Please it your honour, knock but at the gate, And he himself will answer. L. BARD. Enter NORTHUMBERLAND. Here comes the earl. NORTH. What news, lord Bardolph ? every minute now The times are wild; contention, like a horse L. BARD. As good as heart can wish: How is this deriv'd? Saw you the field? came you from Shrewsbury? L. BARD. I spake with one, my lord, that came from thence; A gentleman well bred, and of good name, That freely render'd me these news for true. NORTH. Here comes my servant, Travers, whom I sent L. BARD. My lord, I over-rode him on the way; And he is furnish'd with no certainties, More than he haply may retail from me. Enter TRAVERS. NORTH. Now, Travers, what good tidings come with you? With joyful tidings; and, being better hors'd, • Stratagem-some military movement, according to the Greek derivation of the word;-some enterprise; some decisive act on one part or the other, resulting from the wild times of contention. A gentleman almost forspent with speed, That stopp'd by me to breathe his bloodied horse: He ask'd the way to Chester; and of him If my young lord your son have not the day, Upon mine honour, for a silken point I'll give my barony: never talk of it. NORTH. Why should the gentleman that rode by Travers L. BARD. He was some bilding The horse he rode on; Who, he? fellow, that had stolen and, upon my life, Look, here comes more news. Enter MORTON. NORTH. Yea, this man's brow, like to a title-leafe, So looks the strond, whereon the imperious flood Say, Morton, didst thou come from Shrewsbury? MOR. I ran from Shrewsbury, my noble lord; Forspent. For, as a prefix to a verb, is used to give it intensity. Forwearied, in 'King John,' and forspent, here, mean wearied out, outspent. The prefix, according to Tooke, is identical with forth. Ill. So the folio; the quarto, bad. Hilding-an expression of contempt for a cowardly spiritless person. Some derive it from the Anglo-Saxon hyldan, to bend;-from which hilding, hireling. We find it several times in Shakspere. Capulet calls Juliet a hilding. In 'Henry V.' we have แ a hilding foe." Adventure. So the folio. The common reading is, at a venture. • Title-leaf. Poems of lament-elegies, in the restricted sense of the word-were distinguished by a black title-page. Whereon, in the quarto; the folio, when. Where hateful death put on his ugliest mask, To fright our party. NORTH. How doth my son, and brother? And would have told him, half his Troy was burn'd: NORTH. Why, he is dead. See what a ready tongue suspicion hath! He that but fears the thing he would not know, Hath, by instinct, knowledge from others' eyes, That what he fear'd is chanced. Yet speak, Morton; Tell thou thy earl his divination lies; And I will take it as a sweet disgrace, And make thee rich for doing me such wrong. MOR. You are too great to be by me gainsaid: Your spirit is too true, your fears too certain. Thou shak'st thy head; and hold'st it fear, or sin, And he doth sin that doth belie the dead d; Not he, which says the dead is not alive. • Woe-begone. Dr. Bentley, whose commentary on Milton is more laughter-provoking than most jest-books, thought this passage corrupt, and proposed to read, "So dull, so dead in look, Ucalegon Fear-danger; matter or occasion of fear. Remember'd knolling a departing friend". L. BARD. I cannot think, my lord, your son is dead. That which I would to heaven I had not seen: From whence with life he never more sprung up. And Westmoreland: this is the news at full. And as the wretch, whose fever-weaken'd joints, Departing friend. Malone thought that departing was here used for departed. In Shakspere's 71st Sonnet we have, "No longer mourn for me when I am dead, Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell But the ancient custom was for the bell to ring for the departing soul-not for the soul that had fled. Hence it was called the passing bell. Like strengthless hinges, buckle under life, Out of his keeper's arms; even so my limbs, Weaken'd with grief, being now enrag'd with grief, Are thrice themselves: hence, therefore, thou nice crutch; A scaly gauntlet1 now, with joints of steel, Must glove this hand: and hence, thou sickly quoif; Thou art a guard too wanton for the head [TRA. This strained passion doth you wrong, my lords.] Lean on your health; the which, if you give o'er To stormy passion, must perforce decay. You cast the event of war, my noble lord, And summ'd the account of chance, before you said, You were advis'd his flesh was capable Of wounds, and scars; and that his forward spirit Would lift him where most trade of danger rang'd: Buckle. This word, which here means to bend, is used precisely in the same signification in the present day, when applied to a horse, whose "weaken'd joints, like strengthless hinges," are said to buckle. Grief. In this line the first "grief" is put for bodily pain; the second for mental sorrow. • Nice-weak. Ragged'st. Theobald, and other editors, changed this to rugged'st. We find the epithet several times in Shakspere. In this play we have, In the 6th Sonnet "A ragged and forestall'd remission." "Then let not winter's ragged hand deface In thee thy summer." It means something broken, torn, wanting consistency and coherence. |