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Illustrations of Shakspeare, and of Ancient Manners: / with Dissertations on the Clowns and Fools of Shakspeare; on a Collection of Popular Tales Entitled Gesta Romanorum; and on the English Morris dance. cover

Illustrations of Shakspeare, and of Ancient Manners: / with Dissertations on the Clowns and Fools of Shakspeare; on a Collection of Popular Tales Entitled Gesta Romanorum; and on the English Morris dance.

Chapter 117: ACT III.
By Francis Douce
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About This Book

Annotated commentaries on Shakespeare's plays combine explanatory notes, historical and antiquarian research, and woodcut illustrations. The compiler clarifies obsolete words and customs, supplies critical emendations, and includes specific essays on comic personae such as clowns and fools, the influence of the medieval Gesta Romanorum on one drama, and the English morris dance. The preface reflects on the aims and methods of commentary and earlier editors; the notes range from linguistic glosses to cultural digressions intended to illuminate stage practice and popular sources while occasionally settling disputes between critics.

KING RICHARD II.

ACT III.

Scene 2. Page 272.

K. Rich. That when the searching eye of heaven is hid
 Behind the globe, and lights the lower world.

The slight but necessary emendation of and for that ascribed to Johnson, had already been made by Hanmer. Lower world simply means lower hemisphere.

Scene 2. Page 279.

K. Rich. Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's,
 And nothing can we call our own, but death.

This resembles Wolsey's speech;

"To the last penny 'tis the king's; my robe
 And my integrity to heav'n, is all
 I dare now call my own."

Scene 2. Page 279.

K. Rich. And that small model of the barren earth.

Model or module, for they were the same in Shakspeare's time, seems to mean in this place, a measure, portion, or quantity.

Scene 2. Page 280.

K. Rich. ... For within the hollow crown
 That rounds the mortal temples of a king
 Keeps death his court; and there the antick sits,
 Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp.

Some part of this fine description might have been suggested from the seventh print in the Imagines mortis, a celebrated series of wooden cuts which have been improperly attributed to Holbein. It is probable that Shakspeare might have seen some spurious edition of this work; for the great scarcity of the original in this country in former times is apparent, when Hollar could not procure the use of it for his copy of the dance of death. This note, which more properly belongs to the present place, had been inadvertently inserted in the first part of Henry the Sixth. See Act IV. Scene 7, in Mr. Steevens's edition.

Scene 3. Page 283.

North. Your grace mistakes me; only to be brief
 Left I his title out.
York. The time hath been,
 Would you have been so brief with him, he would
 Have been so brief with you, to shorten you,
 For taking so the head, your whole head's length.

"To take the head," says Dr. Johnson, "is to act without restraint; to take undue liberties." It is presumed it rather means to take away or omit the sovereign's chief and usual title; a construction which considerably augments the play on words that is here intended.