In footh, he might: then, if he were my brother's, ROB. Shall then my father's will be of no force, To dispossess that child which is not his? BAST. Of no more force to dispossess me, fir, Than was his will to get me, as I think. ELI. Whether hadft thou rather, -be a Faulcon bridge, And like thy brother, to enjoy thy land; BAST. Madam, an if my brother had my shape, And I had his, fir Robert his, like him; 9 lawgiver : "Should a bull beget a hundred calves on cows not owned by his master, those calves belong folely to the proprietors of the cows." See The Hindu Laws &c. tranflated by Sir W. Jones, London edit. p. 251. STEEVENS. This concludes,] This is a decisive argument. As your father, if he liked him, could not have been forced to resign him, fo not liking him, he is not at liberty to reject him. JOHNSON. * Lord of thy prefence, and no land befide?] Lord of thy prefence can fignify only master of thyself, and it is a strange expreffion to fignify even that. However, that he might be, without parting with his land. We should read-Lord of the prefence, i. e. prince of the blood. WARBURTON. Lord of thy presence, and no land beside?] Lord of thy prefence means, master of that dignity and grandeur of appearance that may sufficiently diftinguish thee from the vulgar, without the help of fortune. Lord of his prefence apparently signifies, great in his own person, and is used in this sense by King John in one of the following scenes. JOHNSON. 9 And I had his, fir Robert his, like him;] This is obfcure and ill expressed. The meaning is-If I had his shape, fir Robert's-as he has. And if my legs were two such riding-rods, goes!! Sir Robert his, for Sir Robert's, is agreeable to the practice of that time, when the 's added to the nominative was believed, I think erroneoufly, to be a contraction of his. So, Donne : -Who now lives to age, "Fit to be call'd Methusalem his page?" JOHNSON. This ought to be printed : -fir Robert his, like him. His, according to a mistaken notion formerly received, being the fign of the genitive case. As the text before stood there was a double genitive. MALONE. I my face so thin, That in mine ear I durft not stick a rose, Left men should say, Look, where three-farthings goes!] In this very obscure passage our poet is anticipating the date of another coin; humoroufly to rally a thin face, eclipsed, as it were, by a full blown rose. We must observe, to explain this allusion, that Queen Elizabeth was the first, and indeed the only prince, who coined in England three-half-pence, and three farthing pieces. She coined shillings, fix-pences, groats, threepences, two-pences, three-half-pence, pence, three-farthings, and half-pence; and these pieces all had her head, and were alternately with the rose behind, and without the rose. THEOBALD. Mr. Theobald has not mentioned a material circumstance relative to these three-farthing pieces, on which the propriety of the allufion in some measure depends; viz. that they were made of filver, and consequently extremely thin. From their thinness they were very liable to be cracked. Hence Ben Jonson, in his Every Man in his Humour, says, "He values me at a cracked three-farthings." MALONE. So, in The Shoemaker's Holiday, &c. 1610: "Here's a three-penny piece for thy tidings." "Firk. 'Tis but three-half-pence I think: yes, 'tis threepence; I smell the rose." STEEVENS. The sticking roses about them was then all the court-fashion, as appears from this paffage of the Confeffion Catholique du S. de Sancy, L. II. c.i: "Je luy ay appris à mettre des roses par tous les coins." i. e. in every place about him, fays the speaker, of one to whom he had taught all the court-fashions. WARBURTON. And, to his fhape, were heir to all this land, 2 ۱ The roses stuck in the ear were, I believe, only roses composed of ribbands. In Marston's What you will is the following passage: "Dupatzo the elder brother, the fool, he that bought the half-penny ribband, wearing it in his ear," &c. Again, in Every Man out of his Humour : " -This ribband in my ear, or fo." Again, in Love and Honour, by Sir W. D'Avenant, 1649: "A lock on the left fide, so rarely hung "With ribbanding," &c. I think I remember, among Vandyck's pictures in the Duke of Queensbury's collection at Ambrofbury, to have seen one, with the lock nearest the ear ornamented with ribbands which terminate in roses; and Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, says, "that it was once the fashion to stick real flowers in the ear." At Kirtling, (vulgarly pronounced-Catlage,) in Cambridgeshire, the magnificent refidence of the first Lord North, there is a juvenile portrait, (supposed to be of Queen Elizabeth,) with a red rose sticking in her ear." STEEVENS. Marston, in his Satires, 1598, alludes to this fashion as fantaftical: “ Ribbanded eares, Grenada nether-stocks. And from the epigrams of Sir John Davies, printed at Middleburgh, about 1598, it appears that fome men of gallantry, in our author's time, fuffered their ears to be bored, and wore their mistress's filken shoe-ftrings in them. MALONE. 2 And, to his shape, were heir to all this land,] There is no noun to which were can belong, unless the perfonal pronoun in the last line but one be understood here. I suspect that our author wrote And though his shape were heir to all this land, Thus the fentence proceeds in one uniform tenour. Madam, an if my brother had my shape, and I had his and if my legs were, &c. and though his shape were heir, &c. I would give-. MALONE. The old reading is the true one. "To his shape" means, in addition to it. So, in Troilus and Creffida : "The Greeks are strong, and fskilful to their strength, " Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant." Mr. M. Mason, however, would transpose the words his and this: And to this Shape were heir to all his land. 'Would I might never ftir from off this place, ELI. I like thee well; Wilt thou forsake thy for tune, Bequeath thy land to him, and follow me? BAST. Brother, take you my land, I'll take my chance: Your face hath got five hundred pounds a year; ELI. Nay, I would have you go before me thither. K. JOHN. From henceforth bear his name whose Kneel thou down Philip, but arise more great; 5 By this shape, says he, Faulconbridge means, the shape he had been just describing. STEEVENS. 3 I would not be fir Nob-] Sir Nob is used contemptuoufly for Sir Robert. The old copy reads-It would not be-. The correction was made by the editor of the second folio. I am not fure that it is necessary. MALONE. 4 unto the death.] This expreffion (a Gallicifm, à la mort) is common among our ancient writers. STEEVENS. 5 - but arife more great;] The old copy reads onlyrife. Mr. Malone conceives this to be the true reading, and that "more is here used as a dissyllable." I do not fupprefs this opinion, though I cannot concur in it. STEEVENS. 6 A Arife fir Richard, and Plantagenet.] It is a common opinion, that Plantagenet was the furname of the royal house of 1 BAST. Brother, by the mother's fide, give me your hand; My father gave me honour, yours gave land :- ELI. The very spirit of Plantagenet!- What though? 7 In at the window, or else o'er the hatch:9 England, from the time of King Henry II. but it is, as Camden observes, in his Remaines, 1614, a popular mistake. Plantagenet was not a family name, but a nick-name, by which a grandfon of Geffrey, the first Earl of Anjou, was diftinguished, from his wearing a broom-Stalk in his bonnet. But this name was never borne either by the first Earl of Anjou, or by King Henry II. the son of that Earl by the Empress Maude; he being always called Henry Fitz-Empress; his fon, Richard Cœur-delion; and the prince who is exhibited in the play before us, John Sans-terre, or lack-land. MALONE. 7 Madam, by chance, but not by truth: what though?] I am your grandson, madam, by chance, but not by honesty ;what then? JOHNSON. * Something about, a little from the right, &c.] This speech, compofed of allusive and proverbial fentences, is obscure. I am, says the sprightly knight, your grandson, a little irregularly, but every man cannot get what he withes the legal way. He that dares not go about his defigns by day, must make his motions in the night; he, to whom the door is shut, muft climb the window, or leap the hatch. This, however, shall not depress me; for the world never enquires how any man got what he is known to possess, but allows that to have is to have, however it was caught, and that he who wins, shot well, whatever was his skill, whether the arrow fell near the mark, or far off it. JOHNSON. In at the window, &c.] These expressions mean, to be |