I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts: 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. K. JOHN. Death. HUB. K. JOHN. HUB. My lord? A grave. He shall not live. 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. I could be merry now: Hubert, I love thee; For England, cousin', go: [Exeunt. Enough. 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 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. 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? LEW. What he hath won, that hath he fortified: 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. 3 Armado is a Spanish word signifying a fleet of war. The armado in 1588 was called so by way of distinction. STEEVENS. - 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 : "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. Enter CONSTtance. Look, who comes here! a grave unto a soul; 5 a grave unto a soul; 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 "A harmful knife, that thence her soul unsheath'd; "That blow did bail it from the deep unrest "Of that polluted prison where it breath'd." Again, in Sir John Davies's Nosce Teipsum : "Yet in the body's prison so she lies, "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, "This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath, And Hubert says, in the following scene: CONST. Lo, now! now see the issue of your peace! K. PHI. Patience, good lady! comfort, gentle Constance ! CONST. No, I defy all counsel, all redress, And I will kiss thy détestable bones; Come, grin on me; and I will think thou smil'st, "If I, in act, consent, or sin of thought, It is evident that, in this last passage, the breath is considered as embounded in the body; but I will not venture to assert that the same inference may with equal certainty be drawn from the former. M. MASON. 6 No, I DEFY, &c.] So, in Romeo and Juliet : To defy anciently signified to refuse. "I do defy thy commiseration." STEEVENS. 7 And stop this GAP OF BREATH] The gap of breath is the mouth; the outlet from whence the breath issues. MALONE. 8 And Buss thee as thy wife!] Thus the old copy. The word buss, however, being now only used in vulgar language, our modern editors have exchanged it for kiss. The former is used by Drayton, in the third canto of his Barons' Wars, where Queen Isabel says: "And we by signs sent many a secret buss." Again, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. iii. c. x. : "But every satyre first did give a busse "To Hellenore; so busses did abound." Again, Stanyhurst, the translator of Virgil, 1582, renders |
