So 'a cried out--God, God, God! three or four times: now I, to comfort him, bid him 'a should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet: So, 'a bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand into the bed, and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and so upward, and upward, and all was as cold as any stone.

Nya. They say, he cried out of sack.
Quick. Ay, that 'a did.

Bard. And of women.

Quick. Nay, that 'a did not.

Boy. Yes, that 'a did; and said they were devils incarnate.

Quick. 'A could never abide carnation: 'twas a colour he never liked.

Boy. 'A said once the devil would have him about women.

Quick. 'A did in some sort, indeed, handle women: but then he was rheumatick; and talked of the whore of Babylon.

Boy. Do you not remember, 'a saw a flea stick upon Bardolph's nose; and 'a said it was a black soul burning in hell?

Bard. Well, the fuel is gone that maintained that fire: that's all the riches I got in his service.

Nym. Shall we shog? the king will be gone from Southampton.

Pist. Come, let's away.-My love, give me thy lips.

Look to my chattels, and my moveables:

Let senses rule; the word is, Pitch and pay;
Trust none:

For oaths are straws, men's faiths are wafercakes,

And hold-fast is the only dog, my duck;
Therefore, caveto be thy counsellor.

Go, clear thy crystals. -Yoke-fellows in

Fr. King. Thus come the English with full power upon us;

And more than carefully it us concerns,
To answer royally in our defences.
Therefore the dukes of Berry, and of Bretagne,
Of Brabant, and of Orleans, shall make forth,
And you, prince Dauphin,-with all swift de-
spatch,

To line and new repair our towns of war,
With men of courage, and with means defen-
dant:

For England his approaches makes as fierce
As waters to the sucking of a gulf.
It fits us then to be as provident

As fear may teach us, out of late examples
Left by the fatal and neglected English
Upon our fields.

Dau. My most redoubted father, It is most meet we arm us 'gainst the foe: For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom, (Though war nor no known quarrel were in question,)

But that defences, musters, preparations,
Should be maintain'd, assembled, and collected,
As were a war in expectation.

Therefore, I say, 't is meet we all go forth,
To view the sick and feeble parts of France;
And let us do it with no shew of fear;
No, with no more, than if we heard that England
Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance :1
For, my good liege, she is so idly king'd,
Her sceptre so fantastically borne
By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,
That fear attends her not.

Con.

O peace, prince Dauphin! You are too much mistaken in this king: Question, your grace, the late ambassadors,— With what great state he heard their embassy, How well supplied with noble counsellors, How modest in exception, and withal How terrible in constant resolution,— And you shall find, his vanities fore-spent Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus, Covering discretion with a coat of folly; As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots That shall first spring and be most delicate. Dau. Well, 't is not so, my lord high coustable,

337

But though we think it so, it is no matter:
In cases of defence, 't is best to weigh
The enemy more mighty than he seems:
So the proportions of defence are fill'd;
Which, of a weak and niggardly projection,"
Doth like a miser spoil his coat with scanting
A little cloth.

Fr. King. Think we king Harry strong; And, princes, look you strongly arm to meet him.

The kindred of him hath been flesh'd upon us;
And he is bred out of that bloody strain,
That haunted us in our familiar paths:
Witness our too much memorable shame,
When Cressy battle fatally was struck,
And all our princes captiv'd, by the hand

Of that black name, Edward black prince of
Wales;

Mess. Ambassadors from Harry King of England

Do crave admittance to your majesty.

Fr. King. We'll give them present audience. Go, and bring them.

[Exeunt Mess. and certain Lords. You see, this chase is hotly follow'd, friends. Dau. Turn head, and stop pursuit: for coward dogs

Most spend their mouths, when what they seem to threaten

Runs far before them. Good my sovereign,
Take

up the English short; and let them know
Of what a monarchy you are the head:
Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin
As self-neglecting.

a Projection appears here to be used for forecast, preparation. The proportions of defence which are fill'd by estimating the enemy as more mighty than he seems, of (through) a weak and niggardly projection, spoil the coat, &c. The false concord between proportions and doth does not interfere with this explanation, and may be justified by abundant examples in our old writers. If we could venture upon a correction of the text, we might read,

"Of which a weak and niggardly projection," &c. The transposition at once gives us sense and grammatical concord.

b Mountain. Theobald would read mounting.

Re-enter Lords, with EXETER and Train.
Fr. King. From our brother of England?
Exe. From him; and thus he greets your
majesty.

He wills you, in the name of God Almighty,
That you divest yourself and lay apart
The borrow'd glories, that, by gift of heaven,
By law of nature, and of nations, 'long
To him, and to his heirs; namely, the crown,
And all wide stretched honours that pertain,
By custom and the ordinance of times,
Unto the crown of France. That you may
know

'Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim,
Pick'd from the worm-holes of long-vanish'd

days,

Nor from the dust of old oblivion rak'd,
He sends you this most memorable line,*
[Gives a paper.

In every branch truly demonstrative;
Willing you, overlook this pedigree:
And, when you find him evenly deriv’d
From his most fam'd of famous ancestors,
Edward the Third, he bids you then resign
Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held
From him the native and true challenger.

Fr. King. Or else what follows?

Exe. Bloody constraint; for if you hide the

crown

Even in your hearts, there will be rake for it :

Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,
In thunder, and in earthquake, like a Jove,
That, if requiring fail, he will compel;
And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,
Deliver up the crown; and to take mercy
On the poor souls for whom this hungry war
Opens his vasty jaws and on your head
Turning the widows' tears, the orphans' cries,
The dead men's blood, the pining maidens'
groans,

For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers,
That shall be swallowed in this controversy.
This is his claim, his threat'ning, and my mes

I stand here for him: What to him from England?

Eze. Scorn and defiance; slight regard, contempt,

And anything that may not misbecome
The mighty sender, doth ke prize you at.
Thus says my king: and, if your father's high-

ness

Do not, in grant of all demands at large,
Sweeten the bitter mock you sent his majesty,
He'll call you to so hot an answer of it,
That caves and womby vaultages of France
Shall chide your trespass, and return your mock
In second accent of his ordnance.

Dau. Say, if my father render fair return,
It is against my will: for I desire
Nothing but odds with England; to that end,
As matching to his youth and vanity,

I did present him with the Paris balls.

& Chide-used in its double sense of rebuke and resound.

Exe. He'll make your Paris Louvre shake for it, 5

Were it the mistress court of mighty Europe;
And, be assur'd, you'll find a difference,
(As we, his subjects, have in wonder found,)
Between the promise of his greener days,
And these he masters now; now he weighs
time,

Even to the utmost grain; that you shall read
In your own losses, if he stay in France.
Fr. King. To-morrow shall you know our
mind at full.

Exe. Despatch us with all speed, lest that our
king

Come here himself to question our delay;
For he is footed in this land already.

Fr. King. You shall be soon despatch'd, with fair conditions:

A night is but small breath, and little pause,
To answer matters of this consequence.

Sc. III. p. 336.-"For his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields."

"For his nose was as sharp as a pen, on a table of green frieze."-Collier.

The emendation of Theobald is now to be rejected on the authority of Mr. Collier's old Corrector. "Writing-tables," says Mr. Collier, "were, no doubt, at that period often covered with green cloth; and it is to the sharpness of a pen, as seen in strong relief on a table so covered, that Mrs. Quickly likens the nose of the dying wit and philosopher for his nose was as sharp as a pen on a table of green frieze.' We have had such guesses as that of the old Corrector before now. One of the commentators, Smith, has a similar prosaic suggestion in defence of the original table, and would read, "for his nose was as sharp as a pen

[Exeunt.

on a table of green fells," for, says he, "on table books silver or steel pens, very sharp pointed, were formerly, and still are, fixed to the backs or covers." Mr. Collier calls Theobald's emendation "fanciful;" formerly he called it "judicious." In our minds it is judicious, because it is fanciful; and being fanciful is consistent with the excited imagination that often attends the solemn parting hour. What does Dame Quickly say in this sentence? "After I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with the flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields." And so the pen must lie upon a "table of green frieze" before the comparison of the sharp nose can be felt; and we must lose one of the most beautiful examples of the conjunction of poetry and truth, because some authority chooses to read frieze for fields.

1 CHORUS.-"And hides a sword, from hilts unto the point,

With crowns imperial, crowns and coronets." THE engraving which we subjoin is copied from a wood-cut in the first edition of Holinshed's Chronicle that edition, most probably, which Shakspere was in the habit of consulting. The idea conveyed in these lines was evidently suggested by some such representation. In ancient trophies in tapestry or painting, a sword is often thus hidden, from hilt unto the point, with naval or mural crowns. There is a portrait of Edward III. in the Chapter House at Windsor, with a sword in his hand thus ornamented, if we remember rightly, with three crowns.

He, however, mentions the wappe; and Harrison in his description of England, speaking of our English dogs, says "The last sort of dogs consisteth of the currish kind, meet for many toys, of which the whappet, or prick-eared cur, is one." He adds:-"Besides these also we have sholts, or curs, daily brought out of Iseland, and much made of among us because of their sauciness and quarrelling. Moreover, they bite very sore, and love candles exceedingly, as do the men and women of their country." The "cur of Iceland" of Shakspere is unquestionably "the cur daily brought out of Iseland" of Harrison; and it is to be observed that the prick-ears are invariable indications of the half-reclaimed animal. The Esquimaux dog, the dog of the Mackenzie River, and the Australasian dog, or dingo, of each of which the Zoological Society have had specimens, furnish striking examples of this characteristic. Pistol, in his abuse of Nym, uses an expression which was meant to convey the intimation that he was as quarrelsome and as savage as a half-civilized Iceland dog. Johnson upon this passage has a most curious theory, which Steevens adopts: "He seems to allude to an account credited in Elizabeth's time, that in the north there was a nation with human bodies and dogs' heads." Before we leave this subject we may mention an illustration of the correctness of Harrison's account of the northern dogs. He says, "they love candles exceedingly." In a little book written in 1829 by the editor of this work, The Menageries,' vol. i. -there is the following passage:-"The attachment of these dogs to the taste and smell of fat is as remarkable as the passion of the Cossacks for oil. At Chelsea, there are two domesticated Esquimaux dogs that will stand, hour after hour, in front of a candlemaker's workshop, snuffing the savoury effluvia of his melting tallow." We subjoin a portrait of the Esquimaux dog, which strikingly exhibits the prick ear :

SCENE II-" Nay, but the man that was his bedfellow."

Holinshed states this literally: "The said Lord Scroop was in such favour with the king, that he admitted him sometime to be his bedfellow." Malone says, "This unseemly custom continued common till the middle of the last century (the seventeenth), if not later." Customs are unseemly, for the most part, when they are opposed to the general usages of society, and to the state of public opinion. The necessity for two persons occupying one bed belonged to an age when rooms were large and furniture seanty. It is scarcely just to consider the custom unseemly when connected with manners very different from our own. When Roger Ascham speaks of a favourite pupil who was his bedfellow, we see only the affectionate remembrance of the good old schoolmaster; and, in Shakspere, we find the custom connected with the highest poetry :

"O world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn,
Whose double bosoms seem to wear one heart,
Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal, and exercise,
Are still together, who twin, as 't were, in love
Unseparable, shall within this hour,

On a dissension of a doit, break out

To bitterest enmity." (Coriolanus, ACT IV. Sc. IV.)

Morris Dance,' is a performance of considerable research and ingenuity. His opinion, which is opposed to that of Strutt, is, that the Morris dance was derived from the Morisco or Moorish dance. The Morris dance has been supposed to have been first brought into England in the time of Edward III.; but it scarcely can be traced beyond the reign of Henry VII. The Whitsun Morris dance, here spoken of by Shakspere, was, perhaps, the original Morris dance, unconnected with the May games in which the Robin Hood characters were introduced. After archery, however, went into disuse (for the encouragement of which the May games were principally established), the Morris dance was probably again transferred to the celebration of Whitsuntide. In Warner's 'Albion's England' (1612), we have this line :

"At Paske begun our Morrise, and ere Penticost our May." In the following engraving, illustrating the Whitsun Morris, the dragon is introduced, upon the authority of the Vow-breaker' (1636), a tragedy by William Sampson; in which one of the speakers, after describing the hobby-horse, ribbons, bells, handkerchiefs, &c. necessary for a Morris, adds, "provide thou the dragon." The action of the figures in this illustration-the slapping of hands-is still continued by the Morris dancers of the present day, who occasionally come across us to call up the ancient recollections of 'merry England.'