K. Rich. Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom, Or like a cunning instrument cas'd up, That knows no touch to tune the harmony. 8 The old copies read 'sly-slow hours Pope reads fly-slow hours, which has been admitted into the text, and conveys an image highly beautiful and just. It is however remarkable that Pope, in the fourth book of his Essay on Man v. 226, has employed the epithet which, in the present instance, he has rejected: All sly-slow things with circumspective eyes.' 9 Word, for sentence; any short phrase was called a word. Thus Ascham, in a Letter to Queen Elizabeth, Savinge that one unpleasaunte word in that Patent, called "Duringe pleasure," turned me after to. great displeasure.Conway Papers. 10 As Shakspeare used merit, in this place, in the sense of reward, he frequently, uses the word meed, which properly signifies reward, to express merit. Thus in Timon of Athens : no meed but he repays And in the Third Part of King Henry VI :- Again, in the same play, King Henry says: "That's not my fear, my meed hath got me fame.' Too far in years to be a pupil now; What is thy sentence then, but speechless death, You never shall (so help you truth and heaven!) 'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land. Nor. And I, to keep all this. Boling. Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy13;By this time, had the king permitted us, One of our souls had wander'd in the air, Banish'd this frail sepulchre of our flesh, As now our flesh is banish'd from this land: 86 of com 11 Compassionate is apparently here used in plaining, plaintive; but no other instanceord in this sense has occurred to the commentators. May it not be an error of the press, for '80 passionate? which would give the required meaning to the passage; passionate being frequently used for to express passion or grief, to complain. Now leave we this amorous hermit to passionate and playne his misfortune.'-Palace of Pleasure, vol. ii. Ll. 5. And cannot passionate our tenfold griefs.' 12 Premeditated, deliberated. Tit. Andron. Act iii. Sc. 2. 13 The first folio reads 'So fare. This line seems to be addressed by way of caution to Mowbray, lest he should think that Bolingbroke was about to conciliate him. Confess thy treasons, ere thou fly the realm; Nor. No, Bolingbroke; if ever I were traitor, Boling. How long a time lies in one little word! Four lagging winters, and four wanton springs, End in a word; Such is the breath of kings. Gaunt. I thank my liege, that, in regard of me, He shortens four years of my son's exile: But little vantage shall I reap thereby; For, ere the six years, that he hath to spend, Can change their moons, and bring their times about, My oil-dried lamp, and time-bewasted light, Shall be extinct with age, and endless night; My inch of taper will be burnt and done, And blindfold death not let me see my son. K. Rich. Why, uncle, thou hast many years to live. Gaunt. But not a minute, king, that thou canst give: Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow, And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow15; 14 The duke of Norfolk went to Venice, 'where for thought and melancholy he deceased -Holinshed. 15 It is a matter of very melancholy consideration that all human advantages confer more power of doing evil than good. Thou canst help time to furrow me with age, Thy word is current with him for my death; sour. You urg'd me às a judge; but I had rather, You would have bid me argue like a father:O, had it been a stranger, not my child, To smooth his fault I should have been more mild18: And in the sentence my own life destroy'd. K. Rich. Cousin, farewell; and, uncle, bid him so; Six years we banish him, and he shall go. [Flourish. Exeunt K. RICH. and Train. Aum. Cousin, what presence must not know, arewel From where you do remain, let paper show. Gaunt. 0, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words, That thou return'st no greeting to thy friends? 16 Consideration. 11 Had a part or share in it. 18 This couplet is wanting in the folio. 19 i. e. the reproach of partiality. Vol. V. Gaunt. What is six winters? they are quickly gone. Boling. To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten. Gaunt. Call it a travel that thou tak'st for pleasure. Boling. My heart will sigh, when I miscall it so, Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage. Gaunt. The sullen passage of thy weary steps Esteem a foil, wherein thou art to set The precious jewel of thy home-return. Boling. Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make 20 Will but remember me, what a deal of world I wander from the jewels that I love. Must I not serve a long apprenticehood To foreign passages; and in the end, Having my freedom, boast of nothing else, But that I was a journeyman to grief? Gaunt. All places that the eye of heaven21 visits, Are to a wise man ports and happy havens: Teach thy necessity to reason thus; There is no virtue like necessity. Think not the king did banish thee; But thou the king22: Woe doth the heavier sit, Where it perceives it is but faintly borne. 20 This speech and that which follows are not in the folio. 21 So Nonnus:αidépos oμμx; i. e. the sun. Rape of Lucrece : "The eye of heaven is out.' And in Spenser's Faerie Queene, b. i. c. iii. st. 4: As the great eye of heaven shyned bright' Thus in the 22 Shakspeare probably remembered Euphues' exhortation to Botonio to take his exile patiently. Nature hath given to man a country no more than she hath a house, or lands, or livings. Socrates would neither call himself an Athenian, neither a Grecian; but a citizen of the world. Plato would never accompt him banished, that had the sunne, fire, ayre, water, and earth, that he had before; where he felt the winter's blast, and the summer's blaze; where the same sunne and same moone shined: whereby he noted that every place was a country to a wise man, and all parts a palace to a quiet mind.-When it was cast in Diogenes teeth, that the Sinoponetes had banished him from Pontus; Yea, said he, I them of Diogenes.' |