This Edition was prepared by me some years since, but circumstances have delayed its publication. My acknowledgments are due to my friend, Mr. A. E. Morgan, who has kindly assisted me by relieving me of much labour in verifying references, reading proof-sheets, and in the compilation of the Introduction. R. P. COWL SIR MICHAEL, a friend to the Archbishop of York. GADSHILL. PETO. BARDOLPH. LADY PERCY, wife to Hotspur, and sister to Mortimer. LADY MORTIMER, daughter to Glendower, and wife to Mortimer. Lords, Officers, Sheriff, Vintner, Chamberlain, Drawers, 2 THE FIRST PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH ACT I SCENE I.-London. The Palace. Enter KING HENRY, LORD JOHN OF LANCASTER, the EARL OF WESTMORELAND, SIR WALTER BLUNT, and others. King. So shaken as we are, so wan with care, Find we a time for frighted peace to pant, And breathe short-winded accents of new broils No more the thirsty entrance of this soil 5 ACT I. SCENE 1.] Acts and Scenes not marked in Qq; marked throughout in Ff. London. .] Cambridge; London. A Room in the Palace. Capell; The court in London. Theobald. Lord John of Lancaster,] Qq, Ff; omitted Capell. Sir Walter Blunt] Dering MS., Capell; omitted Qq, Ff. 5. entrance] Entrails F 4; entrants Steevens conj.; Erinnys M. Mason conj., Steevens (1793); bosom Dering MS. 2-4. Find... remote] let us now suffer peace, whom our feuds have affrighted, to take breath, and presently she will whisper in short-breathed accents rumours of new wars against infidels in distant lands. The general sense is that the declaration of a holy war against the infidels will bring about a cessation of hostilities at home. Peace will then slumber once more undisturbed in her native seat of England. The same thought, or its converse, occurs in Richard II. Iv. i. 139-141:— "Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels, And in this seat of peace tumul tuous wars Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound." 3 Cf. ibid. 1. iii. 132-137. To pant, to take breath, as in Coriolanus, II. ii. 126. Breathe, to whisper, as in King John, Iv. ii. 36. For "short-winded cf. Shelton, Don Quixote, Part II. xxiii: "deep sighs and short-breathed accents." Stronds, strands, coasts; "strond" is a phonetic variant of "strand." 5. thirsty entrance of this soil] "Entrance" is here used collectively for the pores in the soil, the cracks and crannies of the earth, the language being intentionally vague in order to veil the boldness of the figure. Malone refers to Genesis iv. II as the source of the imagery: "the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood," and compares 3 Henry Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood; 8. flowerets] flowers Qq 6-8. armed] armd Q3. VI. 11. iii. 15: " 'Thy brother's blood the thirsty earth hath drunk," and the old play of King John (1591): "the blood y-spilt on either part, Closing the crannies of the thirsty earth." See also Richard III. iv. iv. 29, 30. Of many conjectural emendations the most interesting are F 4 Entrails, Steevens' entrants (= invaders), and Mason's Erinnys. 6. daub] Corrupted in Ff 2-4 into dambe or damb, which is altered by Theobald to damp and by Warburton to trempe. 6. her. her] Both pronouns refer to "this soil." Q8 reads his... her, the first pronoun referring apparently to “ entrance " and the second to “ this soil." So Malone and others construe, reading her . . . her. For "her own children" cf. Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses, Part 1. (ed. Furnivall, p. 29): "Dame Nature bryngeth vs all into the worlde... and receiueth all againe into the womb of our mother, I meane the bowells of the earth." 7. trenching] cutting trenches in the earth. ΙΟ 15 9. eyes] arms Hanmer; 16. allies] all eyes Q 4. opponents, "eyes" standing by synecdoche for the combatants themselves. For eyes Hanmer substituted arms, Warburton files. The flashing eyes of the opposed warriors suggest fiery meteors; and these meteors resemble the warriors themselves, being, like them, of one and the same origin. See Florio, The New World of Words: "Meteors, certain imperfectly mix't bodies, consisting of vapours drawn up into the Middle Region of the Air, and set out in different forms; as rain, hail, snow, wind, thunder and lightening, Blazing stars, etc." Aristotle (Meteor, 1. iv) writes concerning meteors, shooting stars, etc.: “ ταῦτα γὰρ πάντ ̓ ἐστὶ τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ διὰ τὴν αὐτὴν αἰτίαν, διαφέρει δὲ τῷ μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον.” 10. the... heaven] Cf. Heywood, The Iron Age (Pearson, ii. 323): "Contrary elements, the warring meteors Are not so oppos'd." Meteors, shooting stars, as in Richard II. II. iv. 9. 13. furious close] fierce encounter of combatants fighting hand to hand. New Eng. Dict. quotes Feltham, Resolves, 1. ii: "Lest. they should get a wound in the cloze." For "close" as a technical term in fencing see G. Silver, Bref Instructions (1599), ed. Matthey, p. 101 et seq. 14. mutual ranks] ranks in which all are commingled or united. Titus Andronicus, v. iii. 71 :— "to knit again This scatter'd corn into one mutual sheaf." Well-beseeming, becoming, seemly, as in Titus Andronicus, II. iii. 56. |