RIV. Tyrants themselves wept when it was re ported. DORS. No man but prophesied revenge for it. BUCK. Northumberland, then present, wept to see it 7. Q. MAR. What! were you snarling all, before I came, Ready to catch each other by the throat, Did York's dread curse prevail so much with heaven, Though not by war, by surfeit die your king, 7 Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.] Alluding to a scene in King Henry VI. Part III. vol. xviii. p. 401: What, weeping ripe, my lord Northumberland ? " 8 Could all BUT answer for that peevish brat?] This is the reading of all the editions, yet I have no doubt but we ought to read "Could all not answer for that peevish brat? The sense seems to require this amendment; and there are no words so frequently mistaken for each other as not and but. M. MASON. But is only" Could nothing less answer for the death of that brat than the death of my Henry and Edward?" MALONE. 9 by surfeit die your king,] Alluding to his luxurious life.. JOHNSON. And see another, as I see thee now, Deck'd in thy rights, as thou art stall'd in mine! GLO. Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither'd hag. Q. MAR. And leave out thee? stay, dog, for thou If heaven have any grievous plague in store, On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace! I elvish-MARK'D,] The common people in Scotland (as I learn from Kelly's Proverbs,) have still an aversion to those who have any natural defect or redundancy, as thinking them mark'd out for mischief. STEEVENS. 2-rooting hog!] The expression is fine, alluding (in memory of her young son) to the ravage which hogs make, with the finest flowers, in gardens; and intimating that Elizabeth was to expect no other treatment for her sons. WARBURTON. She calls him hog, as an appellation more contemptuous than boar, as he is elsewhere termed from his ensigns armorial. JOHNSON. In The Mirror for Magistrates is the following Complaint of Collingbourne, who was cruelly executed for making a rime: Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity The slave of nature, and the son of hell! "For where I meant the king by name of hog, "As cat and rat, the half-names of the rest, "To hide the sense that they so wrongly wrest." That Lovel was once the common name of a dog may be likewise known from a passage in The Historie of Jacob and Esau, an interlude, 1568: "Then come on at once, take my quiver and my bowe; "Fette lovell my hounde, and my horne to blowe." The rhyme for which Collingbourne suffered was : "A cat, a rat, and Lovell the dog, "Rule all England under a hog." STEEVENS. The rhyme of Collingbourne is thus preserved in Heywood's History of Edward IV. Part II. : "The cat, the rat, and Lovell our dog "Doe rule all England under a hog. "The crooke backt boore the way hath found "To root our roses from our ground. "Both flower and bud will he confound, "Till king of beasts the swine be crown'd: "And then the dog, the cat, and rat, The propriety of Dr. Warburton's note, notwithstanding what Dr. Johnson hath subjoined, is fully confirmed by this satire. HENLEY. The persons levelled at by this rhyme were the King, Catesby, Ratcliff, and Lovel, as appears in The Complaint of Colling bourn : 66 Catesbye was one whom I called a cat, "The second Ratcliffe, whom I named a rat, "Wherewith to ryme I cald the king a hog." MALONE. 3 The slave of nature,] The expression is strong and noble, and alludes to the ancient custom of masters branding their profligate slaves; by which it is insinuated that his mis-shapen person was the mark that nature had set upon him to stigmatize his ill conditions. Shakspeare expresses the same thought in The Comedy of Errors: Thou slander of thy mother's heavy womb! Q. MAR. I call thee not. GLO. I cry thee mercy then; for I did think, That thou had'st call'd me all these bitter names. Q. MAR. Why, so I did; but look'd for no reply. O, let me make the period to my curse. GLO. "Tis done by me; and ends in-Margaret. Q. ELIZ. Thus have you breath'd your curse against yourself. Q. MAR. Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune'; "He is deformed, crooked, &c. 66 Stigmatized in making-.' But as the speaker rises in her resentment, she expresses this contemptuous thought much more openly, and condemns him to a still worse state of slavery: ‘Sin, death, and hell, have set their marks on him." Only, in the first line, her mention of his moral condition insinuates her reflections on his deformity: and, in the last, her mention of his deformity insinuates her reflections on his moral condition: And thus he has taught her to scold in all the elegance of figure. WARBURTON. Part of Dr. Warburton's note is confirm'd by a line in our author's Rape of Lucrece, from which it appears he was acquainted with the practice of marking slaves: "Worse than a slavish wipe, or birth-hour's blot." MALONE. 4 Thou RAG of honour! &c.] This word of contempt is used again in Timon: "If thou wilt curse, thy father, that poor rag, Again, in this play : "These over-weening rags of France." STEEVENS. flourish of my fortune!] This expression is likewise used by Massinger in The Great Duke of Florence: 66 I allow these "As flourishings of fortune." STEEvens. Why strew'st thou sugar on that bottled spider", HAST. False-boding woman, end thy frantick curse; Lest, to thy harm, thou move our patience. Q. MAR. Foul shame upon you! you have all mov'd mine. 6-bottled spider,] A spider is called bottled, because, like other insects, he has a middle slender, and a belly protuberant. Richard's form and venom, made her liken him to a spider. 66 JOHNSON. A critick, who styles himself "Robert Heron, Esquire," (though his title to Esquireship is but ill supported by his language, puppy, booby, wise-acre," &c. being the usual distinctions he bestows on authors who are not his favourites,) very gravely assures us that "a bottled spider is evidently a spider kept in a bottle long fasting, and of consequence the more spiteful and venomous." May one ask if the infuriation of our Esquire originates from a similar cause? Hath he newly escaped, like Asmodeo, from the phial of some Highland sorcerer, under whose discipline he had experienced the provocations of lenten imprisonment ?-Mrs. Raffald.disserts on bottled gooseberries, and George Falkener warns us against bottled children; but it was reserved for our Esquire (every one knows who our Esquire is) to discover that spiders, like ale, grow brisker from being bottled, and derive additional venom from being starved.—It would be the interest of every writer to wish for an opponent like the Esquire Heron, did not the general credit of letters oppose the production of such another critick. So far I am from wishing the lucubrations of our Esquire to be forgotten, that I counsel thee, gentle reader, (and especially, provided thou art a hypochondriac,) to peruse, and (if thou canst) to re-peruse them, and finally to thank me as thy purveyor of a laugh.-Every man should court a fresh onset from an adversary, who, in the act of ridiculing others, exposes himself to yet more obvious ridicule. STEEVENS. A bottled spider is a large, bloated, glossy spider: supposed to contain venom proportionate to its size. The expression occurs again in Act IV. : "That bottled spider, that foul hunch-back'd toad." RITSON. |