Enter KING PHILIP, LEWIS, PANDULPH, and Attendants. K. Phi. So, by a roaring tempest on the flood, A whole armado of convicted" sail Is scatter'd and disjoin'd from fellowship. Pand. Courage and comfort! all shall yet go well. K. Phi. What can go well, when we have run so ill? Are we not beaten? Is not Angiers lost? Arthur ta'en prisoner? divers dear friends slain? And bloody England into England gone, O'erbearing interruption, spite of France ? Lew. What he hath won that hath he fortified: So hot a speed with such advice dispos'd, Such temperate order in so fierce a cause, Doth want example: Who hath read, or heard, Of any kindred action like to this? K. Phi. Well could I bear that England had this praise, So we could find some pattern of our shame. But that which ends all counsel, true redress. O, come to me! K. Phi. O fair affliction, peace! Const. No, no, I will not, having breath to cry: O, that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth! Pand. Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow. Const. Thou art not holy to belie me so; K. Phi. Bind up those tresses: O, what love In the fair multitude of those her hairs! We give the reading of the original. Thus, in the Merchant of Venice, "Full of wise saws and modern instances." But the sentence is weak, and a slight change would make it powerful. We may read "a mother's invocation" with little violence to the text; moder's (the old spelling) might have been easily mistaken for modern. b Not is wanting in the original. If that be true, I shall see my boy again; Const. Grief fills the room up of my absent child, you you Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, And bitter shame hath spoil'd the sweet world's 1 Pand. Before the curing of a strong disease, Even in the instant of repair and health, The fit is strongest; evils, that take leave, On their departure most of all shew evil : What have you lost by losing of this day? Lew. All days of glory, joy, and happiness. Pand. If you had won it, certainly, you had. No, no when fortune means to men most good, She looks upon them with a threatening eye. 'Tis strange to think how much king John hath lost In this which he accounts so clearly won: blood. Now hear me speak, with a prophetic spirit; John hath seiz'd Arthur; and it cannot be, So be it, for it cannot be but so. Lew. But what shall I gain by young Arthur's a No scope of nature. Some of the modern editions read, contrary to the original, scape (escape) of nature. The scope of nature-the ordinary course of nature-appears to us to An escape of convey the poet's meaning much better. nature is a prodigy ;-Shakspere says, the commonest 3 Than I have nam'd!-The bastard Faulconbridge If you say ay, the king will not say no. [Exeunt. A call. The caged birds which lure the wild ones to the net are termed by fowlers "call-birds." The image in the text is more probably derived from a term of falconry. b Strange. So the reading of the first folio. It has been generally altered into strong. The old reading restored gives us a deep observation instead of an epigrammatic one. Strong reasons make, that is, justify, a large deviation from common courses. RECENT NEW READING. Sc. II. p. 40.-" Some airy devil hovers in the sky." "Some fiery devil hovers in the sky."-Collier. The first folio has aiery devil. Fiery, says Mr. Collier, we may feel confident, was the word of the poet, and which is so consistent with the context. Mr. Collier adds, "Percy quotes Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy,' where, among other things, it is said, 'fiery spirits or devils, are such as commonly work by blazing stars,' &c." We venture to think that Mr. Collier carries his advocacy too far when he quotes what Burton says of "fiery devils," and there stops, although Percy continues the quotation:-" Aerial spirits, or devils, are such as keep quarter most part in the air; cause many tempests, thunder and lightning; tear oaks; fire steeples; strike men and beasts; make it rain stones, as in Livy's time." We turn to Burton, and find in another place, where he says of this class that pour down mischief, "Paul to the Ephesians calls them forms of the air.' Shakspere knew this curious learning from the Schoolmen; but the Corrector knew nothing about it. ILLUSTRATIONS OF ACT III. 1 SCENE III. Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back." THE form of excommunication in the Romish church was familiar to Chaucer : "For clerkes say we shallin be fain With candles queint and bellis clink." In another passage of the same poem, the Manciples' tale, we have the "clerkes," who "Christis people proudly curse With brode boke and braying bell." But the most minute and altogether curious description of the ceremony of excommunication, is in Bishop Bale's "Kynge Johan," which we have described in our " Introductory Notice." In that "pageant" Pandulph denounces John in the following fashion: "For as moch as kyng Johan doth Holy Church so handle, I wyll God to close uppe from hym his benefyttes all. I take hym from rist, and after the sownd of this bell, I take from hym baptym, with the other sacramentes In Fox we have the ceremony of excommunication minutely detailed ;-the bishop, and clergy, and all the several sorts of friars in the cathedral,-the cross borne before them with three wax tapers lighted, and the eager populace assembled. A priest, all in white, mounts the pulpit, and then begins the denunciation. Those who are curious as to this formula, may consult Fox, or Strype; and they will agree with Corporal Trim that the "soldiers in Flanders" swore nothing like this. The climax of the cursing was when each taper was extinguished, with the pious prayer that the souls of the "malefactors and schismatics" might be given "over utterly to the power of the fiend, as this candle is now quench'd and put out." Henry VIII, in 1533, abolished the General Sentence or Curse, which was read in the churches four times a year. (See Pictorial History of England, vol. ii. p. 716.) This singular custom of an intolerant age may be better represented by a picture than by words. Our artist has here happily neutralized the revolting part of the scene by the admixture of the ludicrous. HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATION. AFTER the peace of 1200, Arthur remained under the care of King Philip, in fear, as it is said, of the treachery of John. But the peace was broken within two years. John, whose passions were ever his betrayers, seized upon the wife of the Count de la Marche, Isabella of Angoulême, and married her, although his wife Avisa, to whom he had been married ten years, was living. The injured Count headed an insurrection in Aquitaine; ich Philip secretly encouraged. John was, ho er, courteously entertained by his crafty ral in Paris. But, upon his return to England, Philip openly succoured the insurgents; once more brought the unhappy Arthur upon the scene; and made him raise the banner of war against his powerful uncle. With a small force he marched against the town of Mirebeau, near Poictiers, where his grandmother Elinor was stationed, as "Regent of those parts." Some of the chroniclers affirm that Elinor was captured; but, says Holinshed, "others write far more truly, that she was not taken, but escaped into a tower, within the which she was straitly besieged." John, who was in Normandy, being apprised of the danger of his mother, "used such diligence that he was upon his enemies' necks ere they could understand anything of his coming." On the night of the 31st July, 1202, John obtained possession of the town by treachery, and Arthur was taken in his bed. The Count de la Marche, and the other leaders, were captured, and were treated with extreme cruelty and indignity. Arthur was conveyed to the Castle of Falaise. The interdict of John, by Rome, for refusing to admit Stephen Langton to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, did not take place till five years after these events. |