*So So minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years, * Pafs'd over to the end they were created, * Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. * Ah, what a life were this! how fweet! how lovely! *Gives not the hawthorn bufh a fweeter fhade * To fhepherds, looking on their filly sheep, * Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy *To kings, that fear their fubjects' treachery? *O, yes it doth; a thousand fold it doth. * And to conclude,-the fhepherd's homely curds, * His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle, * His wonted fleep under a fresh tree's shade, *All which fecure and fweetly he enjoys, * Is far beyond a prince's delicates, *His viands fparkling in a golden cup, *His body couched in a curious bed, * When care, mistruft, and treason wait on him. Alarum. Enter a Son that has killed his Father,3 dragging in the dead Body. SON. Ill blows the wind, that profits no-body.This man, whom hand to hand I flew in fight, May be poffeffed with fome ftore of crowns: *And I, that haply take them from him now, *May yet ere night yield both my life and them as a diffyllable. Years is in that line likewise used as a word of two fyllables. MALONE. This diffyllabical pronunciation will by no means fuit the conclufion of a verfe, however it may be admitted in other parts of it. I have retained Mr. Rowe's very neceffary infertion. STEEVENS. 3 Enter a Son &c.] These two horrible incidents are selected to fhow the innumerable calamities of civil war. JOHNSON. In the battle of Conftantine and Maxentius, by Raphael, the fecond of these incidents is introduced on a fimilar occafion. STEEVENS. *To fome man elfe, as this dead man doth me."Who's this?-O God! it is my father's face, 'Whom in this conflict I unwares have kill'd. "O heavy times, begetting fuch events! • From London by the king was I prefs'd forth; My father, being the earl of Warwick's man, "Came on the part of York, press'd by his master ; And I, who at his hands receiv'd my life, 'Have by my hands of life bereaved him.'Pardon me, God, I knew not what I did!And pardon, father, for I knew not thee!* My tears fhall wipe away these bloody marks; * And no more words, till they have flow'd their fill. 'K. HEN. O piteous fpectacle !4 O bloody times! Whilft lions war, and battle for their dens, 'Poor harmless lambs abide their enmity,* Weep, wretched man, I'll aid thee tear for tear; * And let our hearts, and eyes, like civil war, * Be blind with tears, and break o'ercharg'd with grief.5 40 piteous fpectacle! &c.] In the old play the King does not speak, till both the Son and the Father have appeared, and spoken, and then the following words are attributed to him, out of which Shakspeare has formed two diftinct speeches : "Woe above woe! grief more than common grief! "Poor lambs do feel the rigour of their wraths. ". The fatal colours of our striving houses. For, if you ftrive, ten thousand lives must perish." 5 And let our hearts, and eyes, like civil war, Be blind with tears, and break o'ercharg'd with grief.] The meaning is here inaccurately expreffed. The King intends to say that the state of their hearts and eyes fhall be like that of the kingdom in a civil war, all shall be destroyed by power formed within themselves. JOHNSON. Enter a Father, who has killed his Son, with the Body in his Arms. FATH. Thou that fo ftoutly hast resisted me, 'Give me thy gold, if thou haft any gold; 'For I have bought it with an hundred blows.'But let me fee:-is this our foeman's face? Ah, no, no, no, it is mine only fon !- * Ah, boy, if any life be left in thee, * Throw up thine eye; fee, fee, what showers arise, * Blown with the windy tempeft of my heart,6 * Upon thy wounds, that kill mine eye and heart!O, pity, God, this miferable age!— "What ftratagems," how fell, how butcherly, what fhowers arife, Blown with the windy tempeft of my heart,] This image had occurred in the preceding A&: For raging wind blows up incessant showers. STEEVENS. 7 What ftratagems,] Stratagem seems to stand here only for an event of war, or may intend fnares and furprizes. JOHNSON. Stratagem is ufed by Shakspeare not merely to exprefs the events and furprizes of war.-The word means in this place fome dreadful event, as it does alfo in The Second Part of K. Henry IV. where Northumberland says: Every minute now "Should be the father of fome Stratagem." Stratagemma, in Italian, bears the fame acceptation which Shakspeare gives to the English word Stratagem, in these two paffages. Bernini in his Hiftory of Herefies, fays: "Ma Dio puni la Francia, & la Spagna, co'l flagello dei Vandali, per I'Erefia abbracciata, & più gravamente puni Roma, prevaricata di nuovo, al culto de gl' idoli, con il facco che gli diedero. Orofio, che defcriffe quelle ftratagemme, paragoni Roma a Sodoma, chiamando i Romani peccatori." It is evident, that in this paffage ftratagemme means difaftrous events, as ftratagem does in this place. M. MASON. 66 Stratageme. A policie or fubtle device in warre, whereby the enemie is often vanquished." Bullokar's English Expofitor, * Erroneous, mutinous, and unnatural, octavo, 1616. Florio, in his Italian Dict. 1598, defines Stråtagema, "a policie, a wile, or wittie fhift in warre." This was undoubtedly its ordinary fenfe in our author's time, though then and afterwards it was occafionally used for any fubtle device or policy. Here it has unquestionably its ordinary fignification. MALONE. Mr. Malone afferts that fratagem in this place means a fubtle device in war; but I still adhere to my former opinion, that it means a difaftrous event, or an atrocious action. Can we fuppofe that a father in the paroxyfm of defpair, on finding that he had killed with his own hand, his only fon, fhould call that horrid deed a fubtle device in war? When Lorenzo fays, in The Merchant of Venice, that "The man who hath no mufick in himself &c. Could he mean to rank the fubtle devices of war in the fame clafs with the worft of crimes? We find the word Stratagem in The True Chronicle Hiftory of King Lear, p. 417, where Regan fays to the Meffenger"Haft thou the heart to act a ftratagem, "And give a ftab or two, if need require? 66 Meffenger. I have a heart compact of adamant "Do but command me do it, it shall be done." It is evident that Regan's Stratagem, or fubtle device, was affaffination, M. MASON. 8 O boy, thy father gave thee life too foon,] Because had he been born later, he would not now have been of years to engage in this quarrel. WARBURTON, And hath bereft thee of thy life too late!] i. e. He should have done it by not bringing thee into being, to make both father and fon thus miferable. This is the fenfe, fuch as it is, of the two lines; however, an indifferent fenfe was better than none K. HEN. Woe above woe! grief more than com❤ mon grief! 'O, that my death would stay these ruthful deeds!→→→→→ *O pity, pity, gentle heaven, pity!The red rofe and the white are on his face, The fatal colours of our ftriving houses: *The one, his purple blood right well resembles; * The other, his pale cheeks, methinks, present; as it is brought to by the Oxford editor, by reading the lines thus ; O boy! thy father gave thee life too late, And hath bereft thee of thy life too foon. WARBURTON. I rather think the meaning of the line, And hath bereft thee of thy life too foon, to be this: Thy father expofed thee to danger by giving thee life too foon, and hath bereft thee of life by living himself too long. JOHNSON. The Oxford editor might have juftified the change he made, from the authority of the quarto, according to which I would read; explaining the first line thus: Thy father begot thee at too. late a period of his life, and therefore thou wert not old and Strong enough to cope with him. The next line can want no explanation. Mr. Tollet thinks, that by too late is meant too lately, as in King Richard III. A& III: "Too late he died that might have kept that title." STEEVENS, The memory Too late, without doubt, means too recently. of thy virtues and thy hapless end is too recent, to be thought of without the deepeft anguish. The fame quaint expreffion is found in our author's Rape of Lucrece : "O, quoth Lucretius, I did give that life, "Which the too early and too late hath fpill'd.". Here late clearly means lately. Again, in this Third Part of King Henry VI: "Where fame, late entering at his heedful ears." In the old play this and the preceding line ftand thus: "Poor boy, thy father gave thee life too late, "And hath bereft thee of thy life too soon." MALONE. The prefent reading appears to be far the more eligible. Had the fon been younger, he would have been precluded from the levy that brought him into the field; and had the father recognized him before the mortal blow, it would not have been too late to have faved him from death. HENLEY. |