Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher Part 16

"Henry IV.-Part II."

Act ii. sc. 2-

"_P. Hen._ Sup any women with him?

_Page._ None, my lord, but old mistress Quickly, and mistress Doll Tear-sheet.

_P. Hen._ This Doll Tear-sheet should be some road."

I am sometimes disposed to think that this respectable young lady's name is a very old corruption for Tear-street-street-walker, _terere stratam_ (_viam_). Does not the Prince's question rather show this?-

"This Doll Tear-street should be some road?"

Act iii. sc. 1. King Henry's speech:-

... "Then, _happy low, lie down_; Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

I know no argument by which to persuade any one to be of my opinion, or rather of my feeling; but yet I cannot help feeling that "Happy low-lie-down!" is either a proverbial expression, or the burthen of some old song, and means, "Happy the man, who lays himself down on his straw bed or chaff pallet on the ground or floor!"

_Ib._ sc. 2. Shallow's speech:-

"_Rah, tah, tah_, would 'a say; _bounce_, would 'a say," &c.

That Beaumont and Fletcher have more than once been guilty of sneering at their great master, cannot, I fear, be denied; but the pa.s.sage quoted by Theobald from the _Knight of the Burning Pestle_ is an imitation. If it be chargeable with any fault, it is with plagiarism, not with sarcasm.

"Henry V."

Act i. sc. 2. Westmoreland's speech:-

"They know your _grace_ hath cause, and means, and might; So hath your _highness_; never King of England Had n.o.bles richer," &c.

Does "grace" mean the king's own peculiar domains and legal revenue, and "highness" his feudal rights in the military service of his n.o.bles?-I have sometimes thought it possible that the words "grace" and "cause" may have been transposed in the copying or printing;-

"They know your cause hath grace," &c.

What Theobald meant, I cannot guess. To me his pointing makes the pa.s.sage still more obscure. Perhaps the lines ought to be recited dramatically thus:-

"They know your Grace hath cause, and means, and might:- So _hath_ your Highness-never King of England _Had_ n.o.bles richer," &c.

He breaks off from the grammar and natural order from earnestness, and in order to give the meaning more pa.s.sionately.

_Ib._ Exeter's speech:-

"Yet that is but a _crush'd_ necessity."

Perhaps it may be "crash" for "cra.s.s" from _cra.s.sus_, clumsy; or it may be "curt," defective, imperfect: anything would be better than Warburton's "'scus'd," which honest Theobald, of course, adopts. By the by, it seems clear to me that this speech of Exeter's properly belongs to Canterbury, and was altered by the actors for convenience.

Act iv. sc. 3. King Henry's speech:-

"We would not _die_ in that man's company That fears his fellowship to die with us."

Should it not be "live" in the first line?

_Ib._ sc. 5.-

"_Const._ _O diable!_

_Orl._ _O seigneur! le jour est perdu, tout est perdu!_

_Dan._ _Mort de ma vie!_ all is confounded, all!

Reproach and everlasting shame Sit mocking in our plumes!-_O meschante fortune!_ Do not run away!"

Ludicrous as these introductory sc.r.a.ps of French appear, so instantly followed by good, nervous mother-English, yet they are judicious, and produce the impression which Shakespeare intended,-a sudden feeling struck at once on the ears, as well as the eyes, of the audience, that "here come the French, the baffled French braggards!"-And this will appear still more judicious, when we reflect on the scanty apparatus of distinguishing dresses in Shakespeare's tyring-room.

"Henry VI.-Part I."

Act i. sc. 1. Bedford's speech:-

"Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!

Comets, importing change of times and states, Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky; And with them scourge the bad revolting stars That have consented unto Henry's death!

Henry the fifth, too famous to live long!

England ne'er lost a king of so much worth."

Read aloud any two or three pa.s.sages in blank verse even from Shakespeare's earliest dramas, as _Love's Labour's Lost_, or _Romeo and Juliet_; and then read in the same way this speech, with especial attention to the metre; and if you do not feel the impossibility of the latter having been written by Shakespeare, all I dare suggest is, that you may have ears,-for so has another animal,-but an ear you cannot have, _me judice_.

"Richard III."

This play should be contrasted with _Richard II._ Pride of intellect is the characteristic of Richard, carried to the extent of even boasting to his own mind of his villany, whilst others are present to feed his pride of superiority; as in his first speech, act ii. sc. 1. Shakespeare here, as in all his great parts, developes in a tone of sublime morality the dreadful consequences of placing the moral, in subordination to the mere intellectual, being. In Richard there is a predominance of irony, accompanied with apparently blunt manners to those immediately about him, but formalised into a more set hypocrisy towards the people as represented by their magistrates.

"Lear."