ORL. You are the better at proverbs, by how much-A fool's bolt is soon shot. CON. You have shot over. ORL. 'Tis not the first time your were overshot. Enter a Messenger. MESS. My lord high constable, the English lie within fifteen hundred paces of your tent. CON. Who hath measured the ground? CON. A valiant and most expert gentleman.Would it were day!-Alas, poor Harry of England! he longs not for the dawning, as we do. 4 ORL. What a wretched and peevish fellow is this king of England, to mope with his fat-brained followers so far out of his knowledge! CON. If the English had any apprehension, they would run away 5. ORL. That they lack; for if their heads had any intellectual armour, they could never wear such heavy head-pieces. RAM. That Island of England breeds very valiant creatures; their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage. "The devill is dead, then hast thou lost a freende ; BOSWELL. 3 Would it were day!] Instead of this and the succeeding speeches, the quartos, 1600 and 1608, conclude this scene with a couplet : Come, come away; "The sun is high, and we wear out the day." STEEVENS. 4-peevish] In ancient language, signified-foolish, silly. Many examples of this are given in a note on Cymbeline, Act I. Sc. VII.: "He's strange and peevish." STEEVENS. they would run away.] It has been said that the French of the present day still persist in this reproach against our countrymen. BosWELL. ORL. Foolish curs! that run winking into the mouth of a Russian bear, and have their heads crushed like rotten apples: You may as well say,that's a valiant flea, that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion. CON. Just, just; and the men do sympathize with the mastiffs, in robustious and rough coming on, leaving their wits with their wives: and then give them great meals of beef, and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves, and fight like devils. ORL. Ay, but these English are shrewdly out of beef. CON. Then we shall find to-morrow-they have only stomachs to eat, and none to fight. Now is it time to arm: Come, shall we about it? ORL. It is now two o'clock: but, let me see, by ten, We shall have each a hundred Englishmen. [Exeunt. 5 give them great meals of BEEF,] So, in King Edward III. 1596: but scant them of their chines of beef, STEEVENS. 66 keep an Our author had the Chronicle in his thoughts: English man one month from his warm bed, fat beef, stale drink," &c. So also, in the old King Henry V.: 66 Why, take an Englishman out of his warm bed, "And his stale drink, but one moneth, 66 And, alas, what will become of him?" MALONE. Otway has the same thought in his Venice Preserved : "Give but an Englishman, &c. 66 Beef, and a sea-coal fire, he's yours for ever." BOSWELL. ACT IV. Enter CHORUS. CHOR. Now entertain conjecture of a time, When creeping murmur, and the poring dark, Fills the wide vessel of the universe ". From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night, The hum of either army stilly sounds 7, 6 Fills the wide vessel of the UNIVERSE.] Universe, for horizon: for we are not to think Shakspeare so ignorant as to magine it was night over the whole globe at once. He intimates he knew otherwise, by that fine line in A Midsummer Night's Dream : 66 following darkness like a dream." Besides, the image he employs shows he meant but half the globe; the horizon round, which has the shape of a vessel or goblet. WARBURTON. There is a better proof, that Shakspeare knew the order of night and day, in Macbeth: "Now o'er the one half world "Nature seems dead." But there was no great need of any justification. The universe, in its original sense, no more means this globe singly than the circuit of the horizon; but, however large in its philosophical sense, it may be poetically used for as much of the world as falls under observation. Let me remark further, that ignorance cannot be certainly inferred from inaccuracy. Knowledge is not always present. JOHNSON. 7 STILLY sounds,] A similar idea perhaps was meant to be given by Barnaby Googe, in his version of Palingenius, 1561: "Which with a pleasaunt hushyng sound, "Provok'd the ioyes of bed." Sæpe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro. Virg. Ecl. i. 56. STEEVENS. "-stilly sounds." i. e. gently, lowly. So, in the sacred writings: a still small voice." MALONE. 66 8 The secret whispers of each other's watch :] Holinshed says, that the distance between the two armies was but two hundred and fifty paces. MALONE. Fire answers fire; and through their paly flames Each battle sees the other's umber'd face': Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs Piercing the night's dull ear; and from the tents3, 9 Fire answers fire;] This circumstance is also taken from Holinshed: "—but at their coming into the village, fires were made (by the English) to give light on every side, as there likewise were in the French hoste." MALONE. I -the other's UMBER D face:] Of this epithet, used by Shakspeare in his description of fires reflected by night, Mr. Pope knew the value, and has transplanted it into the Iliad on a like occasion: "Whose umber'd arms by turns thick flashes send.” Umber is a brown colour. So, in As You Like It: "And with a kind of umber smirch my face." The distant visages of the soldiers would certainly appear of this hue, win beheld through the light of midnight fires. 66 Umber'd, however, may signify shaded. Thus Caxton tells us that he-" emprysed tenprinte [Tully on Old Age] under the umbre and shadow of King Edward IV." Again, in an old poem called The Castell of Labour, falshood is said to act "under the umbre of veryte." STEEVENS. Umber'd certainly means here discoloured by the gleam of the fires. Umber is a dark yellow earth, brought from Umbria, in Italy, which, being mixed with water, produces such a dusky yellow colour as the gleam of fire by night gives to the countenance. Our author's profession probably furnished him with this epithet; for from an old manuscript play in my possession, entitled The Telltale, it appears that umher was used in the stage-exhibitions of his time. In that piece one of the marginal directions is," He umbers her face." MALONE. 2 Piercing the night's DULL EAR;] lowing idea in Milton's L'Allegro : Hence perhaps the fol "And singing startle the dull night." STEEVENS. 3-and from the tents,] See the preparation for the battle between Palamon and Arcite, in Chaucer: "And on the morwe, when the day 'gan spring, "Of horse and harneis noise and clattering, "There was in the hostelries all aboute : "The fomy stedes on the golden bridel 66 Gnawing, and fast the armureres also With file and hammer priking to and fro," &c. T. WARTON. Thus also Statius, describing the preparations for the Trojan war: The armourers, accomplishing the knights, The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll, 5 innumerâ resonant incude Mycenæ. Achill. i. 414. STEEVENS. 3 The armourers, accomplishing the knights, With busy hammers closing RIVETS up.] This does not solely refer to the business of rivetting the plate armour before it was put on, but as to part, when it was on. Thus the top of the cuirass had a little projecting bit of iron, that passed through a hole pierced through the bottom of the casque. When both were put on, the smith or armourer presented himself, with his rivetting hammer, to close the rivet up; so that the party's head should remain steady notwithstanding the force of any blow that might be given on the cuirass or helmet. This custom more particularly prevailed in tournaments. See Varietés Historiques, 1752, 12mo. tom. ii. p. 73. Douce. And the third hour of drowsy morning NAME.] The old copy -nam'd. STEEVENS. How much better might we read thus ? "The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll, I have admitted this very necessary and elegant emendation. STEEVENS. Sir T. Hanmer, with almost equal probability, reads: "And the third hour of drowsy morning's nam'd." Over-LUSTY MALONE. -1 i. e. over-saucy. So, in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch: "Cassius's soldiers did shewe themselves verie stubborne and lustie in the campe," &c. STEEVENS. "Do the low-rated English play at dice ;] i. e. do play them away at dice. WARBURTON. From Holinshed; "The Frenchmen in the mean while, as though they had been sure of victory, made great triumphe, for the captaines had determined before how to divide the spoil, and the souldiers the night before had plaid the Englishmen at dice." MALONE. |