For he was fitter for that place, than earth. ANNE. And thou unfit for any place but hell. GLO. Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it. ANNE. Some dungeon". GLO. Your bed-chamber. ANNE. Il rest betide the chamber where thou liest. GLO. So will it, madam, till I lie with you. ANNE. I hope so. GLO. I know so. But, gentle lady Anne,- Of these Plantagenets, Henry, and Edward, ANNE. Thou wast the cause, and most accurs'd effect9. Gzo. Your beauty was the cause of that effect; 7 Some dungeon.] As most of the measure throughout this scene is regular, I cannot help suspecting that our author originally wrote: "Some dungeon, perhaps. 8 — a SLOWER method ;] slower was put for serious. the Queen to "Your bed-chamber." STEEVENS. As quick was used for spritely, so In the next scene Lord Grey desires grace with quick and merry words." STEEVENS. 9 Thou wast the cause, and most accurs'd effect.] Effect, for executioner. He asks, was not the causer as ill as the executioner? She answers, Thou wast both. But, for causer, using the word cause, this led her to the word effect, for execution, or executioner. But the Oxford editor, troubling himself with nothing of this, will make a fine oratorical period of it: "Thou wast the cause, and most accurs'd the effect." WARBURON. I cannot but be rather of Sir T. Hanmer's opinion than Dr. Warburton's, because effect is used immediately in its common sense, in answer to this line. JOHNSON. I believe the obvious sense is the true one. So, in The Yorkshire Tragedy, 1608: Your beauty, which did haunt me in my sleep, So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom. ANNE. If I thought that, I tell thee, homicide, These nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks. GLO. These eyes could not endure that beauty's wreck, You should not blemish it, if I stood by: ANNE. Black night o'ershade thy day, and death thy life! GLO. Curse not thyself, fair creature; thou art both. ANNE. I would I were, to be reveng'd on thee. GLO. It is a quarrel most unnatural, To be reveng'd on him that loveth thee. ANNE. It is a quarrel just and reasonable, To be reveng'd on him that kill'd my husband. GLO. He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband, Did it to help thee to a better husband. ANNE. His better doth not breathe upon the earth. GLO. He lives that loves you better than he could. ANNE. Name him. GLO. ANNE. Plantagenet. Why, that was he. GLO. The self-same name, but one of better 66 nature. thou art the cause, "Effect, quality, property; thou, thou." Again, in King Henry IV. Part II. : "I have read the cause of his effects in Galen." Again, in Sidney's Arcadia, book ii. : "Both cause, effect, beginning, and the end, "Are all in me." STEEVens. Our author, I think, in another place uses effect, for efficient cause. MALone. ANNE. Where is he? GLO. Here: [She spits at him.] Why dost thou spit at me? ANNE. 'Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake! GLO. Never came poison from so sweet a place. ANNE. Never hung poison on a fouler toad. Out of my sight! thou dost infect mine eyes. GLO. Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine. ANNE. 'Would they were basilisks, to strike thee dead1! GLO. I would they were, that I might die at once. For now they kill me with a living death". I 'Would they were BASILISKS, to strike thee dead !] "Among the serpents the Basiliske doth infecte and kill people with his looke." Summary of Secret Wonders, &c. bl. 1. by John Alday, no date. STEEVENS. So, in The Winter's Tale: "Make me not sighted like the basilisk, "I have look'd on thousands, who have sped the better 66 By my regard, but kill'd none so.” See also, King Henry VI. Part II. vol. xviii. p. 255, n. 1. MALONE. In Cornucopia, &c. 1596, sign. B. 4: "The eye of the Basiliske is so odious to man, that it sleeth man before he come nere him, even by looking upon him." REED. 2 they kill me with a LIVING DEATH.] In imitation of this passage, and, I suppose, of a thousand more, Pope writes: 66 66 a living death I bear, Says Dapperwit, and sunk beside his chair." JOHNSON. The same conceit occurs in The Trimming of Thomas Nash, 1597: "How happy the rat, caught in a trap, and there dies a living death?" Again, in Phineas Fletcher's Locusts, or Apollyonists, 4to. 1627: "It lives, yet's death: it pleases full of paine: "Monster! ah who, who can thy beeing faigne? "Thou shapelesse shape, live death, paine pleasing, servile raigne." STEEVENS. So, in Watson's Sonnets, printed about 1580: "Love is a sowre delight, a sugred griefe, "A living death, an ever-dying life." We have again the same expression in Venus and Adonis : "For I have heard it [love] is a life in death, "That laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath." MALONE. Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt 3 tears, Sham'd their aspects with store of childish drops: These eyes, which never shed remorseful tear No, when my father* York and Edward wept, To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made, When black-fae'd Clifford shook his sword at him: Nor when thy warlike father, like a child, Told the sad story of my father's death; And twenty times made pause, to sob, and weep, That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks, Like trees bedash'd with rain: in that sad time, My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear 5; And what these sorrows could not thence exhale, Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping. I never su'd to friend, nor enemy; My tongue could never learn sweet soothing wordo; My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to 3 These eyes, which never, &c.] The twelve following beautiful lines added after the first editions. POPE. They were added with many more. JOHNSON. They are found only in the folio. MALONE. 4 NOT, when my father-] The old copies read-No, when, &c. The alteration was made unnecessarily by Mr. Pope. The same phraseology occurs in a subsequent passage: 66 Duch. I hope he is much grown since last I saw him. 5 My manly eyes did scorn, &c.] Here is an apparent reference to King Henry VI. Part III. Act II. Sc. I. See vol. xviii. p. 406, n. 5. STEEVENS. 6 Sweet SOOTHING word;] Thus the quarto 1598. The folio has sweet smoothing word. MALONE. Smooth is, probably, the true reading. So again, p. 36, line penult. : "Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog." See also, Pericles, Act I. Sc. II. STEEVENS. Lo! here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword * ; And humbly beg the death upon my knee. [He lays his Breast open; she offers at it with Nay, do not pause; for I did kill king Henry † ;- Nay, now despatch; 'twas I that stabb'd young [She again offers at his Breast. But 'twas thy heavenly face that set me on. [She lets fall the Sword. Take up the sword again, or take up me. ANNE. Arise, dissembler: though I wish thy death, I will not be thy executioner. GLO. Then bid me kill myself, and I will do it. GLO. That was in thy rage: This hand, which, for thy love, did kill thy love, To both their deaths shalt thou be accessary. ANNE. I would, I knew thy heart. * Quarto 1597, bosom. † Quarto 1597, 'Twas I that killed your husband. § Quarto 1597, Tush, that. 7 But 'twas thy beauty-] Shakspeare countenances the observation, that no woman can ever be offended with the mention of her beauty. JOHNSON. 8 Then man Was never true.] Old copy "Then never man was true." |