MAC. It is no time to discourse, so Chrish save me, the day is hot, and the weather, and the wars, and the king, and the dukes; it is no time to discourse. The town is beseeched, and the trumpet calls us to the breach; and we talk, and, by Chrish, do nothing; 'tis shame for us all so God sa' me, 'tis shame to stand still; it is shame, by my hand: and there is throats to be cut, and works to be done; and there ish nothing done, so Chrish sa' me, la.

JAMY. By the mess, ere theise eyes of mine take themselves to slumber, aile do gude service, or aile ligge i' the grund for it; ay, or go to death; and aile pay it as valorously as I may, that sal I surely do, that is the breff and the long: Mary, I wad full fain heard some question 'tween you 'tway.

FLU. Captain Macmorris, I think, look you, under your correction, there is not many of your nation

Mac. Of my nation? What ish my nation? ish a villain, and a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal ? What ish my natio.? Who talks of my nation?

FLU. Look you, if you take the matter otherwise than is meant, captain Macmorris, peradventure, I shall think you do not use me with that affability as in discretion you ought to use me, look you; being as goot a man as yourself, both in the disciplines of wars, and in the derivation of my birth, and in other particularities.

Mac. I do not know you so good a man as myself: so Crish save me, I will cut off your head. Gow. Gentlemen both, you will mistake each other.

JAMY. Au! that's a foul fault.

[A Parley sounded.

requite you, that is, answer you, or interpose with my arguments,

as I shall find opportunity. JOHNSON.

Gow. The town sounds a parley.

FLU. Captain Macmorris, when there is more better opportunity to be required, look you, I will be so bold as to tell you, I know the disciplines of war; and there is an end 8.

SCENE III.

[Exeunt.

The same. Before the Gates of Harfleur.

The Governour and some Citizens on the Walls; the English Forces below. Enter King HENRY and his Train.

K. HEN. How yet resolves the governour of the town ?

This is the latest parle we will admit :

Therefore, to our best mercy give yourselves;
Or, like to men proud of destruction,

Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier 9,
(A name, that, in my thoughts, becomes me best,)
If I begin the battery once again,

I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur,

Till in her ashes she lie buried.

The gates of mercy shall be all shut up';

8 - there is an end.] It were to be wished, that the poor merriment of this dialogue had not been purchased with so much profaneness. JOHNSON.

9 Defy us TO OUR WORST: for, as I am a soldier,] The three words in small capitals, are, I suppose, an interpolation. They have little value, and spoil the metre. STEEVENS.

The gates of mercy shall be all shut up;] Mr. Gray has borrowed this thought in his inimitable Elegy:

"And shut the gates of mercy on mankind." STEEvens. We again meet with this significant expression in King Henry VI. Part III. :

66

Open thy gate of mercy, gracious Lord!"

Sir Francis Bacon uses the same expression in a letter to King James, written a few days after the death of Shakspeare: "And

And the flesh'd soldier,-rough and hard of heart,In liberty of bloody hand, shall range

With conscience wide as hell; mowing like grass Your fresh-fair virgins, and your flowering infants. What is it then to me, if impious war,—

Array'd in flames, like to the prince of fiends,—
Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats
Enlink'd to waste and desolation??

What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation ?

What rein can hold licentious wickedness,
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil,
As send precepts to the Leviathan

To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town, and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of deadly murder, spoil, and villainy.

3

therefore, in conclusion, we wished him [the earl of Somerset] not to shut the gate of your majesties mercy against himself, by being obdurate any longer." MALONE.

2 fell feats

Enlink'd to waste and desolation ?] All the savage practices naturally concomitant to the sack of cities. JOHNSON. 3 Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace

O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds] This is a very harsh metaphor. To overblow is to drive away, or to keep off. JOHNSON,

4 Of DEADLY murder,] The folio has headly. The passage is not in the quarto. Though deadly is an epithet of but little force, applied to murder, I yet suspect it to have been the poet's word. So, in Macbeth, vol. xi. p. 170, we have mortal murders; and in Richard III. Act IV. Sc. I. " dead-killing news." MALONE, Perhaps we should read, [with the second folio], "heady murder." So, in King Henry IV. Part I. :

"And all the currents of a heady fight." STEEVENS,

If not, why, in a moment, look to see

The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand

Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters'; Your fathers taken by the silver beards,

And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls;
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes;

Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confus'd
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid?
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?

Gov. Our expectation hath this day an end:
The Dauphin, whom of succour we entreated",
Returns us-that his powers are not yet ready
To raise so great a siege. Therefore, dread king,
We yield our town, and lives, to thy soft mercy:
Enter our gates; dispose of us, and ours;
For we no longer are defensible.

K. HEN. Open your gates.-Come, uncle Exeter, Go you and enter Harfleur; there remain, And fortify it strongly 'gainst the French: Use mercy to them all. For us, dear uncle,The winter coming on, and sickness growing Upon our soldiers,—we'll retire to Calais. To-night in Harfleur will we be your guest; To-morrow for the march are we addrest".

9

[Flourish. The King, &c. enter the Town.

5 DEFILE the locks, &c.] The folio reads:

"Desire the locks," &c. STEEVENS.

The emendation is Mr. Pope's. MALONE.

6 - whom of succour we entreated,] Many instances of similar phraseology are already given in a note on the following passage in A Midsummer-Night's Dream: "I shall desire you of more acquaintance." See Act III. Sc. I. STEEVENS.

7 are we ADDREST.] i. e. prepared. So, in Heywood's Brazen Age, 1613:

"Tell us these champions are addrest for war."

STEEVENS.

SCENE IV.S

Roüen. A Room in the Palace.

Enter KATHARINE and ALICE.

KATH. Alice, tu as esté en Angleterre, et tu parles bien le language.

8 Scene IV.] I have left this ridiculous scene as I found it; and am sorry to have no colour left from any of the editions, to imagine it interpolated. WARBURTON.

Sir T. Hanmer has rejected it. The scene is indeed mean enough, when it is read; but the grimaces of two French women, and the odd accent with which they uttered the English, made it divert upon the stage. It may be observed, that there is in it not only the French language, but the French spirit, Alice compliments the princess upon her knowledge of four words, and tells her that she pronounces like the English themselves. The princess suspects no deficiency in her instructress, nor the instructress in herself. Throughout the whole scene there may be found French servility, and French vanity.

I cannot forbear to transcribe the first sentence of this dialogue from the edition of 1608, that the reader, who has not looked into the old copies, may judge of the strange negligence with which they are printed.

"Kate. Alice venecia, vous aves cates en, vou parte fort bon Angloys englatara, coman sae palla vou la main en francoy."

JOHNSON.

We may observe, in general, that the early editions have not half the quantity; and every sentence, or rather every word, most ridiculously blundered. These, for several reasons, could not possibly be published by the author; and it is extremely probable that the French ribaldry was at first inserted by a diferent hand, as the many editions most certainly were after he had left the stage. Indeed, every friend to his memory will not easily believe, that he was acquainted with the scene between Katharine and the old Gentlewoman: or surely he would not have admitted such obscenity and nonsense. FARMER.

It is very certain that authors, in the time of Shakspeare, did not correct the press for themselves. I hardly ever saw, in one of the old plays, a sentence of either Latin, Italian, or French, without the most ridiculous blunders. In The History of Clyomon, Knight of the Golden Shield, 1599, a tragedy which I have often quoted, a warrior asks a lady, disguised like a page,