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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.

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But that which ends all counsel, true redress.
Death, death, O amiable lovely death!
Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!
Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,
Thou hate and terror to prosperity,
And I will kiss thy detestable bones;
And put my eye-balls in thy vaulty brows;
And ring these fingers with thy household worms;
And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,
And be a carrion monster like thyself:
Come, grin on me; and I will think thou smil'st,
And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love,

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!
Then with a passion would I shake the world;
And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy,
Which cannot hear a lady's feeble voice,
Which scorns a modern invocation.

Pand. Lady, you utter madness, and not

sorrow.

Const. Thou art not holy to belie me so;
I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;
My name is Constance; I was Geffrey's wife;
Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost:
I am not mad;-I would to heaven, I were!
For then 't is like I should forget myself:
O, if I could, what grief should I forget !-
Preach some philosophy to make me mad,
And thou shalt be canoniz'd, cardinal;
For, being not mad but sensible of grief,
My reasonable part produces reason
How I may be deliver'd of these woes,
And teaches me to kill or hang myself:
If I were mad, I should forget my son;
Or madly think a babe of clouts were he :
I am not mad; too well, too well I feel
The different plague of each calamity.

K. Phi. Bind up those tresses: O, what love
I note

In the fair multitude of those her hairs!
Where but by chance a silver drop hath fallen,
Even to that drop ten thousand wiry friends
Do glue themselves in sociable grief;
Like true, inseparable, faithful loves,
Sticking together in calamity.

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.

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If that be true, I shall see my boy again;
For, since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday suspire,
There was not such a gracious creature born.
But now will canker sorrow eat my bud,
And chase the native beauty from his cheek,
And he will look as hollow as a ghost;
As dim and meagre as an ague's fit:
And so he 'll die; and, rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him: therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.
Pand. You hold too heinous a respect of grief.
Const. He talks to me that never had a son.
K. Phi. You are as fond of grief, as of your
child.

Const. Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

you

you

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief.
Fare well: had such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do.-
I will not keep this form upon my head,
[Tearing off her head-dress.
When there is such disorder in my wit.
O lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrows' cure! [Exit.
K. Phi. I fear some outrage, and I'll follow
her.
[Exit.
Lew. There's nothing in this world can make
me joy :

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale,
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man ;

And bitter shame hath spoil'd the sweet world's

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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:
Are you not griev'd that Arthur is his prisoner?
Lew. As heartily as he is glad he hath him.
Pand. Your mind is all as youthful as your

blood.

Now hear me speak, with a prophetic spirit;
For even the breath of what I mean to speak
Shall blow each dust, each straw, each little rub,
Out of the path which shall directly lead
Thy foot to England's throne; and, therefore,
mark.

John hath seiz'd Arthur; and it cannot be,
That, whiles warm life plays in that infant's veins,
The misplac'd John should entertain an hour,
One minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest:
A sceptre, snatch'd with an unruly hand,
Must be as boisterously maintain'd as gain'd:
And he that stands upon a slippery place
Makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up:
That John may stand then Arthur needs must
fall;

So be it, for it cannot be but so.

Lew. But what shall I gain by young Arthur's

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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

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Than I have nam'd!-The bastard Faulconbridge
Is now in England, ransacking the church,
Offending charity: If but a dozen French
Were there in arms, they would be as a call
To train ten thousand English to their side;
Or, as a little snow tumbled about,
Anon becomes a mountain. O noble Dauphin,
Go with me to the king: 'Tis wonderful,
What may be wrought out of their discontent,
Now that their souls are topfull of offence.
For England go; I will whet on the king.
Lew. Strong reasons make strange bactions :
Let us go;

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.

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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
For their livelod to sweve and swinke,
And then right nought us geve again,
Neither to eat ne yet to drink;
Thei move by law, as that thei sain,
Us curse and dampne to hellis brink;
And thus thei puttin us to pain

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,
Here I do curse hym wyth crosse, boke, bell and candle.
Lyke as this same roode turneth now from me his face,
So God I requyre to sequester hym of his grace.
As this boke doth speare by my worke mannuall,

I wyll God to close uppe from hym his benefyttes all.
As this burnyng flame goth from this candle in syght,
I wyll God to put hym from his eternall lyght.

I take hym from rist, and after the sownd of this bell,
Both body and sowle i geve hym to the devyll of hell.

I take from hym baptym, with the other sacramentes
And sufferages of the churche, botne amber days and lentes.
Here I take from hym bothe penonce and confessyon,
Masse of the wondes, with sensyng and processyon.
Here I take from hym holy water and holy brede,
And never wyll them to stande hym in any sted."

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.

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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.

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