WOL. Your grace has given a precedent of wisdom Above all princes, in committing freely Your scruple to the voice of Christendom: Who can be angry now? what envy reach you? The Spaniard, tied by blood and favour to her, Must now confess, if they have any goodness, The trial just and noble. All the clerks, I mean, the learned ones, in christian kingdoms, Have their free voices; Rome, the nurse of judg

ment,

Invited by your noble self, hath sent

One general tongue unto us, this good man,
This just and learned priest, Cardinal Campeius;
Whom, once more, I present unto your highness.
K. HEN. And, once more, in mine arms I bid
him welcome,

And thank the holy conclave for their loves;
They have sent me such a man I would have wish'd

for.

CAM. Your grace must needs deserve all strangers' loves,

You are so noble: To your highness' hand
I tender my commission; by whose virtue,
(The court of Rome commanding,)-you, my lord
Cardinal of York, are join'd with me their servant,
In the unpartial judging of this business.

K. HEN. Two equal men.

The queen shall be

acquainted

have at you,

"First that without the King," &c. MALONE.

one heave at him." So, in King Henry VI. Part II :
"To heave the traitor Somerset from hence."

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The first folio gives the passage thus:

"Ile venture one; haue at him."

The reading in the text [Mr. Steevens's] is that of the second folio. STEEVENS.

·

3 Have their free voices;] The construction is, have sent their free voices;' the word sent, which occurs in the next line, being understood here. MALONE.

Forthwith, for what you come:-Where's Gardiner.
WOL. I know, your majesty has always loy'd her
So dear in heart, not to deny her that
A woman of less place might ask by law,
Scholars, allow'd freely to argue for her.

K. HEN. Ay, and the best, she shall have; and my favour

To him that does best; God forbid else. Cardinal,
Pr'ythee, call Gardiner to me, my new secretary;
I find him a fit fellow.
[Exit WOLSEY.

Re-enter WOLSEY, with GARDINER.

WOL. Give me your hand: much joy and favour to you;

You are the king's now.

GARD.

But to be commanded For ever by your grace, whose hand has rais'd me. [Aside.

K. HEN. Come hither, Gardiner. [They converse apart. CAM. My lord of York, was not one doctor Pace In this man's place before him?

WOL.

Yes, he was. CAM. Was he not held a learned man?

WOL. Yes, surely. CAM. Believe me, there's an ill opinion spread then Even of yourself, lord Cardinal.

WOL.

How! of me?

CAM. They will not stick to say, you envied him ; And, fearing he would rise, he was so virtuous, Kept him a foreign man still*; which so griev'd him, That he ran mad, and died 5.

Kept him a foreign man still:] Kept him out of the king's presence, employed in foreign embassies. JOHNSON.

This is from Holinshed.

5- which so griev'd him,

That he ran mad and died.]

WOL. Heaven's peace be with him! That's christian care enough: for living murmurers, There's places of rebuke. He was a fool: For he would needs be virtuous: That good fellow, If I command him, follows my appointment; I will have none so near else. Learn this, brother, We lived not to be grip'd by meaner persons.

K. HEN. Deliver this with modesty to the queen. Exit GARDINER. The most convenient place that I can think of, For such receipt of learning, is Black-Friars ; There ye shall meet about this weighty business :My Wolsey, see it furnish'd.-O my lord, Would it not grieve an able man, to leave Sosweet a bedfellow? But, conscience, conscience,— O, 'tis a tender place, and I must leave her.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.

An Ante-chamber in the Queen's Apartments.

Enter ANNE BULLEN, and an old Lady. ANNE. Not for that neither;-Here's the pang that pinches :

His highness having liv'd so long with her: and she
So good a lady, that no tongue could ever
Pronounce dishonour of her,-by my life,
She never knew harm-doing ;-O now, after
So many courses of the sun enthron'd,
Still growing in a majesty and pomp,-the which

"Aboute this time the king received into favor doctor Stephen. Gardiner, whose service he used in matters of great secrecie and weighte, admitting him in the room of Doctor Pace, the which being continually abrode in ambassades, and the same oftentymes not much necessarie, by the Cardinalles appointment, at length he toke such greefe therwith, that he fell out of his right wittes." DOUCE.

6

To leave is a thousand-fold more bitter, than
"Tis sweet at first to acquire,-after this process,
To give her the avaunt'! it is a pity
Would move a monster.

OLD L.

Hearts of most hard temper

Melt and lament for her.
ANNE.

O, God's will! much better,

8

She ne'er had known pomp: though it be temporal,
Yet, if that quarrel, fortune 3, do divorce
It from the bearer, 'tis a sufferance, panging
As soul and body's severing 9.

6 To leave Is-] The latter word was added by Mr. Theobald. MALONE.

7 To give her the avaunt !] To send her away contemptuously; to pronounce against her a sentence of ejection. JOHNSON.

8 Yet, if that QUARREL, fortune,] She calls Fortune a quarrel or arrow, from her striking so deep and suddenly. Quarrel was a large arrow so called. Thus Fairfax :

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twang'd the string, out flew the quarrel long.": WARBURTON. Such is Dr. Warburton's interpretation. Sir Thomas Hanmer reads:

"That quarreller Fortune."

I think the poet may be easily supposed to use quarrel for quarreller, as murder for the murderer, the act for the agent.

JOHNSON.

Dr. Johnson may be right. So, in Antony and Cleopatra:
but that your royalty

"Holds idleness your subject, I should take you
"For Idleness itself."

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Like Martial's-"Non vitiosus homo es, Zoile, sed Vitium." We might, however, read:

"Yet if that quarrel fortune to divorce

"It from the bearer-.

i. e. if any quarrel happen or chance to divorce it from the bearer. To fortune is a verb used by Shakspeare in The Two Gentlemen of Verona :

I'll tell you as we pass along,

"That you will wonder what hath fortuned." Again, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. i. c. ii. :

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It fortuned (high heaven did so ordaine)," &c.,

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STEEVENS.

9 PANGING

As soul and body's severing.] So Bertram, in All's Well

OLD L.

She's a stranger now again??
ANNE.

Verily,

Must pity drop upon her.
I swear, 'tis better to be lowly born,
And range with humble livers in content,
Than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief,
And wear a golden sorrow.

Our content

OLD L.

Is our best having1.

ANNE.

I would not be a queen.

Again, in Antony and Cleopatra:

That Ends Well: "I grow to you, and our parting is a tortur'd body." STEEVens.

Alas, poor lady!

So much the more

By my troth, and maidenhead,

"The soul and body rive not more at parting,

-

"Than greatness going off." MALONE.

To pang isused as a verb active by Skelton, in his Boke of Philip Sparow, 1568, sig. R. v.:

66

66

"But when I did behold

My sparow dead and cold
"No creature but that wold

"Have rewed upon me
"To behold and see

"What heavines did me pange." BOSWELL.

9 - stranger now again.] Again an alien; not only no longer queen, but no longer an Englishwoman. JOHNSON.

It rather means, she is alienated from the King's affection, is a stranger to his bed; ' for she still retained the rights of an Englishwoman, and was princess Dowager of Wales. So, in the second scene of the third Act:

Katharine no more

"Shall be call'd queen; but princess dowager,
"And widow to prince Arthur." TOLLET.

Dr. Johnson's interpretation appears to me to be the true one.

MALONE.

I agree with Mr. Tollet. So, in King Lear:

"Dower'd with our curse, and stranger'd with our oath-." i. e. the revocation of my love has reduced her to the condition of

an unfriended stranger. STEEVens.

I

our best HAVING.] That is, our best possession. So, in Macbeth:

"Of noble having and of royal hope."

In Spanish, hazienda. JOHNSON.