ACT I.
Scene 1. Page 357.
K. Hen. To be commenced in stronds afar remote.
This antiquated word, signifying shores, seems to have been entitled to some notice by the editors, as it cannot be familiar to every reader. We have now, perhaps accidentally, restored the original Saxon ꞅꞇꞃanꝺ.
Scene 1. Page 357.
K. Hen. No more the thirsty Erinnys of this soil
Shall daub her lips with her own childrens blood.
The original reads entrance, which is supported by Mr. Malone and also by Mr. Ritson, to whose authorities might be added the line in Spenser's Shepherds calendar;
"Quenching the gasping furrowes thirst with rayne."
The present reading was ingeniously suggested by Mr. Mason, and has been adopted by Mr. Steevens, who, vigorously maintaining its propriety, throws the gauntlet of defiance to all adversaries: but let us not be appalled!
To the assertion that a just and striking personification is all that is wanted on this emergency, the answer is, that we have it already. Soil is personified; they are her lips, and her children that are alluded to. With respect to Erinnys, notwithstanding the examples of typographical errors that are adduced, it is highly improbable that it should have been mistaken for entrance, a word which has three letters that are wanting in the other. Again, are the instances common, or rather do they exist at all, where the capital letter of a proper name has been lost in a corruption? And, lastly, to turn in part Mr. Steevens's own words against himself, it is not probable that Shakspeare would have "opened his play with a speech, the fifth line of which is obscure enough to demand a series of comments thrice as long as the dialogue to which it is appended;" or, it may be added, which contained a name of such unfrequent occurrence, and certainly unintelligible to the greatest part of the audience.
It is often expected, though perhaps rather unreasonably, that where an opinion is controverted, a better should be substituted; yet it does seem just that something at least, in value equal or nearly so, should be produced, and on this ground the following new reading is very diffidently offered:
"No more the thirsty entrails of this soil."
In Titus Andronicus we have the expression, "the ragged entrails of this pit." And in the Third part of King Henry VI.,
"What, hath thy fiery heart so parch'd thine entrails?"
Nothing that has been here advanced is calculated to maintain that the name of Erinnys must have been obscure to Shakspeare. One or two quotations have been already given from authorities that might have supplied him, to which the following shall now be added:
"Erinnis rage is growen so fel and fearce."
Last part of the mirour for magistrates, 1578, fo. 153.
"On me, ye swarth Erinnyes, fling the flames."
Turbervile's Ovid's epistles, sign. K. ij.
Scene 2. Page 367.
Fal. ... not by Phœbus,—he, that wandering knight so fair.
Falstaff, with great propriety, according to vulgar astronomy, calls the sun a wandering knight, and by this expression evidently alludes to some hero of romance. Now though the knight of the sun mentioned by Mr. Steevens, was doubtless a great wanderer, he was not more so than others of his profession; and therefore it is possible that Falstaff may refer to another person particularly known by the name of the wandering knight, and the hero of a spiritual romance translated in Shakspeare's time from the French by William Goodyeare, under the last-named title. It may be worth mentioning that in all probability John Bunyan used this work in the composition of his Pilgrim's progress.
Scene 2. Page 376.
Fal. 'S blood, I am as melancholy as a gib cat.
Captain Grose in his Dictionary of the vulgar tongue informs us that a gib cat is so called from Gilbert, the northern name for a he cat; and this is corroborated by the manner in which Chaucer has used the word in question;
"I mean but gyle, and follow that,
For right no more than Gibbe our cat
That awaiteth mice and rattes to killen."
Rom. of the rose.
The original French has "dam Thibert le chas," which proves that Gib was a proper name in Chaucer's time, whatever change it may have since undergone in its feline application. We see too the reason why a gib is a male cat. The melancholy of this animal has been sufficiently explained. Another quality belonging to him is thus ironically mentioned in the anonymous play of The politick whore, 1680; "as modest as a gib-cat at midnight."
Scene 2. Page 381.
Poins. What says sir John Sack-and-sugar?
In aid of Mr. Malone's conjecture that sack was so called as being a dry wine, vin sec, it may be remarked that the old orthography was secke and not sack. Dr. Boorde in his Regimente of health, 1562, 12mo, calls it so. In Hollyband's French schoolemaister, 1619, 12mo, we have "secke, du vin sec." Again, "Some of you chaplaines, get my lorde a cup of secke, to comfort his spirites." Ponet's Treatise of politike power, 1556, 12mo; and Cotgrave in his Dictionary, makes sack to be vin sec. This plausible etymology might have been wholly relied on, if an ingenious female traveller in speaking of the Tatar koumis, a preparation of mare's milk, had not informed us that she could not choose to partake of it out of the goatskin sacks in which it is carried "as the Spaniards," says she, "do their wine; which, by the by, is a practice so common in Spain, as to give the name of sack to a species of sweet wine once highly prized in Great Britain."—Guthrie's Tour through the Crimea, 1802, 4to, page 229. More stress is to be laid on this matter from a remarkable coincidence mentioned by Isidore of Seville, in his Etymologies, book iii. ch. 4, where he states saccatum to be a liquor made from water and the dregs of wine passed through a sack. See also Ducange Gloss. v. Saccatum, and Carpentier's supplement, v. Saquatum.
Whatever has been said in the course of the scattered notes concerning Falstaff's sack is so confused and contradictory, that it will be the duty of a future editor, either to concentrate them for the purpose of enabling the reader to deduce his own inference; or, rejecting them altogether in their present form, to extract from the materials they supply, the best opinion he may be able to form. There are two principal questions on the subject: 1. Whether sack was known in this country in the time of Henry the Fourth? 2. Whether it was a dry or a sweet wine when this play was written? The first is very easily solved; for there appears to be no mention of it till the 23rd year of Henry the Eighth, when a regulation was made that no malmseys, romineis, sackes nor other sweet wines, should be sold for more than three-pence a quart. The other question is full of difficulties, and the evidence relating to it very contradictory. We see it was a sweet wine before Shakspeare's time, a circumstance that may be noticed as adverse to the etymology of sec. But if it was sweet, whence the use of sugar, which we do not find to have been added to other sweet wines? The testimony of Dr. Venner proves that sack was drunk either with or without sugar, according to the palate. The quality of this wine, originally sweet and luscious, might have undergone a change, or else some other Spanish wine less saccharine in its nature might have obtained the name of sack.
Scene 2. Page 385.
Poins. ... and sirrah, I have cases of buckram, &c.
Mr. Malone has in this and some other places maintained that sirrah was not used as a term of disrespect in Shakspeare's time; but the learned commentator would probably have revised his opinion had he recollected the quarrel between Vernon and Basset in the first part of Henry the Sixth, where, in the most opprobrious manner, sirrah is answered by villain. It seems to have been used much in the same way as at present, sometimes expressing anger and contempt, yet more frequently in a milder way when addressed to children and servants. It was even applied to women.
Scene 3. Page 399.
Hot. And if the Devil come and roar for them.
This line would be highly relished by an audience accustomed in Shakspeare's time to "Satan's chaunt," on some of the minor stages. On the theatrical roaring of the Devil, see the notes of Messrs. Steevens and Malone in King Henry V. Act IV.
Scene 3. Page 403.
Wor. As to o'er-walk a current, roaring loud,
On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.
He seems to allude to the practice of making a bridge by means of a sword or a spear sometimes adopted by the heroes of ancient chivalry. See Lancelot of the lake, and other similar romances. Such an incident is represented on an ivory chest engraved in the first volume of Mr. Carter's Specimens of ancient sculpture and painting.
Scene 3. Page 407.
Hot. And that same sword-and-buckler prince of Wales.
To convey to the reader a complete idea of a sword-and-buckler man of Shakspeare's time, the following print of a young Englishman is exhibited. It is taken from the collection of dresses designed by Titian, and said to have been engraved on wood by his brother Cesar Vecelli, the editor of which remarks that the English youths then made great use of the sword and buckler. A similar figure occurs in the frontispiece to Cranmer's Bible, designed by Holbein, which has been most unfaithfully copied in Lewis's History of the translations of the bible. Mr. Strutt has given more correct copies of the man with the buckler in his Manners and customs of the inhabitants of England, vol. iii. pl. xii. and in his Dress and habits of the people of England, pl. cxxxviii.
The subject receives much illustration from a passage in Stowe's chronicle, p. 869, edit. 1634: "Untill about the twelfe or thirteenth yeere of Queene Elizabeth the auncient English fight of sword and buckler was onely had in use: the bucklers then being but a foote broad, with a pike of foure or five inches long. Then they began to make them full halfe ell broad with sharpe pikes ten or twelve inches long wherewith they meant either to breake the swords of their enemies, if it hit upon the pike, or els suddenly to run within them and stabbe, and thrust their buckler with the pike, into the face, arme or body of their adversary; but this continued not long. Every haberdasher then sold bucklers." The above historian had, no doubt, good authority for what he says respecting the length of the pike; but it is certain that in the eighth year of Elizabeth a proclamation was issued by which no person was permitted to wear any sword or rapier that should exceed the length of one yard and half a quarter in the blade, nor any dagger above the length of twelve inches in the blade, nor any buckler with a point or pike exceeding the length of two inches. The mode of wearing the buckler at the back may be seen in the cut p. 209.
Scene 3. Page 407.
Hot. I'd have him poison'd with a pot of ale.
Mr. Steevens suggests that this speech has reference to the prince of Wales's pot companions, and Dr. Grey to the manner of King John's death. It will indeed suit either of those circumstances. But this remark has been principally made for the purpose of correcting an error of long standing with respect to what has been generally called Caxton's chronicle. Dr. Grey, relying perhaps on Bale or Nicolson, has inaccurately cited Caxton's Fructus temporum for the account of King John's death; yet this work was never printed by Caxton under that title. It was professedly compiled by a schoolmaster of Saint Alban's, and originally printed in that city in 1483. In this form it is properly called The Saint Alban's chronicle, and is in fact a republication of one attributed to Caxton, with some additions at the beginning and end. The original often occurs in manuscript both in French and English; and, from the evidence of an ancient note in one copy preserved among the Harleian manuscripts, appears to have been composed by a monk of Glastonbury, named Douglas, who in the early part of it has copied Geoffrey of Monmouth. This work has been commonly ascribed to Caxton, and is often cited, even by old writers, under the name of his chronicle, though he only made a trifling addition by a continuation to his own time. It is likewise supposed to have been originally printed by him, but this is in all probability a mistake; for there is an edition undoubtedly printed by William Machlinia without date, which had escaped the observation of the correct and industrious Herbert. The type is the same as that used in the Speculum Christiani. This is presumed to be the prior edition which is spoken of in the prologue to that which Caxton printed in 1480, and there is no proof whatever that he printed any edition before that year.