IV. 2. 27. The reading 'seal,' which has been attributed to Mr Collier's MS. corrector, we have assigned to Capell, considering that we are justified in doing so, because in his Various Readings (part I. p. 52) he has the note 'Seal 1st F.—.' We think it clear that he inadvertently attributed a conjecture of his own to the first and following Folios. The manner in which the entry is made in his MS., which we have consulted, confirms this view.
[Note XIII.]
IV. 4, and IV. 5. The Jerusalem Chamber in which the king died belonged, as Holinshed tells us (p. 1162, col. 2, ed. 1577), to the Abbot of Westminster. The same authority states that he was first taken ill not in the Jerusalem Chamber, as Shakespeare says (IV. 5. 233, 234), but when paying his devotions at the shrine of S. Edward.
Although neither the Folios nor any more recent editors make a change of scene after line 132, we have ventured to do so, for, as Mr Dyce says, 'In fact the audience of Shakespeare's time were to suppose that a change of scene took place as soon as the king was laid on the bed.' (On the same principle, all editors except Rowe have made a new scene to begin after IV. I. 228, where no change is marked in the Folios.)
Capell's stage direction is not satisfactory, for it implies a change of scene, though none is indicated in the text. The king's couch would not be placed in a recess at the back of the stage, because he has to make speeches from it of considerable length. He must therefore be lying in front of the stage where he could be seen and heard by the audience.
[Note XIV.]
IV. 5. 60, &c. We give Pope's arrangement of this passage in full:
'K. Henry. The Prince hath ta'en it hence; go seek him out.
Is he so hasty, that he doth suppose
My sleep my death? find him, my lord of Warwick,
And chide him hither strait; this part of his
Conjoins with my disease, and helps to end me.
See, sons, what things you are! how quickly nature
Falls to revolt, when gold becomes her object?
For this, the foolish over-careful fathers
Have broke their sleeps with thought, their brains with care,
Their bones with industry: for this engrossed
The canker'd heaps of strange-atchieved gold:
For this, they have been thoughtful to invest
Their sons with arts and martial exercises:
When, like the Bee, culling from ev'ry Flow'r,
Our thighs are packt with wax, our mouths with honey &c.'