Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable,

That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them;-
Why I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time;
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,
And descant on mine own deformity7;
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,

another: but nature that puts together things of a dissimilar kind, as a brave soul and a deformed body. WARBURTON.

Dissembling is here put very licentiously for fraudful, deceitful.

JOHNSON.

Dr. Johnson hath certainly mistaken, and Dr. Warburton rightly explained the word dissembling; as is evident from the following extract: "Whyle thinges stoode in this case, and that the manner of addyng was sometime too short and sometime too long, els dissembled and let slip together." Arthur Golding's translation of Julius Solinus, 1587. HENLEY.

I once thought that Dr. Johnson's interpretation was the true one. Dissimulation necessarily includes fraud, and this might have been sufficient to induce Shakspeare to use the two words as synonymous, though fraud certainly may exist without dissimulation. But the following lines in the old King John, 1591, which our author must have carefully read, were perhaps in his thoughts, and seem rather in favour of Dr. Warburton's interpretation :

"Can nature so dissemble in her frame,

"To make the one so like as like may be,
"And in the other print no character

"To challenge any mark of true descent? Feature is used here, as in other pieces of the same age, for beauty in general. See note on Antony and Cleopatra, vol. xii. p. 253, n. 9. MALONE.

Descant is a term

7 And DESCANT on mine own deformity ;] in musick, signifying in general that kind of harmony wherein one part is broken and formed into a kind of paraphrase on the other. The propriety and elegance of the above figure, without such an idea of the nature of descant, could not be discerned.

SIR J. HAWKINS. That this is the original meaning of the term, is certain. But I believe the word is here used in its secondary and colloquial sense, without any reference to musick. MALONE.

8 And therefore,-since I cannot prove a lover,] Shakspeare very diligently inculcates, that the wickedness of Richard pro

1

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,—
I am determined to prove a villain,.
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous',
By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence, and the king,
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And, if king Edward be as true and just3,
As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,

This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up;
About a prophecy, which says-that G

Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.

ceeded from his deformity, from the envy that rose at the comparison of his own person with others, and which incited him to disturb the pleasures that he could not partake. JOHNSON.

9 To entertain these fair well-spoken DAYS,] I am strongly inclined to think that the poet wrote-" these fair well-spoken dames," and that the word days was caught by the compositor's eye glancing on a subsequent line. So, in the quarto copy of this play, printed in 1612, signat. I.:

"I, my lord, but I had rather kill two deep enemies.

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King. Why, there thou hast it; two deep enemies." In the original copy, printed in 1597, the first line is right: kill two enemies." MALONE.

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Mr. Malone's objection to the old reading was principally upon a notion that the epithets fair and well-spoken could not, with propriety, be applied to days. But surely there is nothing very uncommon in such phraseology. In Twelfth-Night we havebrisk and giddy-paced times. In Timon of Athens the poet speaks of "strange times, that weep with laughing, not with weeping; and in Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour we have the very phrase in the text, "ignorant well-spoken days." Boswell. And HATE the idle pleasures-] Perhaps we might read: "And bate the idle pleasures-." JOHNSON.

2

INDUCTIONS dangerous,] Preparations for mischief. The induction is preparatory to the action of the play. JOHNSON. Marston has put this line, with little variation, into the mouth of Fame:

"Plots ha' you laid? inductions dangerous?" STEEvens. 3 -Edward be as TRUE AND JUST,] The meaning is, if Edward keeps his word.

JOHNSON.

May not this mean-If Edward hold his natural disposition and be true to that? M. MASON.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul! here Clarence

comes.

Enter CLARENCE, guarded, and BRAKENBURY.

Brother, good day: What means this armed guard, That waits upon your grace?

CLAR.

His majesty, Tendering my person's safety, hath appointed This conduct to convey me to the Tower. GLO. Upon what cause?

CLAR.

Because my name is-George.
GLO. Alack, my lord, that fault is none of yours;
He should, for that, commit your godfathers :-
O, belike, his majesty hath some intent,

That you shall be new christen'd in the Tower.
But what's the matter, Clarence? may I know?
CLAR. Yea, Richard, when I know; for, I pro-
test,

As yet I do not: But, as I can learn,

He hearkens after prophecies, and dreams*;
And from the cross-row plucks the letter G,
And says-a wizard told him, that by G
His issue disinherited should be ;

And, for my name of George begins with G 5,
It follows in his thought, that I am he.

4 He hearkens after prophecies, and dreams;] From Holinshed: "Some have reported that the cause of this nobleman's death rose of a foolish prophecie, which was, that after king Edward should raign one whose first letter of his name should be a G; wherewith the king and the queene were sore troubled, and began to conceive a grievous grudge against this duke, and could not be in quiet till they had brought him to his end." Philip de Comines, a contemporary historian, says that the English at that time were never unfurnished with some prophecy or other, by which they accounted for every event. MALONE.

5 And, for my name of George begins with G, &c.] So, in Niccols's Tragical Life and Death of Richard III. :

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George lost his life; it took effect in me." STEEVENS.

These, as I learn, and such like toys as these,
Have mov'd his highness to commit me now.

GLO. Why, this it is, when men are rul'd by

women:

'Tis not the king, that sends you to the Tower;
My lady Grey, his wife, Clarence, 'tis she,
That tempers him to this extremity 7.

Was it not she, and that good man of worship,
Antony Woodeville, her brother there,

That made him send lord Hastings to the Tower;
From whence this present day he is deliver'd?
We are not safe, Clarence, we are not safe.

CLAR. By heaven, I think, there is no man

secure,

But the queen's kindred, and night-walking heralds
That trudge betwixt the king and mistress Shore.
Heard you not, what an humble suppliant
Lord Hastings was to her for his delivery?

8

GLO. Humbly complaining to her deity
Got my lord chamberlain his liberty.
I'll tell you what,-I think, it is our way,
If we will keep in favour with the king,

6

toys-] Fancies, freaks of imagination. JOHNSON. So, in Hamlet, Act I. Sc. IV.:

"The very place puts toys of desperation,

"Without more motive, into every brain." REED.

7 That TEMPERS him to this extremity.] I have collated the original quarto published in 1597, verbatim, with that of 1598. In the first copy this line stands thus:

"That tempers him to this extremity.”

and so undoubtedly we should read. To temper is to mould, to fashion. So, in Titus Andronicus:

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Now will I to that old Andronicus ;

"And temper him, with all the art I have,

"To pluck proud Lucius from the warlike Goths."

In the quarto 1598, tempts was corruptly printed instead of tempers. The metre being then defective, the editor of the folio supplied the defect by reading

"That tempts him to this harsh extremity." MALONE.

8 Humbly complaining, &c.] I think these two lines might be better given to Clarence. JOHNSON.

To be her men, and wear her livery:

The jealous o'er-worn widow, and herself1,

Since that our brother dubb'd them gentlewomen, Are mighty gossips in this monarchy.

BRAK. I beseech your graces both to pardon me; His majesty hath straitly given in charge, That no man shall have private conference, Of what degree so ever, with his brother.

GLO. Even so; an please your worship, Brakenbury,

You may partake of any thing we say :

We speak no treason, man ;-We say, the king
Is wise and virtuous; and his noble queen
Well struck in years2; fair, and not jealous:
We say, that Shore's wife hath a pretty foot,
A cherry lip, a bonny eye, a passing pleasing
tongue;

And that the queen's kindred3 are made gentlefolks :
How say you, sir? can you deny all this?

BRAK. With this, my lord, myself have nought to do.

The jealous o'er-worn widow, and herself,] That is, the Queen and Shore. JOHNSON.

2 Well STRUCK in years ;] This odd expression in our language was preceded by others as uncouth though of a similar kind. Thus, in Arthur Hall's translation of the first book of Homer's Iliad, 1581:

"In Grea's forme, the good handmaid, nowe wel ystept in yeares."

Again:

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"Well shot in years he seem'd," &c.

Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. v. c. vi. The meaning of neither is very obvious; but as Mr. Warton has observed in his Essay on The Fairy Queen, by an imperceptible progression from one kindred sense to another, words at length obtain a meaning entirely foreign to their original etymology. STEEVENS.

3 And the queen's kindred-] The old copies harshly and unnecessarily read

"And that the queen's," &c. STEEVENS.