ACT V., SCENE 3.

P. 123. What is thy name, that in the battle thus

Thou crossest me? - So Hamner. The old copies omit the.

P. 124. A fool go with thy soul where're it goes. So Capell. The old copies have "whither it goes." Both sense and metre favour the change.

P. 124. The King hath many masking in his coats. - The old text has marching instead of masking, which is from Collier's second folio; a very happy correction.

P. 125. There's but three of my hundred and fifty left alive. — Here, again, the old copies have not instead of but. See note on "There's but a shirt and a half," &c., page 147.

P. 125. Whose deaths as yet are unrevenged: I pr'ythee

Of valiant Shirley, Stafford, Blunt, are in my arm. - The old text has" are in my armes." Pope reduced the line from an Alexandrine to a regular verse by omitting valiant.

P. 129. They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my flesh :
But thoughts the slaves of life, and life Time's fool,
And Time that takes survey of all the world,

Must have a stop.· So the first quarto. The other old copies have "But thought's the slave of Life." Lettsom notes upon the passage thus: "The readings of the second quarto are sophistications by one who did not see that thoughts as well as time were nominative cases before must have, and consequently supposed that the syntax was defective for want of a verb." - I suspect we ought to read thought and slave instead of thoughts and slaves. - See foot-note 6.

P. 131. I did; I saw him dead, breathless and bleeding

Upon the ground. Here, again, the old text has On instead

of upon, which is Capell's reading.

ACT V., SCENE 5.

P. 133. Since not to be avoided it falls on me. I suspect we ought to read, with Collier's second folio, "Which not to be avoided falls on me."

P. 134. Even in the bosom of our adversaries. — After this line, the first four quartos put the following speech into the mouth of Lancaster: I thank your Grace for this high courtesy,

Which I shall give away immediately.

This comes pretty near being absurd; for it makes the Prince say he will give away the courtesy.

Ladies, and Attendants; Officers, Soldiers, Messenger, Drawers, Beadles,

Grooms, &c.

SCENE.- England.

INDUCTION.

Warkworth. Before Northumberland's Castle.
Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.1

Rum. Open your ears; for which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?

1 Such was the common way of representing this personage, no unfrequent character in the masques of the Poet's time. In a masque on St. Stephen's Night, 1614, by Thomas Campion, Rumour comes on in a skin

I, from the Orient to the drooping West,
Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold
The acts commenced on this ball of Earth:

Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
I speak of peace, while covert enmity,
Under the smile of safety, wounds the world:
And who but Rumour, who but only I,
Make fearful musters and prepared defence,
Whilst the big year, swoln with some other grief,
Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war,
And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures;
And of so easy and so plain a stop,2

That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wavering multitude,

Can play upon it. But what3 need I thus
My well-known body to anatomize

Among my household? Why is Rumour here?
I run before King Harry's victory;
Who, in a bloody field by Shrewsbury,

Hath beaten down young Hotspur and his troops,
Quenching the flame of bold rebellion

Even with the rebels' blood. But what mean I

coat full of winged tongues. Students of Latin will at once recognize the substantial likeness, not to say identity, of Shakespeare's Rumour and Virgil's Fama; one side of whose nature is choicely described in the following from Bacon's Essay of Fame: "The poets make Fame a monster: they describe her in part finely and elegantly, and in part gravely and sententiously; they say, Look, how many feathers she hath, so many eyes she hath underneath, so many tongues, so many voices, she pricks up so many ears." 2 The stops are the holes in a flute or pipe.

8 What occurs very often, as here, with the exact force of the interrogative why.

To speak so true at first? my office is
To noise abroad, that Harry Monmouth fell
Under the wrath of noble Hotspur's sword;
And that the King before the Douglas' rage
Stoop'd his annointed head as low as death.
This have I rumour'd through the pleasant towns
Between that royal field of Shrewsbury
And this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone,4
Where Hotspur's father, old Northumberland,
Lies crafty-sick: the posts come tiring on,
And not a man of them brings other news

Than they have learn'd of me: from Rumour's tongues
They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs.5

ACT I.

SCENE I. The Same.

Enter Lord BARDOLPH.

L. Bard. Who keeps the gate here, ho?

Enter Porter, above.

[Exit.

Where is the earl?

Port. What shall I say you are?

L. Bard.

Tell thou the earl

That the Lord Bardolph doth attend him here.

Port. His lordship is walk'd forth into the orchard:

4 Warkworth Castle, the residence of Northumberland.

5 Here wrongs evidently means harms, hurts, disasters, or discomforts; as "true wrongs" stands in full antithesis to "comforts false." And wrong has the same radical sense as wring and wrest, all being from the same root. So in Julius Cæsar, iii. 1: “Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause, nor without cause will he be satisfied."