ACT IV. Line 1. ONCE again.] Alluding to their former meeting in the second act. 12. this day -these days, JOHNSON. -] Hanmer reads, but Shakspere meant, such a day as this, a coronationday. And such is the English idiom, which our author commonly prefers to grammatical nicety. JOHNSON. 91. like rams] That is, like battering rams. JOHNSON. 140. SCENE II.] This scene is above any other part of Shakspere's tragedies, and perhaps above any scene of any other poet, tender and pathetick, without gods, or furies, or poisons, or precipices, without the help of romantick circumstances, without improbable sallies of poetical lamentation, and without any throes of tumultuous misery. JOHNSON. 151. -he stepp'd before me, happily, For my example.] Happily seems to mean on this occasion-peradventure, haply. I have been more than once of this opinion, when I have met with the same word thus spelt in other passages. STEEVENS. -with easy roads, -] i. e. by short stages. STEEVENS. 160. 177. Of an unbounded stomach, -] i. e. of unbounded bounded pride, or haughtiness. So, Holinshed, speaking of king Richard III. "Such a great audacitie and such a stomach reigned in his bodie.” STEEVENS. 178. -one, that by suggestion, &c.] Thus, Holinshed: "This cardinal was of a great stomach, for he compted himself equal with princes, and by craftie suggestion got into his hands innumerable treasure: he forced little simonie, and was not pitifull, and stood affectionate in his own opinion: in open presence he would lie and seie untruth, and was double both in speech and meaning; he would promise much and perform little he was vicious of his bodie, and gave the clergie euil example." Edit. 1587, p. 922. Perhaps after this quotation, you may not think, that Sir Thomas Hanmer, who reads tyth'd-instead of ty'd all the kingdom, deserves quite so much of Dr. Warburton's severity.-Indisputably the passage, like every other in the speech, is intended to express the meaning of the parallel one in the chronicle; it cannot therefore be credited, that any man, when the original was produced, should still choose to defend a cant acceptation, and inform us, perhaps, seriously, that in gaming language, from I know not what practice, to tye is to equal! A sense of the word, as far as I have yet found, unknown to our old writers; and, if known, would not surely have been used in this place by our author. 179. Ty'd all the kingdom :] Sir Thomas Hanmer rightly rightly reads Tyth'd. Hall, from whom the above description is copied by Holinshed, is very explicit in the demands of the cardinal: who having insolently told the lord-mayor and aldermen, "For sothe I thinke, that halfe your substance were too little," assures them by way of comfort at the end of his harangue, that, upon an average, the tythe should be sufficient; "Sers, speake not to breake that thyng that is concluded, for some shall not paie the tenth parte, and some more. And again; "Thei saied, the card nall by visitacions, makyng of abbottes, probates of testamentes, graunting of faculties, licences, and other pollyngs in his courtes legantines, had made his threasore egall with the kinges." Edit. 1548, p. 138, and 143. " FARMER. In Storer's Life and Death of Tho. Wolsey, a poem, 1599, the cardinal says, "I car'd not for the gentrie, for I had Ty'd all the kingdom :] i. e. He was a man of an unbounded stomach, or pride, ranking himself with princes, and by suggestion to the king and the pope, he ty'd, i. e. limited, circumscribed, and set bounds to the liberties and properties of all persons in the kingdom. That he did so, appears from various passages in the play. Act ii. sc. 2. "free us from his slavery," " or this imperious man will work us from princes into pages; all men's honours," &c. Act iii. sc. 2. “You wrought to be a legate, by which power you maim'd the jurisdiction of all bishops.' See also act i. sc. 1. and act iii. sc. 2. This con-struction of the passage may be supported from D'Ewes's Journal of Queen Elizabeth's Parliaments, p. 644: "Far be it from me that the state and prerogative of the prince should be tied by me, or by the act of any other subject." Dr. Farmer has displayed such eminent knowledge of Shakspere, that it is with the utmost diffidence I dissent from the alteration which he would establish here. He would read tyth'd, and refers to the authorities of Hall and Holinshed about a tax of the tenth, or tythe of each man's substance, which is not taken notice of in the play. Let it be remarked that it is queen Katharine speaks here, who, in act i. sc. 2. told the king it was a demand of the sixth part of each subject's substance, that caused the rebellion. Would she afterwards say that he, i. e. Wolsey, had tythed all the kingdom, when she knew he had almost doubletythed it? Still Dr. Farmer insists that "the passage, like every other in the speech, is intended to express the meaning of the parallel one in the Chronicle." i. e. The cardinal" by craftie suggestion got into his hands innumerable treasure." This passage does not relate to a public tax of the tenths, but to the cardinal's own private acquisitions. If in this sense I admitted the alteration, tyth'd, I would suppose that, as the queen is descanting on the cardinal's own acquirements, she borrows her term from the principal emolument or payment due to priests; and means to intimate that the the cardinal was not content with the tythes legally accruing to him from his own various pluralities, but that he extorted something equivalent to them throughout all the kingdom. So Buckingham says, act i. sc. 1. "No man's pye is freed from his ambitious finger." So, again, Surrey says, act iii. sc. ult. "Yes, that goodness of gleaning all the land's wealth into one, into your own hands, cardinal, by extortion:" and ibidem, "You have sent innumerable substance (by what means got I leave to your own conscience) to the mere undoing of all the kingdom." This extortion is so frequently spoken of, that perhaps our author purposely avoided a repetition of it in the passage under consideration, and therefore gave a different sentiment declarative of the consequence of his unbounded pride, that must humble all others. TOLLET. 185. —as he is now, nothing.] So, in Massinger's Great Duke of Florence: -Great men "Till they have gain'd their ends, are giants in "Their promises; but those obtain'd, weak pygmies "In their performance," 186. Of his own body he was ill, STEEVENS. -] A criminal connection with women was anciently called the vice of the body. So, in Holinshed, p. 1258: “ he laboured by all meanes to cleare mistresse Sanders of committing evill of her bodie with him." STEEVENS. So, the Protector says of Jane Shore, Hall's Chronicle, fol. 16. temp. Edw. V. " She was naught of her bodye." Fij MALONE. 189. |