Illustrations of Shakspeare, and of Ancient Manners: / with Dissertations on the Clowns and Fools of Shakspeare; on a Collection of Popular Tales Entitled Gesta Romanorum; and on the English Morris dance.

by Francis Douce

ACT IV.

Scene 2. Page 128.

Pemb. If what in rest you have, in right you hold.

Mr. Steevens would read wrest, which he explains to be violence. But surely "the murmuring lips of discontent" would not insinuate that John was an usurper; because the subsequent words, "in right you hold," would then be contradictory. One could not say, "if, being an usurper, you reign by right." The construction may therefore be more simple: "If the power you now possess in quiet be held by right, why should your fears," &c. The explanation given by Mr. Malone might have sufficed.

Scene 2. Page 137.

K. John. It is the curse of kings to be attended
By slaves that take their humours for a warrant
To break within the bloody house of life.

Mr. Malone ingeniously conceives this to be a covert apology for Elizabeth's conduct to the queen of Scots; yet it may be doubted whether any such apology would be thought necessary during the life of Elizabeth. May it not rather allude to the death of the earl of Essex? If this conjecture be well founded, it will serve to ascertain the date of the composition of the play, and to show that Meres had mistaken the older piece for Shakspeare's.

Scene 2. Page 139.

K. John. Or turn'd an eye of doubt upon my face,
As bid me tell my tale in express words.

And, and or, have been proposed instead of as, but without necessity. The words are elliptical in Shakspeare's manner, and only mean, "or turn'd such an eye of doubt as bid me," &c.

Scene 3. Page 142.

Sal. Two long days journey lords, or e'er we meet.

Dr. Percy has judiciously remarked that ever or e'er in this phrase is a useless augmentative, or being of itself equivalent to before. The corruption is not much older than Shakspeare's time. In some of the editions of Cranmer's Bible, Ecclesiastes xii. 6 is rendered, "Or ever the silver lace be taken away, and or ever the golden well be broken." In others the second ever is omitted. Wicliffe's translation, an invaluable monument of our language, has it, "er be to broke the silveren corde," &c. This is pure Saxon æꞃ or eꞃ; and so is our modern ere, often erroneously spelled e'er, as a supposed contraction of ever. Yet in Chaucer's time it had become or;

"For, par amour, I loved hir first or thou."

Knight's tale, v. 1155.

though some copies, both manuscript and printed, read er in this place as well as in others. Mr. Steevens seems properly to object to the orthography of ore.