KING HENRY VIII. ACT I. SCENE I. London. An Antechamber in the Palace. Enter the DUKE of NORFOLK, at one door; at the other, the DUKE of BUCKINGHAM, and the LORD ABERGAVENNY1. Buckingham. GOOD morrow, and well met. How have you done, Nor. I thank your grace: Since last we saw in France? Healthful; and ever since a fresh admirer Of what I saw there. Buck. An untimely ague Stay'd me a prisoner in my chamber, when Nor. 'Twixt Guynes and Arde3: 1 George Nevill, who married Mary, daughter of Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham. 2 Pope has borrowed this phrase in his Imitation of Horace's Epistle to Augustus, ver. 22:— "Those suns of glory please not till they set.' 3 Guynes then belonged to the English, and Arde (Ardres) to the French; they are towns of Picardy: the valley where Henry VII. and Francis I. met lies between them. 4 I was then present, saw them salute on horseback; Beheld them, when they lighted, how they clung In their embracement, as they grew together; Which had they, what four thron'd ones could have weigh'd Such a compounded one? Buck. All the whole time I was my chamber's prisoner. Nor. Then you lost The view of earthly glory: Men might say, Till this time, pomp was single; but now married To one above itself. Each following day Became the next day's master, till the last Made former wonders it's5: To-day, the French, All clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods, Shone down the English: and, to-morrow, they Made Britain, India: every man, that stood, Show'd like a mine. Their dwarfish pages were As cherubins, all gilt: the madams too, Not us'd to toil, did almost sweat to bear The pride upon them, that their very labour Was to them as a painting: now this mask Was cry'd incomparable; and the ensuing night Made it a fool, and beggar. The two kings, Equal in lustre, were now best, now worst, As presence did present them; him in eye, 4 As for as if. We have the same image in Shakspeare's Venus and Adonis : a sweet embrace Incorporate then they seem; face grows to face.' 5 Dies diem docet. Every day learned something from the preceding, till the concluding day collected all the splendour of all the former shows. 6 i. e. glittering, shining. Clarendon uses the word in his description of the Spanish Juegos de Toros. And in a Memorable Masque, &c. performed before King James at Whitehall, in 1613, at the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth :— his buskins clinquant as his other attire.'. Still him in praise: and, being present both, 'Twas said, they saw but one; and no discerner Durst wag his tongue in censure 7. When these suns (For so they phrase them) by their heralds challeng'd The noble spirits to arms, they did perform Being now seen possible enough, got credit, Buck. O, you go far. Order gave each thing view; the office did Buck. Who did guide, I mean, who set the body and the limbs Of this great sport together, as you guess? 7 i. e. in judgment, which had the noblest appearance. So Dryden : Two chiefs So match'd as each seem'd worthiest when alone.' 8 The old romantic legend of Bevis of Hampton. This Bevis (or Beavois) a Saxon, was for his prowess created earl of Southampton by William the Conqueror. See Camden's Britannia. 9 The course of these triumphs, however well related, must lose in the description part of that spirit and energy which were expressed in the real action. The commission for regulating them was well executed, and gave exactly to every particular person and action the proper place. 10 Certes, i. e. certainly, is here used as a monosyllable. 11 No initiation, no previous practice. Elements are the first principles of things, or rudiments of knowledge. The word is here applied, not without a catachresis, to a person. Buck. I pray you, who, my lord? Nor. All this was order'd by the good discretion Of the right reverend cardinal of York. Buck. The devil speed him! no man's pie is free'd From his ambitious finger. What had he To do in these fierce 12 vanities? I wonder, very bulk o' the beneficial sun, Take the Surely, sir, Nor. There's in him stuff that puts him to these ends; For, being not propp'd by ancestry (whose grace Chalks successors their way), nor call'd upon For high feats done to the crown; neither allied To eminent assistants, but, spider-like, Out of his self-drawing web, he gives us note, The force of his own merit makes his way; A gift that heaven gives for him, which buys A place next to the king. Aber. I cannot tell What heaven hath given him, let some graver eye Pierce into that; but I can see his pride Peep through each part of him: Whence has he that? 12 Johnson remarks that fierce is here used, like the French fier, for proud; and Steevens observes that the Puritan, in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, says, the hobby-horse' is a fierce and rank idol. Our ancestors appear to have used the word in the sense of arrogant, outrageous: and the use of the Latin ferox is as likely to have suggested it as the French fier. The word has a different meaning in the passage cited from Timon of Athens, Act iv. Sc. 4. See note there. In the Rape of Lucrece we have Thy violent vanities can never last.' 13 A round lump of fat. The Prince calls Falstaff tallow-keech in the First Part of King Henry IV. Act ii. Sc. 4. It has been thought that there was some allusion here to the Cardinal, being reputed the son of a butcher. We have 'Good wife Keech, the butcher's wife,' mentioned by Dame Quickly, in King Henry IV. Part 11. Act ii. Sc. 1. If not from hell, the devil is a niggard; Why the devil, Buck. Upon this French going-out, took he upon him, Without the privity o' the king, to appoint Who should attend on him? He makes up the file 14 Of all the gentry; for the most part such Too, whom as great a charge as little honour He meant to lay upon; and his own letter, The honourable board of council out, Must fetch him in he papers 15. Aber. I do know Kinsmen of mine, three at the least, that have Buck. 14 List. 15 He papers, a verb; i. e. his own letter, by his own single authority, and without the concurrence of the council, must fetch him in whom he papers down. Wolsey published a list of the several persons whom he had appointed to attend on the king at this interview, and addressed his letters to them. See Hall and Holinshed, or Rymer's Fœdera, vol. xiii. 16 In the ancient Interlude of Nature, blk. 1. no date, apparently printed in the reign of King Henry VIII. a similar stroke is aimed at this expensive expedition : Pryde. I am unhappy, I se it wel, For the expence of myne apparell What in horses and other aray, So in King John, Act ii. Sc. 1 :— 'Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs.' And Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. 1634, p. 482 :'Tis an ordinary thing to put a thousand okes, or an hundred oxen, into a sute of apparell, to weare a whole manor on his back.' |