is What perils having been past, what crosses are to ensue.'

Who like a brother toil'd in my affairs,

And laid his love and life under my foot;
Yea, for my sake, even to the eyes of Richard,
Gave him defiance. But which of you was by 9,
(You, cousin Nevil 10, as I may remember,)
[To WARWICK.
When Richard,—with his eye brimfull of tears,
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,
Fortelling 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 time's deceas'd:
The which observ'd, a man may prophesy,
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.

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

King Richard might create a perfect guess,

9 The reference is to King Richard II. Act iv. Sc. 2: but neither Warwick nor the king were present at that conversation. Henry had then ascended the throne; either the king's or the poet's memory failed him.

10 The earldom of Warwick was at this time in the family of Beauchamp, and did not come into that of the Nevils till many years after when Anne, the daughter of this earl, married Richard Nevil, son of the earl of Salisbury, who makes a conspicuous figure in the Third Part of King Henry VI. under the title of Earl of Warwick.

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?

Then let us meet them like necessities :

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 11.
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.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II. Court before Justice Shallow's House in Gloucestershire.

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 stirrer, by the rood1. And how doth my good cousin Silence?

11 Glendower did not die till after King Henry IV. Shakspeare was led into this error by Holinshed. Vide note on the First Part of King Henry IV. Act iii. Sc. 1, p. 190.

The rood is the cross or crucifix. Rode, Sax.

Sil. Good morrow, good cousin Shallow.

Shal. And how doth my cousin, your bedfellow? and your fairest daughter, and mine, my god-daughter 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?

Sil. Indeed, sir; to my cost.

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.

too.

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 There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Bare, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele a Cotswold man2,-you had not four such swinge-bucklers3 in all the inns of court again: and, I may say to you, we knew where the bona-robas were; and had the best of them all

4

2 The Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire were famous for rural sports of all kinds; by distinguishing Will Squele as a Cotswold man, Shallow meant to have it understood that he was well versed in manly exercises, and consequently of a daring spirit and athletic constitution. In the reign of King James I. Mr. Robert Dover, a public spirited attorney of Barton on the Heath, Warwickshire, established there annual sports, which he superintended in person. They were celebrated in a scarce poetical tract, entitled Annalia Dubrensia, 1636, 4to. The games included wrestling, leaping, pitching the bar, handling the pike, dancing, and hunting. Slender tells Page that he has heard say that his fallow greyhound was outrun upon Cotsall. See Merry Wives of Windsor, Sc. 1.

3 Swinge-bucklers and swash-bucklers were terms implying rakes and rioters in the time of Shakspeare. See a note on sword and buckler men in the First Part of King Henry IV. Act i. Sc. 3, p. 121.

46 Buona-roba, as we say, good stuff; a good wholesome plump cheeked wench.' Florio.