ACT IV. SCENE I.

London. Westminster Hall".

The Lords spiritual on the right side of the Throne; the Lords temporal on the left; the Commons below. Enter BOLINGBROKE, AUMERLE, SURREY, NORTHUMBERLAND, PERCY, FITZWATER, another Lord, Bishop of Carlisle, Abbot of Westminster, and Attendants. Officers behind, with BAGOT. BOLING. Call forth Bagot :

Now, Bagot, freely speak thy mind;

What thou dost know of noble Gloster's death; Who wrought it with the king, and who perform'd The bloody office of his timeless end9.

BAGOT. Then set before my face the lord Aumerle.

BOLING. Cousin, stand forth, and look upon that

man.

BAGOT. My lord Aumerle, I know your daring
tongue

Scorns to unsay what once it hath deliver'd.
In that dead time when Gloster's death was plotted,
I heard you say,-Is not my arm of length,

6 WESTMINSTER Hall.] The rebuilding of Westminster Hall, which Richard had begun in 1397, being finished in 1399, the first meeting of parliament in the new edifice was for the purpose of deposing him. MALONE.

7

Surrey,] Thomas Holland earl of Kent. He was brother to John Holland duke of Exeter, and was created duke of Surrey in the 21st year of King Richard the Second, 1397. The dukes of Surrey and Exeter were half brothers to the King, being sons of his mother Joan, (daughter of Edmond, earle of Kent,) who after the death of her second husband, Lord Thomas Holland, married Edward the Black Prince. MALONE.

8 - Fitzwater,] The christian name of this nobleman was Walter. Walpole.

9 his TIMELESS end.] Timeless, for untimely. WARburton.

That reacheth from the restful English court
As far as Calais, to my uncle's head?
Amongst much other talk, that very time,
I heard you say, that you had rather refuse
The offer of an hundred thousand crowns,
Than Bolingbroke's return to England;
Adding withal, how blest this land would be,
In this your cousin's death.

AUM.
Princes, and noble lords,
What answer shall I make to this base man?
Shall I so much dishonour my fair stars",
On equal terms to give him chastisement?
Either I must, or have mine honour soil'd
With the attainder of his sland'rous lips.
There is my gage, the manual seal of death,
That marks thee out for hell: I say, thou liest,
And will maintain, what thou hast said, is false,
In thy heart-blood, though being all too base
To stain the temper of my knightly sword.

BOLING. Bagot, forbear, thou shalt not take it up.

AUM. Excepting one, I would he were the best In all this presence, that hath mov'd me so.

9

FITZ. If that thy valour stand on sympathies',

my fair STARS,] I rather think it should be stem, being of the royal blood. WARBURton.

I think the present reading unexceptionable. The birth is supposed to be influenced by the stars; therefore, our author, with his usual licence, takes stars for birth. JOHNSON.

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We learn from Pliny's Natural History, that the vulgar error assigned the bright and fair stars to the rich and great :—“ Sidera singulis attributa nobis, et clara divitibus, minora pauperibus," &c. lib. i. cap. viii. ANONYMOUS.

If that thy valour stand on SYMPATHIES,] Here is a translated sense much harsher than that of stars explained in the foregoing note. Aumerle has challenged Bagot with some hesitation, as not being his equal, and therefore one whom, according to the rules of chivalry, he was not obliged to fight, as a nobler life was not to be staked in a duel against a baser. Fitzwater then throws down his gage, a pledge of battle; and tells him that if he

There is my gage, Aumerle, in gage to thine:
By that fair sun that shows me where thou stand'st,
I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak'st it,
That thou wert cause of noble Gloster's death.
If thou deny'st it twenty times 2, thou liest;
And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart,
Where it was forged, with my rapier's point3.

stands upon sympathies, that is, upon equality of blood, the combat is now offered him by a man of rank not inferior to his own. Sympathy is an affection incident at once to two subjects. This community of affection implies a likeness or equality of nature, and thence our poet transferred the term to equality of blood. JOHNSON.

2 If thou deny'st it twenty times, thou liest.] This is the punctuation of the quarto. The folio, followed by Mr. Steevens, points the passage thus:

3

the

"If thou deny'st it, twenty times thou liest." MAlone.

my RAPIER'S POINT.] Shakspeare deserts the manners of age in which this drama was placed, very often without necessity or advantage. The edge of a sword had served his purpose as well as the point of a rapier, and he had then escaped the impropriety of giving the English nobles a weapon which was not seen in England till two centuries afterwards. JOHNSON.

66

at

Mr. Ritson censures this note in the following terms: "It would be well, however, though not quite so easy, for some learned critick to bring some proof in support of this and such like assertions. Without which the authority of Shakspeare is at least equal to that of Dr. Johnson." It is probable that Dr. Johnson did not see the necessity of citing any authority for a fact so well known, or suspect that any person would demand one. If an authority, however, only is wanted, perhaps the following may be deemed sufficient to justify the Doctor's observation : that time two other Englishmen, Sir W. Stanley, and Rowland Yorke, got an ignominious name of traytors. This Yorke, borne in London, was a man most negligent and lazy, but desperately hardy; he was in his time most famous among those who respected fencing, having been the first that brought into England that wicked and pernicious fashion to fight in the fields in duels with a rapier called a tucke, onely for the thrust: the English having till that very time used to fight with backe swords, slashing and cutting one the other, armed with targets or bucklers, with very broad weapons, accounting it not to be a manly action to fight by thrusting and stabbing, and chiefly under the waste."

AUM. Thou dar'st not, coward, live to see that

day.

FITZ. Now, by my soul, I would it were this hour.

AUM. Fitzwater, thou art damn'd to hell for this. PERCY. Aumerle, thou liest; his honour is as true,

In this appeal, as thou art all unjust:

And, that thou art so, there I throw my gage,
To prove it on thee to the extremest point
Of mortal breathing; seize it if thou dar'st.
AUM. And if I do not, may my hands rot off,
And never brandish more revengeful steel
Over the glittering helmet of my foe!

LORD. I task the earth to the like, forsworn
Aumerle 3;

Darcie's Annals of Queen Elizabeth, 4to. 1623, p. 223, sub anno, 1587.

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Again, in Bulleine's Dialogue between Soarnesse and Chirurgi, fol. 1579, p. 20: There is a new kynd of instruments to let bloud withall, whych brynge the bloud-letter sometyme to the gallowes, because hee stryketh to deepe. These instruments are called the ruffins tucke, and long foining rapier: weapons more malicious than manly." REED.

3 I take the EARTH to the like, &c.] This speech I have restored from the first edition in humble imitation of former editors, though, I believe, against the mind of the author. For the earth I suppose we should read, thy oath. JOHNSON.

To"

take the earth" is, at present, a fox-hunter's phrase. So, in The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, 1598:

"I'll follow him until he take the earth.” But I know not how it can be applied here. It should seem, however, from the following passage in Warner's Albion's England, 1602, b. iii. c. xvi. that the expression is yet capable of another meaning:

"Lo here my gage (he terr'd his glove) thou know'st the victor's meed."

To terre the glove was, I suppose, to dash it on the earth. We still say to ground a musquet, and to ground a bowl.

Let me add, however, in support of Dr. Johnson's conjecture,

And spur thee on with full as many lies
As may be holla'd in thy treacherous ear
From sun to sun*: there is my honour's pawn;
Engage it to the trial, if thou dar'st.

that the word oath, in Troilus and Cressida, quarto, 1609, is corrupted in the same manner. Instead of the " untraded oath," it gives "untraded earth." We might read, only changing the place of one letter, and altering another:

"I task thy heart to the like"

i. e. I put thy valour to the same trial. So, in King Henry VI. Act V. Sc. II. :

"How show'd his tasking? seem'd it in contempt ?" The quarto 1597 reads-task; the succeeding quartos, viz. 1598, 1608, and 1615, have-take. STEEVENS.

In

Task is the reading of the first and best quarto, in 1597. that printed in the following year the word was changed to take; but all the alterations made in the several editions of our author's plays in quarto, after the first, appear to have been made either arbitrarily or by negligence. (I do not mean to include copies containing new and additional matter.) I confess I am unable to explain either reading; but I adhere to the elder, as more likely to be the true one. MALONE.

I should read" I take the earth,” i. e. I take the earth to witness. TALBOT.

4 From SUN to SUN:] i. e. as I think, from sun-rise to sunset. So, in Cymbeline:

"Imo. How many score of miles may we well ride ""Twixt hour and hour?

"Pisa. One score 'twixt sun and sun,

"Madam, 's enough for you, and too much too."

"The time appointed for the duello (says Saviolo,) hath alwaies been 'twixt the rising and the setting sun; and whoever in that time doth not prove his intent, can never after be admitted the combat upon that quarrel." On Honour and honourable Quarrels, 4to. 1595. This passage fully supports the emendation here made, and my interpretation of the words. The quartos read"From sin to sin." The emendation, which in my apprehension requires no enforcement or support, was proposed by Mr. Steevens, who explains these words differently. He is of opinion that they mean, from one day to another. MALONE.

However ingenious the conjecture of Mr. Steevens may be, I think the old reading the true one. "From sin to sin," is from one denial to another; for those denials were severally maintained to be lies. HENLEY.