The ufurper Richard: who, being at Salisbury, Made fuit to come in his prefence; which if granted,

As he made femblance of his duty, would

Have put his knife into him.

K. HEN.

I

A giant traitor !

WOL. Now, madam, may his highness live in

freedom,

And this man out of prifon?

Q. KATH.

God mend all!

K. HEN. There's something more would out of

thee; What say'st?

SURV. After the duke his father, with the

knife,

Have put his knife into him.] The accuracy of Holinshed, if from him Shakspeare took his account of the accufations and punishment, together with the qualities of the Duke of Buckingham, is proved in the most authentick manner by a very curious report of his cafe in East. Term, 13 Hen. VIII. in the year books published by authority, fol.11 and 12, edit. 1597. After, in the most exact manner, setting forth the arrangement of the Lord High Steward, the Peers, the arraignment, and other forms and ceremonies, it says: "Et isfint fuit arreine Edward Duc de Buckingham, le derrain jour de Terme le xij jour de May, le Duc de Norfolk donques estant Grand seneschal: la cause fuit, pur ceo que il avoit entend l' mort de nostre Snr. le Roy. Car premierment un Moine del' Abbey de Henton in le countie de Somerset dit a lui que il fera Roy & command' luy de obtenir lė benevolence del' communalte, & fur ceo il doña certaines robbes a cest entent. A que il dit que le moine ne onques dit ainsi a lui, & que il ne dona ceux dones a cest intent. Donques auterfoits il dit, fi le Roy morust sans issue male, il voul' eftre Roy: & auxi que il disoit, fi le Roy avoit lui commis al' prifon, donques il voul' lui occire ove fon dagger. Mes touts ceux matters il denia in effect, mes fuit trove coulp: Et pur ceo il avoit jugement comme traitre, et fuit decolle le Vendredy devant le Fefte del Pentecost que fuit le xiij jour de May avant dit. Dieu à sa ame grant mercy-car il fuit tres noble prince & prudent, et mirror de tout courtefie," VAILLANT.

He stretch'd him, and, with one hand on his dagger,
Another spread on his breast, mounting his eyes,
He did difcharge a horrible oath; whose tenour
Was,-Were he evil us'd, he would out-go
His father, by as much as a performance

Does an irrefolute purpose.

K. HEN.

There's his period,

To sheath his knife in us. He is attach'd;
Call him to present trial: if he may
Find mercy in the law, 'tis his; if none,
Let him not seek't of us: By day and night,
He's traitor to the height.

2

[Exeunt.

- By day and night,] This, I believe, was a phrase anciently fignifying at all times, every way, completely. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff, at the end of his letter to Mrs. Ford, styles himself:

"Thine own true knight,

" By day or night," &c.

Again, (I must repeat a quotation I have elsewhere employed,)

in the third Book of Gower, De Confeffione Amantis :

"The sonne cleped was Machayre,

"The daughter eke Canace hight,

" By daie bothe and eke by night."

The King's words, however, by some criticks, have been

confidered as an adjuration. I do not pretend to have determined the exact force of them. STEEVENS.

SCENE III.

A Room in the Palace.

Enter the Lord Chamberlain,3 and Lord SANDS.4

CHAM. Is it possible, the spells of France should juggle

Men into fuch strange mysteries ? 5

3-Lord Chamberlain-] Shakspeare has placed this scene in 1521. Charles Earl of Worcester was then Lord Chamberlain; but when the King in fact went in masquerade to Cardinal Wolfey's house, Lord Sands, who is here introduced as going thither with the Chamberlain, himself possessed that office.

MALONE.

Lord Chamberlain-) Charles Somerset, created Earl of Worcester 5 Henry VIII. He was Lord Chamberlain both to Henry VII. and Henry VIII. and continued in the office until his death, 1526. REED.

* Lord Sands.] Sir William Sands, of the Vine, near Bafingstoke, in Hants, was created a peer 1524. He became Lord Chamberlain upon the death of the Earl of Worcester in 1526. REED.

5 Is it poffible, the spells of France should juggle

Men into fuch strange mysteries?) Mysteries were allegorical shows, which the mummers of those times exhibited in odd fantastick habits. Mysteries are used, by an easy figure, for those that exhibited mysteries; and the sense is only, that the travelled Englishmen were metamorphofed, by foreign fashions, into such an uncouth appearance, that they looked like mummers in a mystery. JOHNSON.

That mysteries is the genuine reading, [Dr. Warburton would read-mockeries] and that it is used in a different sense from the one here given, will appear in the following instance from Drayton's Shepherd's Garland:

even so it fareth now with thee,

"And with these wisards of thy myfterie."

The context of which shows, that by wisards are meant poets, and by mysterie their poetick skill, which was before called

SANDS.

New customs,

Though they be never so ridiculous,
Nay, let them be unmanly, yet are follow'd.

CHAM. As far as I fee, all the good our English
Have got by the late voyage, is but merely
A fit or two o'the face; but they are shrewd ones;
For when they hold them, you would swear directly,
Their very noses had been counsellors
To Pepin, or Clotharius, they keep ftate so.

SANDS. They have all new legs, and lame ones;
one would take it,

That never faw them pace before, the spavin,
A springhalt reign'd among them.

CHAM.

8

Death! my lord,

" mister artes." Hence the mysteries in Shakspeare fignify those fantastick manners and fashions of the French, which had operated as fpells or enchantments. HENLEY.

A fit or two o'the face ;] A fit of the face seems to be what we now term a grimace, an artificial cast of the countenance. JOHNSON.

Fletcher has more plainly expressed the same thought in The Elder Brother:

"-learnt new tongues

"To vary his face as seamen do their compass."

STEEVENS.

7 That never saw them-) Old copy-fee 'em. Corrected by Mr. Pope. MALONE.

* A springhalt reign'd among them.] The Stringhalt, or Springhalt, (as the old copy reads,) is a disease incident to horses, which gives them a convulfive motion in their paces. So, in Muleaffes the Turk, 1610: " -by reason of a general Spring-halt and debility in their hams."

Again, in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair:

"Poor foul, she has had a stringhalt." STEEVENS. Mr. Pope and the subsequent editors, without any necessity, I think, for A springhalt, read-And springhalt. MALONE.

Their clothes are after such a pagan cut too,
That, fure, they have worn out christendom. How

now?

What news, fir Thomas Lovell ?

Lov.

Enter Sir THOMAS LOVELL.

'Faith, my lord,

I hear of none, but the new proclamation
That's clapp'd upon the court-gate.

CHAM.

What is't for?

Lor. The reformation of our travell'd gallants, That fill the court with quarrels, talk, and tailors. CHAM. I am glad, 'tis there; now I would pray

our monfieurs

To think an English courtier may be wife,

And never fee the Louvre.

Lov.

They must either

(For so run the conditions,) leave these remnants Of fool, and feather, that they got in France,

9

-cut too,] Old copy-cut to't. Corrected in the fourth folio. MALONE.

Both the first and second folio read cut too't, so that for part of this correction we are not indebted to the fourth folio.

I

- leave these remnants

STEEVENS.

Of fool, and feather,) This does not allude to the feathers anciently worn in the hats and caps of our countrymen, (a circumstance to which no ridicule could juftly belong,) but to an effeminate fashion recorded in Greene's Farewell to Folly, 1617: from whence it appears that even young gentlemen carried fans of feathers in their hands: "-we strive to be counted womanish, by keeping of beauty, by curling the hair, by wearing plumes of feathers in our hands, which in wars, our ancestors wore on their heads." Again, in his Quip for an upstart Courtier, 1620: "Then our young courtiers strove to exceed one another in