KING HENRY THE SIXTH.

PART THE SECOND.

AS THE Third Part of King Henry the Sixth existed in 1592, when it was alluded to by Green, we may be certain that this Second Part was produced in or before that year. It was one of the plays in which Shakespeare was employed in altering and amending the work of a preceding and inferior dramatist; but there is much from his hand, and some parts in this and the third play on this reign are even in his best manner.

I. 1. SALISBURY.
And BROTHER York.

Mr. Malone's genealogical note is not so germane to the matter as it might be, and contains moreover one, if not more, erroneous statement. They were brothers by the Duke of York having married Cecily Neville, the sister of the Earl of Salisbury, both being children of Ralph the first Neville Earl of Westmoreland by Joan his second Countess, daughter of John of Gaunt by Katharine Swinford, and sister, of course, to Cardinal Beaufort. It would seem by Mr. Malone's note that the Earl of Salisbury was son of the Earl of Westmoreland by some other wife. The matter of a note, such as this of Mr. Malone, should be given before the play, explanatory of the dramatis personæ.

I. 3. FIRST PETITIONER.

My masters, let's stand close; my Lord Protector will come this way by and by, and then we may deliver our supplications in the QUILL.

Steevens, Tollet, and Hawkins have all undertaken this word "quill," and with little success. The word has

nothing to do with the instrument for writing so called, or with a nine-pin; neither of which, it may be observed, gives anything like a satisfactory meaning. "Quill" means here the narrow passage through which the Protector was to pass, as I infer from the use of this very rare word in Sylvester's translation of Dr. Bartas, a work abounding in rare and curious words and phrases. He is describing the Deluge:

All wandering clouds, all humid exhalations,

All seas (which Heaven through many generations
Hath hoarded up) with selfs-weight entir-crusht,
Now all at once upon the earth have rusht:
And th' endless, thin ayr (which by secret quils
Hath lost itself within the windes-but hils,
Dark hollow caves, and in that gloomy hold
To ycy crystall turned by the cold),
Now swiftly surging towards Heav'n again
Hath not alone drowned all the lowly plain,
But in fewe dayes with raging flouds ore-flowen
The top-less cedars of mount Libanon.-P. 302.

Here it clearly means narrow winding passages, ambages. It is doubtless allied to the word quillets, which is also used by Shakespeare.

III. 2. WARWICK.

See how the blood is settled in his face!
Oft have I seen a TIMELY-parted GHOST,
Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless,
Being all descended to the labouring heart;
Who, in the conflict that it holds with death,

Attracts the same for aidance 'gainst the enemy;

Which with the heart there cools, and ne'er returneth
To blush and beautify the cheek again.

But see his face is black and full of blood, &c.

"Ghost” ap

"Timely" is here opposite to untimely. pears to be written somewhat licentiously for corpse; but the Poet is kept in countenance by others. Spenser, as Steevens remarks, uses "ghost" in the same manner: and in The Widow of Watling Street we have, "I can't abide to

handle a ghost of all men." But the most remarkable use of the term "ghost," when corpse is intended, is presented by the verses on Shakespeare by J. M. S.

This is one of the most striking passages in that noble poem; it reminds one of the vaults in which the Kings of Babylon were sleeping as pourtrayed by Isaiah.

I know not that it has ever been adverted to, that in the royal vaults of England it was sometimes the practice to deposit valuables with the body of a person interred therein, with the special object that the body might be distinguished from that of a mean person if in the revolution of time the body should ever be disturbed in its last earthly home. In an account of the expenses of the burial of King Edward the Third in the Chapel of the Kings, at Westminster, this expression occurs :-" Pro predicto corpore honorabiliter arriando, si illud imposterum contigerit inveniri."

III. 2. Suffolk.

Would curses kill as doth the mandrake's groan.

Sir Thomas Brown has collected all the opinions respecting the mandrake in his Vulgar Errors, Part II. ch. 6. Ben Jonson alluded to this part of its fabulous properties,

Where the sad mandrake grows,

Whose groans are deathful.-THE SAD SHEPHERD, Act ii. Sc. 8.

III. 3. K. HENRY.

Lord Cardinal, if thou thinkest on heaven's bliss,
Hold up thy hand, make signal of thy hope.

This was conformable to the practice of Shakespeare's time. When Queen Elizabeth was in extremis Dr. Parry, her chaplain, moved her to signify her faith and hope by lifting

up her hand and eyes to Heaven.

When Prince Henry

was dying the Archbishop of Canterbury, Abbot, approached his bed and "spoke more loud than ever in his ear, 'Sir, hear you me? hear you me? hear you me? If you hear me, in certain sign of your faith and hope in the blessed resurrection, give me, for our comfort, a sign by lifting up of your hands.' This the Prince did, lifting up both his hands together."-Birch's Life of Henry Prince of Wales, p. 358.

IV. I. SUFFOLK.

Obscure and lowly swain, King Henry's blood,

The honourable blood of Lancaster,

Must not be shed by such a jaded groom.

If the second of these lines had been left out, the passage might have been defended, since the Duke of Suffolk partook of the King's blood through his mother, who descended of Joan of Acre, daughter of King Edward the First; but he could not properly be said to be of "the honourable blood of Lancaster," as he did not in any way descend from either of the lines of Lancaster.

Edward II.
Edward III.

John of Gaunt.

Henry IV.

Henry V.T

Henry VI.

Edward I...

Joan of Acre. Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester.

CADE.-My father was a Mortimer.

DICK-He was an honest man, and a good bricklayer.

CADE.-My mother a Plantagenet.

DICK.-I knew her well, she was a midwife.

As a pun, though a very indifferent one, is intended in Mortimer and bricklayer, through the word mortar; so it is probable that another pun, perhaps no better than this, lurks in midwife and Plantagenet. It is to be remembered, however, that such quibbles suit not ill with the character.

IV. 2. CADE.

Spare none but such as go in CLOUTED SHOON.

Thus Milton, in Comus, to mark the rude commonalty, uses
the same expression, probably borrowed from this passage:
He loved me well, and oft would bid me sing;
Which, when I did, he on the tender grass
Would sit, and hearken ev'n to extacy,
And in requital ope his leathern scrip,
And shew me simples of a thousand names,
Telling their strange and vigorous faculties :
Amongst the rest a small unsightly root,
But of divine effect, he cull'd me out;
The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it,
But in another country, as he said,

Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil:*
Unknown and like esteem'd, and the dull swain
Treads on it daily with his CLOUTED SHOON:
And yet more med'cinal is it than that Moly
That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave;
He call'd it Hæmony, and gave it me,
And bad me keep it as of sovran use

'Gainst all inchantments, mildew, blast, or damp,
Or ghastly furies' apparition.

The use of this expression by two great poets, whose verse even this homely phrase does not in the least degrade, makes

I give it according to the reading of the editions printed under the eye of Milton, without meaning that I have brought myself wholly to reject the proposed amendment of Seward and Hurd

but in this soil

Unknown and light esteem'd

or that I should wholly distrust another and perhaps a better conjectural emendation

not in this soil

Unknown, but light esteem'd.