P. 26, first 1. my toils. JoHNSON. P. 26, 1. 2. my pains -] My labours; Out, devil!] Mr. Lambe observes in his notes on the ancient metrical history of The Battle of Flodden Field, that out is an interjection of abhorrence or contempt, most frequent in the mouths of the common people of the north. STEevens. P. 26, 1. 11. To royalize ] i. e. to make roval. STEEVENS, · P. 26, l. 17-19. Was not your husband In Margaret's battle at saint Albans slain?] It is said in Henry VI. that he died in quarrel of the house of York. JOHNSON. The account here given is the true one. MALONE. Margaret's battle is Margaret's army. RITSON. P. 27, 1. 20. Hear me, you wrangling pirates,] This scene of Margaret's imprecations is fine and artful. She prepares the audience, like another Cassandra, for the following tragic revolutions. WARBURTON. Surely, the merits of this scene are insufficient to excuse improbability. Margaret, bullying the court of England in the royal palace, is a cir cumstance as absurd as the courtship of Gloster in a publick street. STEEVENS. P. 27, 1. 21. which you have pill'd from me: To pill is to pil lage. STEEVENS. To pill is literally, to take off the outside or rind. Thus they say in Devonshire, to pill an apple, rather than pare it; and Shirley uses the word precisely in this sense. HENLEY. P. 27, 1. 27. gentle villain,] We should read: ungentle villain, WARBURTON. The meaning of gentle is not, as the commen tator imagines, tender or courteous, but high born. An opposition is meant between that and villain, which means at once a wicked and a low-born wretch. So before: Since every Jack is made a gentleman, There's many a gentle person made a Jack. JOHNSON. Gentle appears to me to be taken in its common acceptation, but to be used ironically. - M. MASON. what mak'st thou in my P. 27, 1. 28. sight? An obsolete ex pression for what dost thou in my sight. Margaret in her answer takes the word in its ordinary acceptation. MALONE. P. 27, 1. 33. Wert thou not banished on pain of death?] Margaret fled into France after the battle of Hexham in 1464, and Edward soon afterwards issued a proclamation, prohibiting any of his subjects from aiding her to return, or harbouring her, should she attempt to revisit England. She remained abroad till the 14th of April 1471, when she landed at Weymouth. After the battle of Tewksbury, in May 1471, she was confined in the Tower, where she continued a prisoner till 1475, when she was ransomed by her father Reignier, and removed to France, where she died in 1482. The present scene is in 1477-8. MALONE. "the P. 28, 1. 13. To plague, in ancient language, is to punish. Hence the scriptural term plagues of Egypt. "" STEEVENS. P. 28, l. 21. Northumberland, then present, ing to STEEVENS. P. 28, last but one 1. by surfeit die your luxurious life. JOHNSON. P. 29, last but one 1.-abortive, rooting hog!] The expression is fine, alluding (in memory of her young son) to the ravage which hogs make, with the finest, flowers, in gardens; and intimating that Elizabeth was to expect no other treatment for her sons. WARBURTON. She calls him hog, as an appellation more contemptuous than boar, as he is elsewhere termed from his ensigns armorial. JOHNSON. 1 In The Mirror for Magistrates is the following Complaint of Collingbourne, who was cruelly executed for making a rime: For where I meant the King by name of 1 hog, I only alluded to his badge the bore: our dog; Because most dogs have borne that name of yore. These metaphors I us'd with other more, rest, To hide the sense that they so wrong ly wrest... That Lovel was once the common name of a dog, , may be likewise known from a passage in The Historie of Jacob and Esau, an interlude, 1568: "Then come on at once, take my quiver and my bowe;' "Fette lovell my hounde, and my horne to blowe. " The rhime for which Collingbourne suffered, was: "A cat, a rat, and Lovel the dog, STEEVENS. The rhime of Collingbourne is thus preserved in Heywood's History of Edward IV. P. II : "The cat, the rat, and Lovell our dog, "Doe rule all England under a hog. "The crooke backt boore the way hath found "To root our roses from our ground. "Both flower and bud will he confound, "Till King of beasts the swine be crown'd: "And then the dog, the cat, and rat, "Shall in his trough feed and be fat." The propriety of Dr. Warburton's note withstanding what Dr. Johnson hath subjoined, is fully confirmed by this satire. HENLEY. not The persons levelled at by this rhime were the King, Catesby, Ratcliff, and Lovel, as appears in The Complaint of Collingbourn: 66 Catesbye was one whom I called a cat, "A craftie lawyer catching all he could; would, "Whom I therefore did rightly terme our dog, "Wherewith to ryme I cald the King a hog.” MALONE. P. 29, last 1. & P. 30, first 1. Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity The slave of nature,] The expression is strong and noble, and alludes to the ancient custom of masters branding their profligate slaves; by which it is insinuated that his mishapen person was the mark that nature had set upon him to stigmatize his ill conditions, Shakspeare expresses the same thought in The Comedy of Errors: "He is deformed, crooked, &c. "Stigmatical in making," But as the speaker rises in her resentment, she expresses this contemptuous thought much more openly, and condemns him to a still worse state of slavery: "Sin, death, and hell, have set their marks on him. Only, in this first line, her mention of his moral condition insinuates her reflections on his deformity and, in the last, her mention of his deformity insinuates her reflections on his moral condition: And thus he has taught her to scold in all the elegance of figure. WARBURTON. Part of Dr. Warburton's note is confirm'd by a line in our author's Rape of Lucrece, from which it appears he was acquainted with the practice of marking slaves : "Worse than a slavish wipe, or birth-hour's blot." MALONE. P. 30, 1. 4. Thou rag of honour! &c.] This word of contempt is used again in Timon; and also in this play: |