For our approach shall so much dare the field, That England shall couch down in fear, and yield. Enter GRANDPRE. GRAND. Why do you stay so long, my lords of Yon island carrions", desperate of their bones, In The Spanish Tragedy, (no date,) a tucket afar off." "2 tuckets by several trumpets." Sonance is a word used by Heywood, in his Rape of Lucrece, 1630: "Or, if he chance to endure our tongues so much "As but to hear their sonance." STEEVENS. 7 You island carrions, &c.] This and the preceding description of the English is founded on the melancholy account given by our historians, of Henry's army, immediately before the battle of Agincourt: "The Englishmen were brought into great misery in this journey [from Harfleur to Agincourt]; their victual was in manner spent, and now could they get none :-rest could they none take, for their enemies were ever at hand to give them alarmes daily it rained, and nightly it freezed; of fewel there was great scarcity, but of fluxes great plenty; money they had enough, but wares to bestowe it upon, for their relief or comforte, had they little or none." Holinshed. MALONE. 8 Their RAGGED CURTAINS poorly are let loose,] By their ragged curtains, are meant their colours. M. MASON. The idea seems to have been taken from what every man must have observed, i. e. ragged curtains put in motion by the air, when the windows of mean houses are left open. STEEVENS. 9 Their horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks, With torch-staves in their hand:] Grandpré alludes to the form of ancient candlesticks, which frequently represented human Lob down their heads, dropping the hides and hips; The gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes; figures holding the sockets for the lights in their extended hands. A similar image occurs in Vittoria Corombona, 1612: " he showed like a pewter candlestick, fashioned like a man in armour, holding a tilting staff in his hand little bigger than a candle." The following is an exact representation of one of these candlesticks, now in the possession of Francis Douce, Esq. The receptacles for the candles are wanting in the original. The sockets in which they were to be placed are in the outstretched hands of the figure. The form of torch-staves may be ascertained by a wooden cut in vol. xiv. p. 372. STEEVENS. 1 And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit1 3 CON. They have said their prayers, and they stay for death. DAU. Shall we go send them dinners, and fresh suits, And give their fasting horses provender, And after fight with them? I CON. I stay but for my guard; On, to the field: GIMMAL bit —] Gimmal is, in the western counties, a ring: a gimmal bit is therefore a bit of which the parts played one within another. JOHNSON. I meet with the word, though differently spelt, in the old play of The Raigne of King Edward the Third, 1596: 66 Nor lay aside their jacks of gymold mail.” Gymold or gimmal'd mail means armour composed of links like those of a chain, which by its flexibility fitted it to the shape of the body more exactly than defensive covering of any other contrivance. There was a suit of it to be seen in the Tower. Spenser, in his Fairy Queen, book i. ch. v. calls it woven mail : "In woven mail all armed warily." In Lingua, &c. 1607, is mentioned: 66 a gimmal rink with one link hanging." STEEVENS. "A gimmal or gemmow ring, (says Minsheu, Dictionary, 1617,) from the Gal. gemeau, Lat. gemellus, double, or twinnes, because they be rings with two or more links." MALONE. 2 - their executors, the knavish crows,] The crows who are to have the disposal of what they shall leave, their hides and their flesh. JOHNSON. 3 In life so lifeless-] So, in The Comedy of Errors: "A living dead man." STEEVENS. 4 I stay but for my GUARD;] It seems, by what follows, that guard in this place means rather something of ornament or of distinction, than a body of attendants. JOHNSON. The following quotation from Holinshed, p. 554, will best elucidate this passage: "The duke of Brabant when his standard was not come, caused a banner to be taken from a trumpet and I will the banner from a trumpet take, And use it for my haste. Come, come, away! [Exeunt. fastened upon a spear, the which he commanded to be borne before him instead of a standard." In the second part of Heywood's Iron Age, 1632, Menelaus, after having enumerated to Pyrrhus the treasures of his father Achilles, as his myrmidons, &c. adds: "His sword, spurs, armour, guard, pavilion." From this last passage it should appear that guard was part of the defensive armour; perhaps what we call at present the gorget. Again, in Holinshed, p. 820: " The one bare his helmet, the second his granguard," &c. STEEVENS. By his guard, I believe, the Constable means, not any part of his dress, but the guard that usually attended with his banner; to supply the want of which he afterwards says, that he will take a banner from a trumpet, and use it for his haste. It appears, from a passage in the last scene of the fourth Act, that the principal nobility, and the princes, had all their respective banners, and of course their guards: "Of princes in this number, "And nobles bearing banners, there be dead Dr. Johnson and Mr. Steevens are of opinion that " guard in this place means rather something of ornament, or of distinction, than a body of attendants." But from the following passage in Holinshed, p. 554, which our author certainly had in his thoughts, it is clear, in my apprehension, that guard is here used in its ordinary sense: "When the messenger was come back to the French hoste, the men of warre put on their helmettes, and caused their trumpets to blow to the battaile. They thought themselves so sure of victory, that diverse of the noble men made such haste toward the battaile, that they left many of their servants and men of warre behind them, and some of them would not once stay for their standards; as amongst other the Duke of Brabant, when his standard was not come, caused a banner to be taken from a trumpet, and fastened to a speare, the which he commanded to be borne before him, instead of a standard." The latter part only of this passage is quoted by Mr. Steevens; but the whole considered together proves, in my apprehension, that guard means here nothing more than the men of war whose duty it was to attend on the Constable of France, and among those his standard, that is, his standard-bearer. In a preceding passage Holinshed mentions, that "the Constable of France, the SCENE III. The English Camp. Enter the English Host; GLOSTER, BEDFORD, EXETER, SALISBURY, and Westmoreland, GLO. Where is the king? BED. The king himself is rode to view their battle. WEST. Of fighting men they have full threescore thousand. EXE. There's five to one; besides, they all are fresh. SAL. God's arm strike with us! 'tis a fearful odds. God be wi' you, princes all; I'll to my charge: If we no more meet, till we meet in heaven, Then, joyfully,—my noble lord of Bedford,My dear lord Gloster,—and my good lord Exeter,— And my kind kinsman,-warriors all, adieu! Marshal, &c. and other of the French nobility, came and pitched down their standards and banners in the county of St. Paule." Again : "Thus the French men being ordered under their standards and banners, made a great shew: "-or, as Hall has it: "Thus the French men were every man under his banner, only waiting," &c. It appears, from both these historians, that all the princes and nobles in the French army bore banners, and of these one hundred and twenty-six were killed in this battle. In a subsequent part of the description of this memorable victory, Holinshed mentions that “ Henry having felled the Duke of Alanson, the king's guard, contrary to his mind, outrageously slew him." The Constable being the principal leader of the French army, had, without doubt, like Henry, his guard also, one of whom bore before him, as we may collect from Hall, the banner-royal of France. MALONE. 5 Salisbury,] Thomas Montacute, Earl of Salisbury. 6 And my kind KINSMAN,] This must be addressed to West |