Had bak'd thy blood, and made it heavy, thick; Or if that thou could'st see me without eyes, 8 from the horror and awful silence here described as so propitious to the dreadful purposes of the king. Though the hour of one be not the natural midnight, it is yet the most solemn moment of the poetical one; and Shakspeare himself has chosen to introduce his Ghost in Hamlet, "The bell then beating one." Shakspeare may be restored into obscurity. I retain Mr. Theobald's correction; for though "thundering a peal into a man's ears" is good English, I do not perceive that such an expression as "sounding one into a drowsy race," is countenanced by any example hitherto produced. STEEVENS. 7-using CONCEIT alone,] Conceit here, as in many other places, signifies conception, thought. So, in King Richard III.: "There's some conceit or other likes him well, "When that he bids good-morrow with such spirit." 8 MALONE. brooded] So the old copy. Mr. Pope reads-broadey'd, which alteration, however elegant, may be unnecessary. All animals while brooded, i. e. "with a brood of young ones under their protection," are remarkably vigilant.-The King says of Hamlet: 66 there's something in his soul "O'er which his melancholy sits on brood." In P. Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History, a broodie hen is the term for a hen that sits on eggs. See p. 301, edit. 1601: Milton also, in L'Allegro, desires Melancholy to Find out some uncouth cell "Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings: " plainly alluding to the watchfulness of fowls while they are sitting. Broad-eyed, however, is a compound epithet to be found in Chapman's version of the eighth Iliad : "And hinder broad-ey'd Jove's proud will-." STEEVENS. Brooded, I apprehend, is here used, with our author's usual I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts: HUB. So well, that what you bid me undertake, K. JOHN. And, wheresoe'er this foot of mine doth tread, HUB. And I will keep him so, That he shall not offend your majesty. licence, for brooding; i. e. day, who is as vigilant, as ready with open eye to mark what is done in his presence, as an animal at brood. Shakspeare appears to have been so fond of domestick and familiar images, that one cannot help being surprized that Mr. Pope, in revising these plays, should have gained so little knowledge of his manner as to suppose any corruption here in the text. MALOne. The same image is found in Beaumont and Fletcher's Borduca, Act IV. Sc. II. : "See how he broods the boy." Again, in The Woman's Prize, Act I. Sc. I.: "This fellow broods his master." Brooded is used for brooding by Shakspeare, (says Mr. Malone) with his usual licence. So delighted for delighting in Othello: "If virtue no delighted beauty lack." Discontenting for discontented: "Your discontenting father strive to qualify." And so in a multitude of other instances. BOSWELL. I am not thoroughly reconciled to this reading; but it would be somewhat improved by joining the words brooded and watchful by a hyphen-brooded-watchful. M. MASON. K. JOHN. Enough. I could be merry now: Hubert, I love thee; K. JOHN. [Exeunt. SCENE IV. The Same. The French King's Tent. Enter King PHILIP, LEWIS, PANDULPH, and Attend ants. K. PHI. So, by a roaring tempest on the flood, A whole armado 2 of convicted sail 3 9 Remember.] This is one of the scenes to which may be promised a lasting commendation. Art could add little to its perfection; no change in dramatick taste can injure it; and time itself can substract nothing from its beauties. STEEVENS. 1 For England, cousin :] The old copy "For England, cousin, go:" I have omitted the last useless and redundant word, which the eye of the compositor seems to have caught from the preceding hemistich. STEEVENS. King John, after he had taken Arthur prisoner, sent him to the town of Falaise, in Normandy, under the care of Hubert, his Chamberlain; from whence he was afterwards removed to Rouen, and delivered to the custody of Robert de Veypont. Here he was secretly put to death. MALONE. 2 A whole ARMADO] This similitude, as little as it makes for the purpose in hand, was, I do not question, a very taking one when the play was first represented; which was a winter or two at most after the Spanish invasion in 1588. It was in reference likewise to that glorious period that Shakspeare concludes his play in that triumphant manner: "This England never did, nor never shall, Is scatter'd and disjoin'd from fellowship. PAND. Courage and comfort! all shall yet go well. K. PHI. What can go well, when we have run so ill ? Are we not beaten? Is not Angiers lost? Arthur ta'en prisoner? divers dear friends slain? And bloody England into England gone, O'erbearing interruption, spite of France ? LEW. What he hath won, that hath he fortified: So hot a speed with such advice dispos'd, Such temperate order in so fierce a cause 1, Doth want example: Who hath read, or heard, Of any kindred action like to this? K. PHI. Well could I bear that England had this praise, So we could find some pattern of our shame. But the whole play abounds with touches relative to the then posture of affairs. WARBURTON. This play, so far as I can discover, was not played till a long time after the defeat of the armado. The old play, I think, wants this simile. The commentator should not have affirmed what he can only guess. JOHNSON. Armado is a Spanish word signifying a fleet of war. The armado in 1588 was called so by way of distinction. STEEVENS. 3 of CONVICTED sail-] Overpowered, baffled, destroyed. To convict and to convince were in our author's time synonymous. See Minsheu's Dictionary, 1617: "To convict, or convince, a Lat. convictus, overcome.' So, in Macbeth : 66 their malady convinces "The great assay of art." Mr. Pope, who ejected from the text almost every word that he did not understand, reads-collected sail; and the change was too hastily adopted by the subsequent editors. See also Florio's Italian Dictionary, 1598: "Convitto. Vanquished, convicted, convinced." MALONE. 4 in so fierce a CAUSE,] We should read course, i. e. march. The Oxford editor condescends to this emendation. WARBURTON. Change is needless. A fierce cause is a cause conducted with precipitation. Fierce wretchedness," in Timon, is, hasty, sudden misery. STEEVENS. 66 Enter CONSTance. Look, who comes here! a grave unto a soul; 5 - a grave unto a soul; 5 Holding the eternal spirit, against her will, In the vile prison of afflicted BREATH:] I think we should read earth. The passage seems to have been copied from Sir Thomas More: "If the body be to the soule a prison, how strait a prison maketh he the body, that stuffeth it with riff-raff, that the soule can have no room to stirre itself-but is, as it were, enclosed not in a prison, but in a grave." FARMER. There is surely no need of change. "The vile prison of afflicted breath," is the body, the prison in which the distressed soul is confined. We have the sanie image in King Henry VI. Part III. : "Now my soul's palace is become her prison." Again, more appositely, in his Rape of Lucrece : "Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast Again, in Sir John Davies's Nosce Teipsum : "As through the body's windows she must look." MALONE. Perhaps the old reading is justifiable. So, in Measure for Measure: "To be imprison'd in the viewless winds." STEEVens. It appears, from the amendment proposed by Farmer, and by the quotation adduced by Steevens in support of the old reading, that they both consider this passage in the same light, and suppose that King Philip intended to say, "that the breath was the prison of the soul; " but I think they have mistaken the sense of it; and that by "the vile prison of afflicted breath," he means the same vile prison in which the breath is confined; that is, the body. In the second scene of the fourth Act, King John says to Hubert, speaking of what passed in his own mind: "Nay, in the body of this fleshly land, 66 This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath, "Hostility and civil tumult reign." And Hubert says, in the following scene: |