Enter KATHARINE, Dowager, fick; led between GRIFFITH and PATIENCE. GRIF. How does your grace? KATH. O, Griffith, fick to death: My legs, like loaden branches, bow to the earth, GRIF. Yes, madam; but, I think, your grace, Out of the pain you suffer'd, gave no ear to't. КATH. Pr'ythee, good Griffith, tell me how he died: If well, he stepp'd before me, happily, 1 Scene 11.] This scene is above any other part of Shakspeare's tragedies, and perhaps above any scene of any other poet, tender and pathetick, without gods, or furies, or poifons, or precipices, without the help of romantick circumstances, without improbable fallies of poetical lamentation, and without any throes of tumultuous mifery. JOHNSON. child of honour,] So, in King Henry IV. Part I: STEEVENS. - I think, Old copy-I thank. Corrected in the second folio. MALONE. 2 - be stepp'd before me, happily, For my example.] Happily seems to mean on this occafion GRIF. Well, the voice goes, madam: For after the stout earl Northumberland 3 Arrested him at York, and brought him forward (As a man forely tainted,) to his answer, He fell fick fuddenly, and grew fo ill, He could not fit his mule.+ KATH. Alas, poor man! GRIF. At last, with easy roads,' he came to Leicester, Lodg'd in the abbey; where the reverend abbot, With all his convent, honourably receiv'd him; To whom he gave these words, - father abbot, An old man, broken with the storms of state, Is come to lay his weary bones among ye; peradventure, haply. I have been more than once of this opinion, when I have met with the same word thus spelt in other passages. STEEVENS. Mr. M. Mason is of opinion that happily here means fortunately. Mr. Steevens's interpretation is, I think, right. So, in K. Henry VI. Part II: "Thy fortune, York, hadst thou been regent there, 3 the stout earl Northumberland - So, in Chevy Chafe: "The ftout earl of Northumberland "A vow to God did make" &c. STEEVENS. * He could not fit his mule.] In Cavendish's Life of Wolfey, 1641, it is faid that Wolfey poisoned himself; but the words" at which time it was apparent that he had poisoned himself," which appear in p. 108 of that work, were an interpolation, inferted by the publisher for fome finifter purpose; not being found in the two manuscripts now preserved in the Museum. See a former note, P. 134. MALONE. Cardinals generally rode on mules. "He rode like a cardinal, sumptuously upon his mule." Cavendish's Life of Wolfey. REED. In the representation of the Champ de Drap d'Or, published by the Society of Antiquaries, the Cardinal appears mounted on one of these animals very richly caparisoned. STEEVENS. swith easy roads,] i. e. by short stages. STEEVENS. Give him a little earth for charity! KATH. So may he rest; his faults lie gently on Yet thus far, Griffith, give me leave to speak him, 6 Of an unbounded stomach,] i. e. of unbounded pride, or haughtiness. So, Holinshed, speaking of King Richard III: "Such a great audacitie and such a stomach reigned in his bodie." STEEVENS. 7 one, that by fuggeftion Ty'd all the kingdom: The word fuggeftion, says the critick, [Dr. Warburton] is here used with great propriety and feeming knowledge of the Latin tongue: and he proceeds to fettle the fenfe of it from the late Roman writers and their gloffers. But Shakspeare's knowledge was from Holinshed, whom he follows verbatim: " This cardinal was of a great ftomach, for he compted himself equal with princes, and by craftie suggestion got into his hands innumerable treasure: he forced little on fimonie, and was not pitifull, and stood affectionate in his own opinion: in open prefence he would lie and seie untruth, and was double both in speech and meaning; he would promise much and perform little: he was vicious of his bodie, and gave the clergie euil example." Edit. 1587, p. 922. Perhaps after this quotation, you may not think, that Sir Thomas Hanmer, who reads tyth'd-instead of ty'd all the kingdom, deserves quite so much of Dr. Warburton's feverity.-Indisputably the passage, like every other in the speech, is intended to express the meaning of the parallel one in the chronicle; it cannot therefore be credited, that any man, when the original was produced, should still choose to defend a cant acceptation, and inform us, perhaps, His own opinion was his law: I'the prefence Seriously, that in gaming language, from I know not what practice, to tye is to equal! A sense of the word, as I have yet found, unknown to our old writers; and, if known, would not furely have been used in this place by our author. But let us turn from conjecture to Shakspeare's authorities. Hall, from whom the above description is copied by Holinshed, is very explicit in the demands of the cardinal: who having infolently told the lord mayor and aldermen, "For fothe I thinke, that halfe vour substance were too little," assures them by way of comfort at he end of his harangue, that upon an average the tythe should be sufficient; "Sirs, speake not to breake that thyng that is concluded, for fome shall not paie the tenth parte, and some more."And again; "Thei faied, the cardinall by vifitacions, makyng of abbottes, probates of teftamentes, graunting of faculties, licences, and other pollyngs in his courtes legantines, had made his threafure egall with the kynges." Edit, 1548, p. 138, and 143. FARMER. In Storer's Life and Death of Tho. Wolfey, a poem, 1599, the Cardinal says: " I car'd not for the gentrie, for I had " STEEVENS. Ty'd all the kingdom.] i. e. he was a man of an unbounded stomach, or pride, ranking himself with princes, and by suggestion to the king and the pope, he ty'd, i. e. limited, circumscribed, and set bounds to the liberties and properties of all persons in the kingdom. That he did so, appears from various passages in the play. Act II. fc. ii. " free us from his flavery," -" or this imperious man will work us all from princes into pages: all men's honours," &c. Act III. fc. ii. “You wrought to be a legate, by which power you maim'd the jurisdiction of all bishops." See also Act I. fc. i. and Act III. fc. ii. This construction of the passage may be supported from D'Ewes's Journal of Queen Elizabeth's Parliaments, p. 644: "Far be it from me that the ftate and prerogative of the prince should be tied by me, or by the act of any other subject." Dr. Farmer has displayed such eminent knowledge of Shakspeare, that it is with the utmost diffidence I diffent from the alteration which he would establish here. He would read tyth'd, and refers to the authorities of Hall and Holinshed about a tax of the tenth, or tythe of each man's substance, which is not taken notice of in the play. Let it be remarked that it is Queen Ka Both in his words and meaning: He was never, His promises were, as he then was, mighty; tharine speaks here, who, in Act I. fc. ii. told the king it was a demand of the fixth part of each subject's substance, that caused the rebellion. Would she afterwards say that he, i. e. Wolfey, had tythed all the kingdom, when she knew he had almost doubletythed it? Still Dr. Farmer insists that "the passage, like every other in the fpeech, is intended to express the meaning of the parallel one in the Chronicle:" i. e. The cardinal " by craftie fuggeftion got into his hands innumerable treasure." This passage does not relate to a publick tax of the tenths, but to the cardinal's own private acquifitions. If in this sense I admitted the alteration, tyth'd, I would suppose that, as the queen is descanting on the cardinal's own acquirements, she borrows her term from the principal emolument or payment due to priests; and means to intimate that the cardinal was not content with the tythes legally accruing to him from his own various pluralities, but that he extorted something equivalent to them throughout all the kingdom. So, Buckingham says, Act I. fc. i: "No man's pie is freed from his ambitious finger." So, again, Surrey says, Act III. fc. ult. " Yes, that goodness of gleaning all the land's wealth into one, into your own hands, cardinal, by extortion:" and ibidem, "You have sent innumerable fubftance (by what means got, I leave to your own confcience) to the mere undoing of all the kingdom." This extortion is so frequently spoken of, that perhaps our author purposely avoided a repetition of it in the passage under confideration, and therefore gave a different sentiment declarative of the consequence of his unbounded pride, that must humble all others. 7 Florence: TOLLET. - as he is now, nothing.] So, in Maffinger's Great Duke of Great men "Till they have gain'd their ends, are giants in & Of his own body he was ill.] A criminal connection with women was anciently called the vice of the body. So, in Holinshed, |