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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 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.5

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 hips; how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration

With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,7

It is but as a body, yet, distemper'd;] Distemper, that is, according to the old physick, a disproportioned mixture of humours, or inequality of innate heat and radical humidity, is less than actual disease, being only the state which foreruns or produces diseases. The difference between distemper and disease seems to be much the same as between disposition and habit.

Johnson. 5 My lord Northumberland will soon be cool'd.] I believe Shakspeare wrote school'd; tutor'd, and brought to submission.

Cool'd is certainly right. Johnson.

Warburton.

So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor: " my humour shall not

cool."

Steevens.

6 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 &c.] So, in our author's 64th Sonnet:

"When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
"Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
"And the firm soil win of the watry main,
"Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;

"When I have seen such interchange of state," &c.

7

Malone.

O, if this were seen, &c.] These four lines are supplied from the edition of 1600. Warburton.

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;
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,8
(You, cousin Nevil,9 as I may remember,)
When Richard,-with his eye brimfull of tears,

[to WAR

My copy wants the whole scene, and therefore these lines.
There is some difficulty in the line-

What perils past, what crosses to ensue,—

because it seems to make past perils equally terrible with ensuing crosses. Johnson.

This happy youth, who is to foresee the future progress of his life, cannot be supposed, at the time of his happiness, to have gone through many perils. Both the perils and the crosses that the King alludes to were yet to come; and what the youth is to foresee is, the many crosses he would have to contend with, even after he has passed through many perils. M. Mason.

8 But which of you was by, &c.] He refers to King Richard II, Act IV, sc. ii. But whether the king's or the author's memory fails him, so it was, that Warwick was not present at that conversation. Johnson.

9

Neither was the King himself present, so that he must have received information of what passed from Northumberland. His memory, indeed, is singularly treacherous, as, at the time of which he is now speaking, he had actually ascended the throne. Ritson cousin Nevil,] Shakspeare has mistaken the name of the present nobleman. 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, in the latter end of the reign of King Henry VI, when it descended to Anne Beauchamp, (the daughter of the earl here introduced) who was married to Richard Nevil, Earl of Salisbury. Steevens.

Anne Beauchamp was the wife of that Richard Nevil, (in her right) Earl of Warwick, and son to Richard Earl of Salisbury, who makes so conspicuous a figure in our author's Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI He succeeded to the latter title on his father's death, in 1460, but is never distinguished by it.

Ritson.

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;1
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,
Foretelling 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 times deceas'd:
The which observ'd, a man may prophecy,
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,2

King Richard might create a perfect guess,
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,

1

Are these things then necessities?3

I had no such intent;] He means, "I should have had no such intent, but that necessity" &c. or Shakspeare has here also forgotten his former play, or has chosen to make Henry forget his situation at the time mentioned. He had then actually accepted the crown. See King Richard II, Act IV, sc. i:

"In God's name, I'll ascend the regal throne." Malone. 2 And, by the necessary form of this,] I think we might better read:

the necessary form of things.

The word this has no very evident antecedent. Johnson.
If any change were wanting, I would read:

And, by the necessary form of these,

i. e. the things mentioned in the preceding line. Steevens. And, by the necessary form of this, is, I apprehend, to be understood this history of the times deceased. Henley.

3 Are these things then necessities?] I suspect that-things then are interpolated words. They corrupt the measure, do not im

Then let us meet them like necessities: 4

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 received
A certain instance, that Glendower is dead.5
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.

6

prove the sense, and the anticipation of then diminishes the force of the same adverb in the following line. Steevens.

4 Then let us meet them like necessities:] I am inclined to read: Then let us meet them like necessity.

That is, with the resistless violence of necessity; then comes more aptly the following line:

And that same word even now cries out on us.

That is, the word necessity. Johnson

That is, let us meet them with that patience and quiet temper with which men of fortitude meet those events which they know to be inevitable.-I cannot approve of Johnson's explanation.

M. Mason.

5 ▪ that Glendower is dead.] Glendower did not die till after King Henry IV.

Shakspeare was led into this error by Holinshed, who places Owen Glendower's death in the tenth year of Henry's reign. See Vol. VIII, p. 259, n. 5. Malone.

6 -unto the Holy Land.] This play, like the former, proceeds in one unbroken tenor through the first edition, and there is therefore no evidence that the division of the Acts was made by the author. Since, then, every editor has the same right to mark the intervals of action as the players, who made the present distribution, I should propose that this scene may be added to the foregoing Act, and the remove from London to Gloucestershire be made in the intermediate time, but that it would shorten the next Act too much, which has not, even now, its due proportion to the Johnson.

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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 rood. And how doth my good cousin Silence?

Sil. Good morrow, good cousin Shallow.

7 Justice Shallow's House in Gloucestershire.] From the following passage in The Return from Parnassus, 1606, we may conclude that Kempe was the original Justice Shallow.—Burbage and Kempe are introduced, instructing some Cambridge students to act. Burbage makes one of the students repeat some lines of Hieronymo and King Richard III. Kempe says to another, "Now for you, methinks you belong to my tuition; and your face methinks would be good for a foolish Mayor, or a foolish Justice of Peace."-And again: "Thou wilt do well in time if thou wilt be ruled by thy betters, that is, by myselfe, and such grave aldermen of the play-house as I am." It appears from Nashe's Apologie of Pierce Penniless, 1593, that he likewise played the Clown: “Whatcan be made of a rope-maker more than a clowne. Will. Kempe, I mistrust it will fall to thy lot for a merriment one of these days." Malone.

8 by the rood.] i. e. the cross. Pope.

Hearne, in his Glossary to Peter Langtoft, p. 544, under the word cross, observes, that although the cross and the rood are commonly taken for the same, yet the rood properly signified formerly the image of Christ on the cross; so as to represent both the cross and figure of our blessed Saviour, as he suffered upon it. The roods that were in churches and chapels were placed in shrines that were called rood lofts. "Roodloft, (saith Blount) is a shrine whereon was placed the cross of Christ. The rood was an image of Christ on the cross, made generally of wood, and erected in a loft for that purpose, just over the passage out of the church into the chancel." Reed.

Bullokar, however, is a better authority than any of these, being contemporary with Shakspeare. In his English Expositor, 8vo. 1616, he defines roode thus: "In land it signifies a quarter of an acre. It is sometimes taken for the picture of our Saviour upon the cross." Malone.

9 Sil.] The oldest copy of this play was published in 1600. It must however have been acted somewhat earlier, as in Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, which was performed in 1599, is the following reference to it: " No, lady, this is a kinsman to Justice Silence." Steevens.

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