Snores out the watch of night. O majesty!
! When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit
Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,

That scalds with safety. By his gates of breath
There lies a downy feather, which stirs not:
Did he suspire, that light and weightless down
Perforce must move.-My gracious lord! my fa-
ther!-

This sleep is sound indeed; this is a sleep,
That from this golden rigol' hath divorc'd
So many English kings. Thy due, from me,
Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood;
Which nature, love, and filial tenderness,
Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously:
My due, from thee, is this imperial crown;
Which, as immediate from thy place and blood,
Derives itself to me. Lo, here it sits,—

[Putting it on his head. Which heaven shail guard: And put the world's whole strength

Into one giant arm, it shall not force

This lineal honour from me: This from thee

Will I to mine leave, as 'tis left to me.

[Exit.

\

K. HEN. Warwick! Gloster! Clarence!

CLd.

Re-enter WARWICK, and the rest.

Again, in Ben Jonson's Volpone:

7

Doth the king call?

"Get you a biggin more, your brain breaks loose."

STEEVENS.

this golden RIGOL- -] Rigol means a circle. I know not that it is used by any author but Shakspeare, who introduces it likewise in his Rape of Lucrece :

"About the mourning and congealed face

"Of that black blood, a watry rigol goes." STEEVENS. We meet with ringol, which was perhaps the right spelling of the word, in Nashe's Lenten Stuffe: "What needs there any more ambages, the ringoll or ringed circle was compast and chakt out." MALONE.

WAR. What would your majesty? How fares your grace?

K. HEN. Why did you leave me here alone, my lords ?

CLA. We left the prince my brother here, my

liege,

Who undertook to sit and watch by you.

K. HEN. The prince of Wales? Where is he? let me see him :

He is not here *.

WAR. This door is open; he is gone this way. P. HUMPH. He came not through the chamber where we stay'd.

K. HEN. Where is the crown? who took it from my pillow?

WAR. When we withdrew, my liege, we left it here.

K. HEN. The prince hath ta'en it hence :-go, seek him out.

Is he so hasty, that he doth suppose

My sleep my death?

Find him, my lord of Warwick; chide him hither.

[Exit WARWICK.

This part of his conjoins with my disease,

And helps to end me.-See, sons, what things you

are!

How quickly nature falls into revolt,

When gold becomes her object!

For this the foolish over-careful fathers

Have broke their sleep

brains with care,

with thoughts, their

*Folio omits He is not here. † Folio, sleeps.

8with THOUGHTS,] Concerning the education and promotion of their children. So, afterwards:

"For this they have been thoughtful to invest

"Their sons with arts," &c.

Mr. Rowe and the subsequent editors read-with thought; but the change does not appear to me necessary. MALONE.

Their bones with industry:

For this they have engrossed and pil'd up
The canker'd heaps of strange-achieved gold;
For this they have been thoughtful to invest
Their sons with arts, and martial exercises:
When, like the bee, tolling from every flower"
The virtuous sweets;

Our thighs pack'd' with wax, our mouths with honey,

We bring it to the hive; and, like the bees,
Are murder'd for our pains. This bitter taste
Yield his engrossments to the ending father.-

2

Re-enter WARWICK.

Now, where is he that will not stay so long
Till his friend sickness hath determin'd' me?
WAR. My lord, I found the prince in the next

room,

Washing with kindly tears his gentle cheeks; With such a deep demeanour in great sorrow, That tyranny, which never quaff'd but blood, Would, by beholding him, have wash'd his knife With gentle eye-drops. He is coming hither.

K. HEN. But wherefore did he take away the

crown?

9-TOLLING from every flower-] This speech has been cortracted, dilated, and put to every critical torture, in order to force it within the bounds of metre, and prevent the admission of hemistichs. I have restored it without alteration, but with those breaks which appeared to others as imperfections. The reading of the quarto is tolling. The folio reads culling. Tolling is taking toll.

STEEVENS. 1 Our thighs pack'd] Mr. Capell reads-" Packing our thighs." BOSWELL.

2 Yield his engrossments-] His accumulations. JOHNSON. determin'd] i. e. ended; it is still used in this sense in legal conveyances. REED.

3-

So, in Antony and Cleopatra :

as it [the hailstone] determines, so Dissolves my life." STEEVENS.

Re-enter Prince HENRY.

Lo, where he comes.-Come hither to me, Harry:Depart the chamber, leave us here alone.

[Exeunt CLARENCE, Prince HUMPHREY, Lords, &c.

P. HEN. I never thought to hear you speak again. K. HEN. Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought:

I stay too long by thee, I weary thee.

Dost thou so hunger for my empty chair,

That thou wilt needs invest thee with mine ho

nours

Before thy hour be ripe? O foolish youth!

Thou seek'st the greatness that will overwhelm thee.

Stay but a little; for my cloud of dignity
Is held from falling with so weak a wind,
That it will quickly drop: my day is dim.

Thou hast stol'n that, which, after some few hours,
Were thine without offence; and, at my death,

Thou hast seal'd up my expectation*:

Thy life did manifest, thou lov'dst me not,
And thou wilt have me die assured of it.

Thou hid'st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts;
Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart,
To stab at half an hour of my life'.

4 ---

seal'd up my expectation:] Thou hast confirmed my opinion. JOHNSON.

5 half an HOUR of my life.] It should be remembered that Shakspeare uses a few words alternately as monosyllables and dissyllables. Mr. Rowe, whose ear was accustomed to the utmost harmony of numbers, and who, at the same time, appears to have been little acquainted with our poet's manner, first added the word frail to supply the syllable which he conceived to be wanting. The quarto writes the word hower, as it was anciently pronounced. So, Ben Jonson, in The Case is Alter'd, 1609 :

66

'By twice so many howers as would fill

The circle of a year."

What! canst thou not forbear me half an hour?
Then get thee gone; and dig my grave thyself;
And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear,
That thou art crowned, not that I am dead.
Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse,
Be drops of balm, to sanctify thy head:
Only compound me with forgotten dust;
Give that, which gave thee life, unto the worms.
Pluck down my officers, break my decrees;
For now a time is come to mock at form,
Harry the fifth is crown'd:-Up, vanity!

Down, royal state! all you sage counsellors, hence!
And to the English court assemble now,
From every region, apes of idleness!

Now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum:
Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance,
Revel the night; rob, murder, and commit
The oldest sins the newest kind of ways?
Be happy, he will trouble you no more:
England shall double gild his treble guilt o;

The reader will find many more instances in the soliloquy of King Henry VI. Part III. Act II. Sc. V. The other editors [except Mr. Malone] have followed Mr. Rowe. STEEVENS.

• England shall double GILD his treble GUILT;] Evidently the nonsense of some foolish player: for we must make a difference between what Shakspeare might be supposed to have written off hand, and what he had corrected. These scenes are of the latter kind; therefore such lines are by no means to be esteemed his. But, except Mr. Pope, (who judiciously threw out this line,) not one of Shakspeare's editors seem ever to have had so reasonable and necessary a rule in their heads, when they set upon correcting this author. WARBURTON.

I know not why this commentator should speak with so much confidence what he cannot know, or determine so positively what so capricious a writer as our poet might either deliberately or wantonly produce. This line is, indeed, such as disgraces a few that precede and follow it, but it suits well enough with the daggers hid in thought, and whetted on thy stony heart; and the answer which the Prince makes, and which is applauded [by the King] for wisdom, is not of a strain much higher than this ejected line.

JOHNSON.