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SCENE III.

The fame.

Alarums; Excurfions; Retreat.

Enter King JOHN,

ELINOR, ARTHUR, the Baftard, HUBERT, and Lords.

behind,

K. JOHN. So fhall it be; your grace shall stay [To ELINOR. So ftrongly guarded. - Coufin, look not fad: [ To ARTHUR. Thy grandam loves thee; and thy uncle will As dear be to thee as thy father was.

ARTH. O, this will make my mother die with grief.

K. JOHN. Coufin, [To the Bastard.] away for England; hafte before:

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And, ere our coming, fee thou fhake the bags
Of hoarding abbots; prifoned angels
Set thou at liberty: the fat ribs of peace
Muft by the hungry now be fed upon:
Ufe our commiffion in his utmoft force.

2 Set thou at liberty:] The word thou (which is wanting in the old copy) was judicioully added, for the fake of metre, by Sir T. Hanmer. STEEVENS.

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the fat ribs of peace

Muft by the hungry now be fed upon:] This word now feems a very idle term here, and conveys no fatisfactory idea. An antithefis, and oppofition of terms, fo perpetual with our author, requires:

Muft by the hungry war be fed upon.

War, demanding a large expence, is very poetically faid to be hungry, and to prey on the wealth and fat of peace.

WARBURTON.

hungry maw, with lefs debut with not fo much force

This emendation is better than the former word, but yet not neceffary. Sir T. Hanmer reads viation from the common reading, or elegance as war. JOHNSON.

BAST. Bell, book, and candle fhall not drive me back,

When gold and filver becks me to come on..
I leave your highness: - Grandam, I will pray

Either emendation may be unneceffary. Perhaps, the hungry now is this hungry infant. Shakspeare uses the word now as a fubftantive, in Measure for Measure:

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till this very now,

"When men were fond, I fmil'd and wonder'd how."

STEEVENS.

The meaning, I think, is, " the fat ribs of peace muft now be fed upon by the hungry troops, to whom fome fhare of this ecclefiaftical fpoil would naturally fall. The expreffion, like many other of our author's, is taken from the facred writings: "And there he maketh the hungry to dwell, that they may prepare a city for habitation. 107th Pfalm. Again: "He hath filled the hungry with good things, &c. St. Luke, i. 53.

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This interpretation is fupported by the paffage in the old play,

which is here imitated:

"Philip, I make thee chief in this affair ;

"Ranfack their abbeys, cloyfters, priories,
"Convert their coin unto my foldiers' use.

When I read this paffage in the old play, the firft idea that fuggefted itfelf was, that a word had dropped out at the prefs, in the line before us, and that our author wrote:

Muft by the hungry foldiers now be fed on.

But the interpretation above given renders any alteration unneceffary. MALONE.

3 Bell, book, and candle-] In an account of the Romish curfe given by Dr. Grey, it appears that three candles were extinguished, one by one, in different parts of the execration. JOHNSON. I meet with the fame expreffion in Ram-Alley, or Merry Tricks, 1611:

"I'll have a prieft fhall mumble up a marriage
"Without bell, book, or candle.'

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STEEVENS.

In Archbishop Winchelfea's fentences of excommunication, anno 1298, (fee Johnson's Ecclefiaftical Laws, Vol. II.) it is directed that the fentence againft infringers of certain articles fhould be throughout explained in order in English, with bells tolling, and candles lighted, that it may cause the greater dread; for laymen have greater regard to this folemnity, than to the effect of fuch fentences. See Dodfley's Old Plays, Vol. XII. p. 397, edit. 1780.

--

REED.

(If ever I remember to be holy,

For your fair fafety; fo I kifs your hand.
ELI. Farewell, my gentle coufin.

K. JOHN.

Coz, farewell.

[Exit Baftard.

ELI. Come hither, little kinfman; hark, a word. [She takes ARTHUR afide.

K. JOHN. Come hither, Hubert. O my gentle

Hubert,

We owe thee much; within this wall of flesh
There is a foul, counts thee her creditor,
And with advantage means to pay thy love:
And, my good friend, thy voluntary oath
Lives in this bofom, dearly cherished.
Give me thy hand. I had a thing to fay
But I will fit it with fome better time.
By heaven, Hubert, I am almost afham'd
To fay what good refpect I have of thee.
HUB. I am much bounden to your majesty.
K. JOHN. Good friend, thou haft no cause to say

fo yet:

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But thou fhalt have; and creep time ne'er fo

flow,

Yet it fhall come, for me to do thee good.
I had a thing to fay, But let it go:
The fun is in the heaven; and the proud day
Attended with the pleasures of the world,

with fome better time. ] The old copy reads-tune. Corrected by Mr. Pope. The fame miftake has happened in Twelfth Night. See that play, Vol. V. p. 279, n. 8. In Macbeth, A& IV. fc. ult. we have "This time goes manly, "inftead of "This tune goes manly. MALONE.

In the handwriting of Shakspeare's age, the words time and tune are fcarcely to be diftinguished from each other. STEEVENS.

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Is all too wanton, and too full of gawds,
To give me audience:
me audience-If the midnight bell
Did, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth
Sound one unto the drowfy race of night;

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full of gawds, | Gawds are any showy ornaments. So, in The Dumb Knight, 1633:

"Io caper in his grave,
"Trick up his coffin.

and with vain gawds

See Midfummer Night's Dream, Vol. VII. p. 7. n. 8. STEEVENS.
Sound one unto the drowsy race of night;] Old capy

on. STEFVENS.

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Sound

I fhould fuppofe the meaning of--found on, to be this: If the midnight bell, by repeated firokes, was to haften away the race of beings who are busy at that hour, or quicken night itself in its progrefs; the morning bell (that is, the bell that ftrikes one) could not, with ftrict propriety, be made the ageut; for the bell has ceafed to be in the fervice of night, when it proclaims the arrival of day. Sound on may alfo have a peculiar propriety, because by the repetition of the ftrokes at twelve, it gives a much more forcible warning than when it only ftrikes one.

Such was once my opinion concerning the old reading; but on re-confideration, its propriety cannot appear more doubtful to any One than to myself.

It is too late to talk of haftening the night when the arrival of the morning is announced; and I am afraid that the repeated ftrokes have lefs of folemnity than the fingle notice, as they take from the horror and awful filence here defcribed as lo propitious to the dreadful purposes of the king. Though the hour of one be not the natural midnight, it is yet the moit folemn moment of the poetical one; and Shakspeare himself has chofen to introduce his Ghoft in Hamlet

"The bell then beating one." STEEVENS.

The word one is here, as in many other paffages in these plays, written on in the old copy. Mr. Theobald made the correction. He likewife fubftituted unto for into, the reading of the original copy; a change that requires no support. In Chaucer and other old writers one is ufually written on. See Mr. Tyrwhitt's Gloffary to The Canterbury Tales. So once was anciently written ons. And it fhould feem from a quibbling paffage in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, that one, in fome counties at leaft, was pronounced in our author's time as if written Hence the tranfcriber's ear might cafily have deceived him. One of the persons whom I employed

on.

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If this fame were a churchyard where we ftand, And thou poffeffed with a thoufand wrongs;

to read aloud to me each fheet of the present work [Mr. Malone's edition of our author ] before it was printed off, conftantly founded the word one in this manner. He was a native of Herefordshire.

The inftances that are found in the original editions of our author's plays, in which on is printed inftead of one, are fo numerous, that there cannot, in my apprehenfion, be the fmalleft doubt that one is the true reading in the line before us. Thus, in Coriolanus, edit. 1623, p. 15:

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This double worship,

"Where on part does difdain with caufe, the other
Infult without all reafon.

Again, in Cymbeline, 1623, p. 380:

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perchance be spoke not; but, Like a full- acorn'd boar, a Jarmen on, Again, in Romeo and Juliet, 1623, p. 66:

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"And thou, and Romeo, prefs on heavie bier."

Again, in The Comedy of Errors, 1623, p. 94:

"On, whofe hard heart is button'd up with fteel. Again, in All's well that ends well, 1623, p. 240: "A good traveller is fomething at the latter end of a dinner, but on that lies three thirds, &c.

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Again, in Love's Labour's Loft, quarto, 1598:
"On, whom the mufick of his own vain tongue

Again, ibid. edit 1623, p. 133:

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On, her hairs were gold, cryflal the other's eyes. The fame spelling is found in many other books. So, in Holland's Suetonius, 1606, p. 14: he caught from on of them of

" &c.

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trumpet, I fhould not have produced fo many paffages to prove a fact of which no one can be ignorant, who has the flightest knowledge of the carly editions of these plays, or of our old writers, had not the author of Remarks, &c. on the laft Edition of Shakspeare, afferted, with that modefty and accuracy by which his pamphlet is diftinguished, that the observation contained in the former part of this note was made by one totally unacquainted with the old copies, and that it would be difficult to find a fingle inftance" in which on and one are confounded in those copies.

I fufpe& that we have too haftily in this line fubfituted unto for into; for into feems to have been frequently used for unto in Shakfpeare's time. So, in Harfnet's Declaration, &c. 1603: " when the nimble Vice would fkip up nimbly into the devil's neck.

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