Page images
PDF
EPUB

With opening titles miscreate3, whose right
Suits not in native colours with the truth;
For God doth know, how many, now in health,
Shall drop their blood in approbation *

Of what your reverence shall incite us to:
Therefore take heed how you impawn our person3,
How you awake the sleeping sword of war;
We charge you in the name of God, take heed:
For never two such kingdoms did contend,
Without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops
Are every one a woe, a sore complaint,

'Gainst him, whose wrongs give edge unto the swords

false title, or of maintaining, by specious fallacies, a claim which, if shown in its native and true colours, would appear to be false. JOHNSON.

3- miscreate,] Ill-begotten, illegitimate, spurious.

4

JOHNSON.

- in APPROBATION-] i. e. in proving and supporting that title which shall be now set up. So, in Braithwaite's Survey of Histories, 1614: Composing what he wrote, not by report of others, but by the approbation of his own eyes."

Again, in The Winter's Tale :

5

"That lack'd sight only;-nought for approbation,
"But only seeing." MALONE.

- take heed how you IMPAWN OUR person,] The whole drift of the king is to impress upon the archbishop a due sense of the caution with which he is to speak. He tells him that the crime of unjust war, if the war be unjust, shall rest upon him: "Therefore take heed how you impawn your person." So, I think, it should be read, Take heed how you pledge your self, your honour, your happiness, in support of bad advice. Dr. Warburton explains impawn by engage, and so escapes difficulty. JOHNSON.

the

The allusion here is to the game of chess, and the disposition of the pawns with respect to the King, at the commencement of this mimetick contest. HENLEY.

mous.

To engage and to pawn were, in our author's time, synony See Minsheu's Dictionary, in v. engage. But the word pawn, had not, I believe, at that time, its present signification. To impawn seems here to have the same meaning as the French phrase se commettre. MALONE.

That make such waste in brief mortality".
Under this conjuration", speak, my lord :
And we will hear, note, and believe in heart,
That what you speak is in your conscience wash'd
As pure as sin with baptism.

CANT. Then hear me, gracious sovereign,—and

you peers,

8

That owe your lives, your faith, and services *,
To this imperial throne ;-There is no bar
To make against your highness' claim to France,
But this, which they produce from Pharamond,—
In terram Salicam mulieres nè succedant,
No woman shall succeed in Salique land:
Which Salique land the French unjustly gloze,
To be the realm of France, and Pharamond
The founder of this law and female bar.

Yet their own authors faithfully affirm,

[blocks in formation]

read:

8

*Folio, Which owe yourselves, your lives, and services.

BRIEF mortality.]

Nulla brevem dominum sequetur. Horace, STEEVENS. UNDER this conjuration,] The quartos, 1600 and 1608,

"After this conjuration." STEEVENS.

There is no bar, &c.] This whole speech is copied (in a manner verbatim) from Hall's Chronicle, Henry V. year the second, folio iv. xx. xxx. xl. &c. In the first edition it is very imperfect, and the whole history and names of the princes are confounded; but this was afterwards set right, and corrected from the original, Hall's Chronicle. POPE.

This speech (together with the Latin passage in it) may as well be said to be taken from Holinshed as from Hall. STEEVENS. See a subsequent note, in which it is proved that Holinshed, and not Hall, was our author's historian. The same facts, indeed, are told in both, Holinshed being a servile copyist of Hall; but Holinshed's book was that which Shakspeare read; and therefore I always quote it in preference to the elder chronicle, contrary to the rule that ought in general to be observed.

9

MALONE. gloze,] Expound, explain, and sometimes comment upon. So, in Troilus and Cressida :

66

you have said well ;

"And on the cause and question now in hand,
"Have gloz'd but superficially." REED.

That the land Salique lies in Germany,

Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe:

Where Charles the great, having subdued the Sax

ons,

There left behind and settled certain French;
Who, holding in disdain the German women,
For some dishonest manners of their life,
Establish'd there this law,-to wit, no female
Should be inheritrix in Salique land→
Which Salique, as I said, 'twixt Elbe and Sala,
Is at this day in Germany call'd-Meisen.
Thus doth it well appear, the Salique law
Was not devised for the realm of France:
Nor did the French possess the Salique land
Until four hundred one and twenty years
After defunction of king Pharamond,
Idly suppos'd the founder of this law;
Who died within the year of our redemption
Four hundred twenty-six; and Charles the great
Subdued the Saxons, and did seat the French
Beyond the river Sala, in the year

Eight hundred five. Besides, their writers say,
King Pepin, which deposed Childerick,
Did, as heir general, being descended

Of Blithild, which was daughter to king Clothair,
Make claim and title to the crown of France.
Hugh Capet also,-that usurp'd the crown
Of Charles the duke of Lorain, sole heir male
Of the true line and stock of Charles the great,-
To fine his title with some show of truth',

1 TO FINE his title, &c.] This is the reading of the quarto of 1608; that of the folio is-"To find his title." I would read: "To line his title with some show of truth."

To line may signify at once to decorate and to strengthen. So, in Macbeth:

66

66

did line the rebel

With hidden help and vantage-."

Dr. Warburton says, that" to fine his title," is to refine or improve it. The reader is to judge.

(Though, in pure truth, it was corrupt and naught,)
Convey'd himself as heir to the lady Lingare,
Daughter to Charlemain, who was the son
To Lewis the emperor, and Lewis the son
Of Charles the great3. Also king Lewis the tenth *,

I now believe that find is right; the jury finds for the plaintiff, or finds for the defendant; to find his title is, "to determine in favour of his title with some show of truth." JOHNSON.

To fine his title, is to make it showy or specious, by some appearance of justice. STEEVENS.

So, in King Henry IV. Part I.:

"To face the garment of rebellion,
"With some fine colour."

The words in Holinshed's Chronicle are:

[blocks in formation]

title seem true, and appear good, though indeed it was stark naught."-In Hall, "to make, &c.-though indeed it was both evil and untrue." MALONE.

I believe that fine is the right reading, and that the metaphor is taken from the fining of liquors. In the next line the speaker says:

"Though in pure truth it was corrupt and naught."

It is the jury that finds a verdict, not the plaintiff or defendant, and therefore a man cannot find his own title. M. MASON.

2 CONVEY'D himself-] Derived his title. Our poet found this expression also in Holinshed. MALONE.

3 -the lady LINGare,

Daughter to CHARLEMAIN, &c.] By Charles the Great is meant the Emperor Charlemagne, son of Pepin: Charlemain is Charlechauve, or Charles the Bald, who, as well as Charles le Gros, assumed the title of Magnus. See Goldasti Animadversiones in Einhardum. Edit. 1711, p. 157. But then Charlechauve had only one daughter, named Judith, married, or, as some say, only betrothed, to our King Ethelwulf, and carried off, after his death, by Baldwin the forester, afterward Earl of Flanders, whom, it is very certain, Hugh Capet was neither heir to, nor any way descended from. This Judith, indeed, had a great-grand-daughter called Luitgarde, married to a Count Wichman, of whom nothing further is known. It was likewise the name of Charlemagne's fifth wife; but no such female as Lingare is to be met with in any French historian. In fact, these fictitious personages and pedigrees seem to have been devised by the English heralds, to “fine a title with some show of truth," which, in pure truth was corrupt and naught." It was manifestly impossible that Henry, who had no hereditary title to his own dominions, could derive one, by the same colour, to another person's. He merely proposes the inva

66

Who was sole heir to the usurper Capet,
Could not keep quiet in his conscience,
Wearing the crown of France, till satisfied
That fair queen Isabel, his grandmother,
Was lineal of the lady Ermengare,

Daughter to Charles the foresaid duke of Lorain:
By the which marriage, the line of Charles the great
Was-reunited to the crown of France.

So that, as clear as is the summer's sun,
King Pepin's title, and Hugh Capet's claim,
King Lewis his satisfaction, all appear

sion and conquest of France, in prosecution of the dying advice of his father:

66

to busy giddy minds

"In foreign quarrels; that action, thence borne out,

66

Might waste the memory of former days: "

that his subjects might have sufficient employment to mislead their attention from the nakedness of his title to the crown. The zeal and eloquence of the Archbishop are owing to similar motives. RITSON.

4

- Also king Lewis the TENTH,] The word ninth has been inserted by some of the modern editors. The old copies read tenth. Ninth is certainly wrong, and tenth certainly right. Isabel was the wife of Philip the second, father of Lewis the ninth, and grandfather of Lewis the tenth. RITSON.

66

-Lewis the tenth." This is a mistake, (as is observed in The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. liii. Part II. p. 588,) into which Shakspeare was led by Holinshed, (vol. ii. p. 546, edit. 1577), whom he copied. St. Lewis, (for he is the person here described,) the grandson of Queen Isabel, the wife of Philip II. King of France, was Lewis the Ninth. He was the son of Lewis VIII. by the Lady Blanch of Castile. In Hall's Chronicle, Henry V. folio iiii. b. (which Holinshed has closely followed, except this particular error, occasioned by either his own or his printer's inaccuracy,) Lewis is rightly called the Ninth. Here therefore we have a decisive proof that our author's guide in all his historical plays was Holinshed, and not Hall. See n. 8, p. 267. I

have however left the error uncorrected, on the same principle on which similar errors in Julius Cæsar, into which Shakspeare was led by the old translation of Plutarch, have been suffered to remain undisturbed; and also, because it ascertains a fact of some importance. MALONE.

5 King Lewis his SATISFACTION,] He had told us just above,

« PreviousContinue »