Enter the Archbishop of York, Mowbray, Hastings, and others.

Arch. What is this forest call'd?

Hast. 'Tis Gaultree Forest, an 't shall please your

grace.

Arch. Here stand, my lords; and send discoverers

forth

To know the numbers of our enemies. Hast. We have sent forth already.

Arch.

"Tis well done.
My friends and brethren in these great affairs,
I must acquaint you that I have received
New-dated letters from Northumberland;
Their cold intent, tenor and substance, thus:
Here doth he wish his person, with such pow-

ers

10

As might hold sortance with his quality,
The which he could not levy; whereupon
He is retired, to ripe his growing fortunes,
To Scotland: and concludes in hearty prayers

11. "hold sortance with"; sort with, be in keeping with.-C. H. H.

That your attempts may overlive the hazard

And fearful meeting of their opposite.

Mowb. Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground

And dash themselves to pieces.

Hast.

Enter a Messenger.

Now, what news?

20

Mess. West of this forest, scarcely off a mile,
In goodly form comes on the enemy;
And, by the ground they hide, I judge their
number

Upon or near the rate of thirty thousand. Mowb. The just proportion that we gave them

out.

Let us sway on and face them in the field. Arch. What well-appointed leader fronts us here? Enter Westmoreland.

Mowb. I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland. West. Health and fair greeting from our general, The prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster. Arch. Say on, my Lord of Westmoreland, in

peace:

What doth concern your coming?

West.

Then, my lord, 30
Unto your grace do I in chief address

The substance of my speech. If that rebellion
Came like itself, in base and abject routs,
Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags,

25. "well-appointed"; completely accoutered.-H. N. H.
30. "What does your coming import?”—C. H. H.

34. "bloody; guarded"; Baret carefully distinguishes between

I

And countenanced by boys and beggary;
say,
if damn'd commotion so appear'd,
In his true, native and most proper shape,
You, reverend father, and these noble lords
Had not been here, to dress the ugly form
Of base and bloody insurrection

40

With your fair honors. You, lord Archbishop,
Whose see is by a civil peace maintain'd,
Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath
touch'd,

Whose learning and good letters peace hath
tutor❜d,

Whose white investments figure innocence,

The dove and very blessed spirit of peace,
Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself
Out of the speech of peace that bears such
grace,

Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war;
Turning your books to graves, your ink to
blood,

50

Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine To a loud trumpet and a point of war? Arch. Wherefore do I this? so the question stands. Briefly to this end: we are all diseased,

bloody, full of blood, sanguineous, and bloody, desirous of blood, sanguinarius. In this speech Shakespeare uses the word in both senses.-"Guarded" is a metaphor taken from dress; to guard being to ornament with guards or facings.-H. N. H.

45. "investments"; formerly all bishops wore white, even when they traveled. This white investment was the episcopal rochet.— H. N. H.

50. "graves"; Warburton proposed glaives, Steevens greaves; which latter Singer approves and remarks "that greaves, or leg-armour, is sometimes spelt graves." Mr. Verplanck concurs in the same emendation.-H. N. H.

And with our surfeiting and wanton hours
Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,
And we must bleed for it; of which disease
Our late king, Richard, being infected, died.
But, my most noble Lord of Westmoreland,
I take not on me here as a physician,
Nor do I as an enemy to peace

60

Troop in the throngs of military men;
But rather show a while like fearful war,
To diet rank minds sick of happiness,
And purge the obstructions which begin to stop
Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.
I have in equal balance justly weigh'd

What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs
we suffer,

And find our griefs heavier than our offenses.
We see which way the stream of time doth run,
And are enforced from our most quiet there 71
By the rough torrent of occasion;

And have the summary of all our griefs,
When time shall serve, to show in articles;
Which long ere this we offer'd to the king,
And might by no suit gain our audience:
When we are wrong'd and would unfold our
griefs,

We are denied access unto his

55-79. Omitted in Q.-I. G.

person

60. “I take not on me as"; I do not assume the part of.-C. H. H. 71. "our most quiet there"; our perfect acquiescence in its course. The idea is that of smoothly running waters suddenly diverted by the inrush of a turbulent torrent.-C. H. H.

"there"; the reading of the Ff.; Hanmer conjectured "sphere”; Collier "chair."-I. G.

Even by those men that most have done us

wrong.

80

The dangers of the days but newly gone, Whose memory is written on the earth With yet appearing blood, and the examples Of every minute's instance, present now, Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms, Not to break peace or any branch of it, But to establish here a peace indeed, Concurring both in name and quality. West. When ever yet was your appeal denied? Wherein have you been galled by the king? 89 What peer hath been suborn'd to grate on you, That you should seal this lawless bloody book Of forged rebellion with a seal divine, And consecrate commotion's bitter edge?

82. "examples of every minute's instance"; are examples which every minute instances or supplies.-H. N. H.

93. That is, the edge of bitter strife and commotion; the sword of rebellion.-H. N. H.

Neither this line nor 95 is to be found in the Ff., and they are omitted in some copies of the Q. To some corruption of the text is due the obscurity of ll. 94-96, which Clarke paraphrases: "The grievances of my brother general, the commonwealth, and the home cruelty to my born brother, cause me to make this quarrel my own." The archbishop's brother had been beheaded by the king's order.-I. G.

This most obscure passage seems quite incapable of a satisfactory explanation. Perhaps the best is that proposed by Monck Mason: "My brother-general makes the commonwealth his cause of quarrel; an household cruelty to one born my brother I make my quarrel in particular"; which, however unsatisfactory otherwise, has the merit of agreeing very well with what Worcester says in The First Part, Act i. sc. 3: "The archbishop,-who bears hard his brother's death at Bristol, the lord Scroop." Dr. Johnson would read, "My quarrel general," which is perhaps worth considering, as it makes a sort of antithesis between general and particular, where something of the kind seems intended. The meaning in that case would be,―The