That Mowbray hath receiv'd eight thousand no bles, In name of lendings for your highness' foldiers; Fetch from falfe Mowbray their first head and fpring. Further I fay, and further will maintain 8 Sluic'd out his innocent foul through ftreams of blood: Which blood, like facrificing Abel's, cries, K. RICH. How high a pitch his refolution foars!Thomas of Norfolk, what fay'st thou to this? 6 -for lewd employments,] Lewd here fignifies wicked. It is so used in many of our old ftatutes. MALONE. Thus, in King Richard III: "But you must trouble him with lewd complaints.” STEEVENS. 7 the duke of Glofter's death;] Thomas of Woodstock, the youngest fon of Edward III.; who was murdered at Calais, in 1397. MALONE. 8 Suggeft his foon-believing adverfaries;] i. e. prompt, fet them on by injurious hints. Thus, in The Tempest: "They'll take fuggeftion, as a cat laps milk." STEEVENS. This England never did, (nor never fhall,) But when it firft did help to wound itself. And we shall shock them: Nought fhall make us rue, If England to itself do reft but true.' [Exeunt. 9 If England to itself do reft but true.] This fentiment feems borrowed from the conclufion of the old play : "If England's peers and people join in one, "Nor pope, nor France, nor Spain, can do them wrong." Again, in K. Henry VI. Part III: of itself England is fafe, if true within itself." STEEVENS. Shakspeare's conclufion feems rather to have been borrowed from thefe two lines of the old play: "Let England live but true within itself, "And all the world can never wrong her ftate." MALONE. * Brother, brother, we may be both in the wrong;" this fentiment might originate from A Difcourfe of Rebellion, drawne forth for to warne the wanton Wittes how to kepe their Heads on their Shoulders, by T. Churchyard, 12mo. 1570: "O Britayne bloud, marke this at my defire- STEEVENS. The tragedy of King John, though not written with the utmost power of Shakspeare, is varied with a very pleafing interchange of incidents and characters. The lady's grief is very affecting; and the character of the Baftard contains that mixture of greatnefs and levity which this author delighted to exhibit. JOHNSON. * THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING RICHARD II.] But this history comprises little more than the two laft years of this prince. The action of the drama begins with Bolingbroke's appealing the duke of Norfolk, on an accufation of high treason, which fell out in the year 1398; and it clofes with the murder of King Richard at Pomfret-caftle towards the end of the year 1400, or the beginning of the enfuing year. THEOBALD. It is evident from a paffage in Camden's Annals, that there was an old play on the fubject of Richard the Second; but I know not in what language. Sir Gillie Merick, who was concerned in the hare-brained bufinefs of the Earl of Effex, and was hanged for it, with the ingenious Cuffe, in 1601, is accufed, amongst other things, quod exoletam tragœdiam de tragicâ abdicatione regis Ricardi Secundi in publico theatro coram conjuratis datâ pecuniâ agi curaffet." I have fince met with a paffage in my Lord Bacon, which proves this play to have been in English. It is in the arraignments of Cuffe and Merick, Vol. IV. p. 412. of Mallet's edition: "The afternoon before the rebellion, Merick, with a great company of others, that afterwards were all in the action, had procured to be played before them the play of depofing King Richard the Second; when it was told him by one of the players, that the play was old, and they should have lofs in playing it, because few would come to it, there was forty fhillings extraordinary given to play, and fo thereupon played it was." It may be worth enquiry, whether fome of the rhyming parts of the prefent play, which Mr. Pope thought of a different hand, might not be borrowed from the old one. Certainly however, the general tendency of it must have been very different; fince, as Dr. Johnfon obferves, there are fome expreffions in this of Shakfpeare, which ftrongly inculcate the doctrine of indefeasible right. FARMER. It is probable, I think, that the play which Sir Gilly Merick procured to be reprefented, bore the title of HENRY IV. and not of RICHARD II. Camden calls it " exoletam tragediam de tragica abdicatione regis Ricardi fecundi;" and (Lord Bacon in his account of The Effelt of that which passed at the arraignment of Merick and others) fays, "That the afternoon before the rebellion, Merick had procured to be played before them, the play of depofing King Richard the Second." But in a more particular account of the proceeding against Merick, which is printed in the State Trials, Vol. VII. p. 60, the matter is ftated thus: "The ftory of HENRY IV. being fet forth in a play, and in that play there being fet forth the killing of the king upon a ftage; the Friday before, Sir Gilly Merick and fome others of the earl's train having an humour to fee a play, they muft needs have the play of HENRY IV. The players told them that was ftale; they should get nothing by playing that; but no play elfe would ferve: and Sir Gilly Merick gives forty fhillings to Philips the player to play this, befides whatfoever he could get." Auguftine Philippes was one of the patentees of the Globe playhoufe with Shakspeare in 1603; but the play here described was certainly not Shakspeare's HENRY IV. as that commences above a year after the death of Richard. TYRWHITT. This play of Shakspeare was first entered at Stationers' Hall by Andrew Wife, Aug. 29, 1597. STEEVENS. It was written, I imagine, in the fame year. MALONE. |