Scene 1. Page 223.
Exe. Here comes the queen whose looks bewray her anger.
Although the word bewray has received very proper illustration on the present and other occasions, it remains to observe that its simple and original meaning was to discover or disclose; that it has been confounded with betray, which is used, though not exclusively, for to discover for bad or treacherous purposes, a sense in which bewray is never properly found. Of this position take the following proof: "If you do so, saide the other, then you ought to let me knowe what so ever you know your selfe: unlesse you thinke that yourself will bewray yourself, except you doubt yourself will deceive yourself, and unlesse you thinke that yourself will betray your self."—Lupton's Siuqila, 1580, 4to, sign. L 4. b.
Scene 1. Page 224.
Q. Mar. Rather than made that savage duke thine heir.
The note which follows Mr. Steevens's was not inadvertently introduced by that gentleman, though it certainly should not have been retained as the text now stands.
Scene 4. Page 242.
Q. Mar. [Putting a paper crown on his head.]
Mr. Ritson has not shown, as he conceived he had, that the preceding commentator was certainly mistaken: for the author of the play, if he be accountable for the stage direction, could not have "followed history with the utmost precision," when he makes queen Margaret put a paper crown on York's head; whereas Holinshed, the black-letter chronicler whom Mr. Ritson should have first consulted, and who only follows Whethamstede, relates that a garland of bulrushes was placed on York's head; which was afterwards stricken off and presented to the queen. Nor is there historical evidence that the queen herself put on the crown. Shakspeare has continued the same error in King Richard the Third, where he makes Gloucester say to queen Margaret,
He was therefore, in this instance, misled by the author of King Henry the Sixth; or he must have written the queen's speech himself.
Scene 4. Page 244.
York. Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth.
Again in Cymbeline, Act III. Scene 4;
"Whose tongue outvenoms all the worms of Nile."
Scene 2. Page 310.
The following is offered as a very select instance of the use of sadness for seriousness. It is from Tom Coriat's speech that he made to a Mahometan who had called him an infidel. "But I pray thee tell me thou Mahometan, dost thou in sadness call me Giaur? That I doe, quoth he. Then quoth I, in very sober sadness I retort that shameful word in thy throate."
Scene 2. Page 314.
Glo. Like to a chaos, or an unlick'd bear-whelp.
The common opinion which Dr. Johnson mentions of the bear bringing forth unformed lumps of animated flesh, and afterwards licking them into proper shape, has been very properly exposed and confuted by Sir Thomas Brown in his Enquiries into vulgar errors, book iii. ch. 6. His adversary Ross, in his Arcana microcosmi, p. 115, has attempted a solution of this matter, by stating it as a fact that bears bring forth their young deformed and mis-shapen, by reason of the thick membrane in which they are wrapped, that is, covered over with a mucous and phlegmatick matter. This, he says, the dam contracts in the winter time, by lying in hollow caves without motion, so that to the eye the cub appears like an unformed lump. The above mucilage is afterwards licked away by the dam, and the membrane broken, whereby that which before seemed to be unformed appears now in its right shape. And this, he contends, against Dr. Brown, is all that the ancients meant. See more on the subject of the old opinion in Bartholomæus De proprietat. rerum, lib. xviii. c. 112.
Scene 7. Page 359.
Glo. For many men that stumble at the threshold.
To understand this phrase rightly, it must be remembered that some of the old thresholds or steps under the door, were, like the hearths, raised a little, so that a person might stumble over them unless proper care was taken. A very whimsical reason for this practice is given in a curious little tract by Sir Balthazar Gerbier, entitled, Councel and advice to all builders, 1663, 24mo, in these words, "A good surveyour shuns also the ordering of doores with stumbling-block-thresholds, though our forefathers affected them, perchance to perpetuate the antient custome of bridegroomes, when formerly at their return from church [they] did use to lift up their bride, and to knock their head against that of the doore, for a remembrance, that they were not to passe the threshold of their house without their leave."
Scene 7. Page 403.
Unless there be some omission in this speech, it must either be regarded as improperly elliptical, or as ungrammatical. It refers to the sum of money borrowed by Margaret's father, which is mentioned by the French historians to have been fifty thousand crowns. The author of the play followed Holinshed.
The right accentuation of Hĕcătē, as well as the proper description of Althea's torch, which Shakspeare, in King Henry the Fourth, had misrepresented, are additional arguments that he did not write the whole of these plays; but that they were composed by some person who had more classical knowledge, but infinitely less genius than our author.