To Bristol castle; which, they say, is held For I am loath to break our country's laws. Nor friends, nor foes, to me welcome you are: Things past redress, are now with me past care. SCENE IV6. A Camp in Wales. Énter SALISBURY', and a Captain. [Exeunt. CAP. My lord of Salisbury, we have staid ten days, And hardly kept our countrymen together, 4 It may be, I will go WITH YOU :-but yet I'll pause ;] I suspect the words with you, which spoil the metre, to be another interpolation. STEEVENS. 5 Things past redress, are now with me past care.] So, in Macbeth: Things without remedy, "Should be without regard." STEEVENS. 6 Scene IV.] Here is a scene so unartfully and irregularly thrust into an improper place, that I cannot but suspect it accidentally transposed; which, when the scenes were written on single pages, might easily happen in the wildness of Shakspeare's drama. This dialogue was, in the author's draught, probably the second scene in the ensuing act, and there I would advise the reader to insert it, though I have not ventured on so bold a change. My conjecture is not so presumptuous as may be thought. The play was not, in Shakspeare's time, broken into Acts; the editions published before his death, exhibit only a sequence of scenes from the beginning to the end, without any hint of a pause of action. In a drama so desultory and erratic, left in such a state, transpositions might easily be made. JOHNSON. 7 Salisbury,] Was John Montacute, Earl of Salisbury. WALPOLE. And yet we hear no tidings from the king; man; The king reposeth all his confidence in thee. CAP. 'Tis thought, the king is dead; we will not stay. The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd", These signs forerun the death or fall of kings. The bay-trees, &c.] This enumeration of prodigies is in the highest degree poetical and striking. JOHNSON. Some of these prodigies are found in Holinshed: "In this yeare in a manner throughout all the realme of England, old baie trees wither'd," &c. This was esteemed a bad omen; for, as I learn from Thomas Lupton's Syxt Booke of Notable Thinges, 4to. bl. 1.: "Neyther falling sycknes, neyther devyll, wyll infest or hurt one in that place whereas a Bay tree is. The Romaynes calles it the plant of the good angell," &c. STEEVENS. Evelyn says, "Amongst other things, it has of old been observed, that the bay is ominous of some funest accident, if that be so accounted which Suetonius (in Galba) affirms to have happened before the death of the monster Nero, when these trees generally withered to the very roots in a very mild winter and much later; that in the year 1629, when at Padua, preceding a great pestilence, almost all the Bay trees about that famous university grew sick and perished: Certo quasi præsagio, (says my author,) Apollinem Musasque, subsequenti anno urbe illa bonarum literarum domicilio excessuras.' (Sylva, 4to. 1776, p. 396.) REED. Fall to the base earth from the firmament! [Exit. ACT III. SCENE I. BOLINGBROKE's Camp at Bristol. Enter BOLINGBROKE, YORK, NORTHUMBERLAND, PERCY, WILLOUGHBY, Ross: Officers behind with BUSHY and GREEN, prisoners. BOLING. Bring forth these men. Bushy, and Green, I will not vex your souls 9 clean.] i. e. quite, completely. REED. So, in our author's 75th Sonnet : “And by and by, clean starved for a look." MALONE. You have, in manner, with your sinful hours, Made a divorce betwixt his queen and him ; Broke the possession of a royal bed,] There is, I believe, no authority for this. Isabel, the queen of the present play, was but nine years old. Richard's first queen, Anne, died in 1392, and the king was extremely fond of her. MALONE. And stain'd the beauty of a fair queen's cheeks With tears drawn from her eyes by your foul wrongs. Myself—a prince, by fortune of my birth; 3 This and much more, much more than twice all this, 2 DISPARK'D my parks,] To dispark is to throw down the hedges of an enclosure. Dissepio. I meet with the word in Barrett's Alvearie or Quadruple Dictionary, 1580. It also occurs in The Establishment of Prince Henry, 1610: "Forestes and Parkes of the Prince's disparked and in Lease," &c. STEEVENS. "Dispark'd my parks." Mr. Steevens supposed that to dispark signified" to throw down the hedges of an enclosure," but this is not the meaning of the term. To dispark, is a legal term, and signifies, to divest a park, constituted by royal grant or prescription, of its name and character, by destroying the enclosures of such a park, and also the vert (or whatever bears green leaves, whether wood or underwood,) and the beasts of chase therein; and laying it open. MALONE. 3 From my own windows torn my household coat,] It was the practice when coloured glass was in use, of which there are still some remains in old seats and churches, to anneal the arms of the family in the windows of the house. JOHNSON. 4 Raz'd out my IMPRESS, &c.] The impress was a device or motto. Ferne, in his Blazon of Gentry, 1585, observes, "that the arms, &c. of traitors and rebels may be defaced and removed, wheresoever they are fixed, or set." STEEVENS. For the punishment of a base knight, see Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. v. c. iii. st. 37. Malone. Condemns you to the death:-See them deliver'd over To execution and the hand of death. BUSHY. More welcome is the stroke of death to me, Than Bolingbroke to England.-Lords, farewell. GREEN. My comfort is, that heaven will take our souls, And plague injustice with the pains of hell. BOLING. My lord Northumberland, see them dispatch'd. [Exeunt NORTHumberland and Others, with Uncle, you say the queen is at your house; BOLING. Thanks, gentle uncle.-Come, lords, away; To fight with Glendower and his complices; 5 Thanks, gentle uncle.-Come, lords, away; [Exeunt. TO FIGHT WITH GLENDOWER AND HIS COMPLICES; Awhile to work, and, after, holiday.] Though the intermediate line has taken possession of all the old copies, I have great suspicion of its being an interpolation: and have therefore ventured to throw it out. The first and third lines rhyme to each other; nor do I imagine this was casual, but intended by the poet. Were we to acknowledge the line genuine, it must argue the poet of forgetfulness and inattention to history. Bolingbroke is, as it were, but just arrived; he is now at Bristol, weak in his numbers; has had no meeting with a parliament; nor is so far assured of the succession, as to think of going to suppress insurrections before he is planted in the throne. Besides, we find the opposition of Glendower begins The First Part of King Henry IV. and Mortimer's defeat by that hardy Welchman is the tidings of the first scene of that play. Again, though Glendower, in the very first year of King Henry IV. beginning to be troublesome, put in for the supremacy of Wales, and imprisoned Mortimer; yet it was |