Had been a little ratsbane for thy sake! Or else, when thou didst keep my lambs a-field, 30 [Exit. York. Take her away; for she hath lived too long 35 Puc. First, let me tell you whom you have condemn'd: Not me begotten of a shepherd swain, But issued from the progeny of kings; 29. ratsbane] Mentioned again 2 Henry IV. 1. ii. 48, and King Lear, III. iv. 55. The only example in New Eng. Dict. of an earlier date than this (which is not cited) is from a Church Warden's account. Ratsbane was sublimate. Compare Jonson's and Chapman's Eastward Ho! Iv. i.: "Take arsenic, otherwise called realga, which indeed is plain ratsbane, sublime 'hem three or four times." And Every Man in his Humour, II. iii.: "Its little better than ratsbane or rosaker." And Epicene, 11. i. "take a little sublimate and go out of the world like a rat." 32. drab] strumpet. Frequent in Shakespeare. 40. inspiration of celestial grace] See extract at v. iii. 30: "This woman was not inspyred with the Holy Ghost, 40 45 50 55 nor sent from God (as the Frenchmen beleeue) but an enchantress" (Hall). 43. polluted with] Not again in Shakespeare. Pucelle's language is intentionally Biblical. Compare Ezekiel xxiii. 17, 30, xx. 31, etc. 49. misconceived] Not again in Shakespeare. Peele (?) has a good passage in Jack Straw (Hazlitt's Dodsley, v. 384) "The Multitude, a beast of many heads, Of misconceiving and misconstruing minds." The word is found in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. 52, 53. blood . . cry for vengeance] Compare Richard II. 1. i. 104-106:"Whose blood cries To me for justice (Genesis iv. 10). 56. Spare for no faggots] Compare Much Ado About Nothing, 111. v. 66: Place barrels of pitch upon the fatal stake, Puc. Will nothing turn your unrelenting hearts? That warranteth by law to be thy privilege. I am with child, ye bloody homicides: 60 York. Now heaven forfend! the holy maid with child! I did imagine what would be her refuge. York. Alençon! that notorious Machiavel: 60. discover] Ff 3, 4; discovet Ff 1, 2. "We will spare for no wit"; and Romeo no cost: Tell him Orlando sends for An- And Grafton, i. 339: "Eche of them no cost. 59. unrelenting] Occurs again 3 Henry 62. homicides] See 1. ii. 25 above. 74. Alençon ! that notorious Machi- 65 70 74. Machiavel] Machevile Ff 1, 2, 3; Harvey says: "So Cæsar Borgia, the It dies an if it had a thousand lives. 'Twas neither Charles nor yet the duke I nam'd, War. It's sign she hath been liberal and free. Strumpet, thy words condemn thy brat and thee: Puc. Then lead me hence; with whom I leave my curse : land (p. 238). York's remark is there- 84. Strumpet, thy words condemn To ende her burning lust in flames Boswell Stone quotes here from Holin- 75 80 85 strumpet, and (unmaried as she was) to be with child. For triall, the lord regent's lenitie gave hir nine moneths staie, at the end wherof she (found herein as false . . .) was thereupon deliuered ouer to secular power, and so executed." 87. sun reflex his beams] This verb is not found again in Shakespeare. The phrasing is Marlowe's: "For neither rain can fall upon the earth, Nor sun reflex his virtuous beams thereon (Tamburlaine, Part I. III. ii. (20, a), 1586). One is inclined to give Marlowe credit for a good deal of the savagery here, such as lies in lines 87-93. See 88. make abode] dwell, live. again Two Gentlemen of Verona, Iv. iii. 23, and King Lear, 1. i. 136. Drayton uses it in his Heroical Epistles. 89. darkness death] Malone points out that this is scriptural: "to give light to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death." 89. gloomy] Occurs again only in Titus Andronicus, IV. i. 53, and Lucrece, 803. Another example of the many words seemingly deliberately dropped out of Shakespeare's later work. Glooming" is in Romeo and Juliet, v. iii. 305. Both forms occur in the first book of the Faerie Queene: "A little glooming light, much like a shade" (1. i. 14); "a gloomy glade" (1. vii. 4). Peele has "gloomy several times : gloomy Time sat whipping on the team" (Polyhymnia). And Alcazar, IV. 90 [Exit, guarded. Environ you, till mischief and despair York. Break thou in pieces and consume to ashes, 95 Enter Cardinal BEAUFORT, Bishop of WINCHESTER, attended. After the slaughter of so many peers, 93. Enter Cardinal Beaufort, attended Capell. travail] travel Ff. 100 105 IIO .] Enter Cardinall Ff (after line 91); Enter Cardinal 101. matter] F 1; matters Ff 2, 3, 4. ii.: "Best, then, betimes t' avoid this gloomy storm.' And David and Bethsabe (473, a): "hurls through the gloomy air, His radiant beams." New Eng. Dict. has Titus Andronicus, dated 1588, as earliest use. This date follows Fleay (Manual), an unreliable authority who rejected that date later placing it not earlier than 1593 (for Shakespeare's part), which is probably correct. Golding gives the word's evolution: " some mistie cloud that ginnes to gloom and loure" (Ovid, vi. 292). 93. minister] servant. 93. Enter Cardinal Beaufort. For the negotiations here referred to, see extract at the beginning of this Act. There is a certain quiet dignity and 102. strength in the remainder of this scene that is quite in the way of Shakespeare. There is no need to question this authority. It is altogether outside Greene or Marlowe's work. But although we meet the language of Shakespeare, we look in vain for his genius. 99. aspiring French] This is again like Marlowe. “Th' aspiring Guise” occurs several times in The Massacre at Paris; "aspiring Lancaster" in Edward the Second (184, b). Greene has Aspiring traitor' in George-a-Greene (xiv. 161). In this sense of ambitious (applied to a person or persons) it is scarcely met with in Shakespeare, but Spenser used it. 66 112. realm of France] See note at II. ii. 36. It shall be with such strict and severe covenants 115 Enter CHARLES, ALENÇON, Bastard, REIGNIER, and others. Cha. Since, lords of England, it is thus agreed That peaceful truce shall be proclaim'd in France, What the conditions of that league must be. York. Speak, Winchester; for boiling choler chokes Car. Charles, and the rest, it is enacted thus: That, in regard King Henry gives consent, Alen. Must he be then as shadow of himself? 120 125 130 and others] Capell; omitted Ff. 133. as] a F 4. 115. Bastard] Ff; omitted Capell. 121. poison'd] prison'd Theobald. 120. boiling] In this sense is selected for ridicule in Midsummer Night's Dream. Compare Grafton's Continuation of Hardyng, p. 583: “his wickednes boylyng so hote within his brest." 120, 121. choler chokes ... passage of my voice] Compare Marlowe, Tamburlaine, Part II. III. ii. : 'My mother's death hath mortified my mind A world of dreadful sins holp there Prisons were very poisoned places. And sorrow stops the passage of Compare (Peele's) Jack Straw :- Developed by? 121. poison'd] Theobald's emendation is very probably correct. But compare Othello, v. ii. 364, and Coriolanus, v. ii. 92, for the obsolete sense of "destroy' which the verb had. There is much more to be said for " prison " here than in Love's Labour's Lost, IV. iii. 302 (Arden edition, p. 103, note), where Theobald would also make the alteration. It was an old confusion with printers. Peele has "O deadly wound that passeth by mine eye, The fatal poison of my swelling heart" "And though his looks bewray such lenity Yet at advantage he can use extremity" (Hazlitt's Dodsley, v. 388). And Selimus (Grosart's Greene, xiv. 210): "My lenitie addes fuel to his fire." 131. viceroy] Compare Tamburlaine, Part II. v. i. (69, a): "Come, Asian viceroys." See below, 1. 143. Only again (jocularly) in The Tempest. 133-135. shadow substance] See note, II. iii. 37. Shakespeare never wearied of knocking these two words together. |