Ele. My bleffing goe with thee. 80 Iohn. For England Cofen, goe. Hubert fhall be your man, attend on you With al true duetie: On toward Callice,hoa. Enter France, Dolphin, Pandulpho, Attendants. Fra. So by a roaring Tempeft on the flood, A whole Armado of conuicted faile 80. thee.] thee! Theob. et seq. 81. goe.] Om. Steev. Var. '03, '13, Sing. i, Words. 82. attend] to attend F3F4, Rowe. t' attend Pope,+ (−Var. '73), Dyce ii, iii, Huds. ii, Words. to tend Coll. iii. 83. all F1. duetie:] duty.- Cap. et seq. Callice] Ff, Rowe i, Ktly. Calais Rowe ii. et cet. hoa.] ho! Theob. et seq. 1. Scæna Tertia] Ff. SCENE III. Rowe. SCENE V. Pope. SCENE VI. Han. Warb. Johns. SCENE II. Dono. SCENE IV. Cap. et cet. The French Court. Theob. +, Cap. Var. '78, '85, Rann. The French King's Tent. Mal. et seq. 2 4 2. France, Dolphin,] King Philip, Lewis, Rowe et seq. Pandulpho,] Pandupho, Ff. Pandulph, Cap. et seq. 3-5. Fra. So...fellowship.] Om. Dono. 4. Armado] Armada Johns. Var. '73. conuicted] collected Pope,+, Cap. Var. '78, '85, Rann. convented Mason, Sing. ii, Coll. ii, iii. (MS.), Dyce ii, iii, Huds. ii, Words. conflicted Ktly. consorted Id. conj. connected Mal. conj. (withdrawn), Del. convected Dyce conj. Fle. R. M. Spence (N. & Q., April, 1894). convoyed Cartwright. convexed Bulloch. compacted Vaughan. combined Spedding. conjointed Orger. 81. For England] MALONE: King John, after he had taken Arthur prisoner, sent him to the town of Falaise, in Normandy, under the care of Hubert, his Chamberlain; from whence he was removed to Rouen, and delivered to the custody of Robert de Veypont. Here he was secretly put to death. 3. a roaring Tempest] GREY (i, 289): Shakespeare does not allude to any tempest that then happened, but to the defeat of the French fleet (prepared to invade the dominions of the Earl of Flanders) in the Scheld, by the Earl of Salisbury, brother to King John, in the year 1213. In which 300 ships, laden with provisions, arms, and other valuable things, were taken; and above 100 more sunk, and burnt; and the rest destroyed by their own hands for fear of being taken by the enemy. Which put an end to King Philip's purpose of invading England. 4. A whole Armado] WARBURTON: This similitude, as little as it makes for the purpose in hand, was, I do not question, a very taking one when the play was first represented; which was a winter or two at most after the Spanish invasion in 1588. It was in reference likewise to that glorious period that Shakespeare concludes his play in that triumphant manner: "This England never did, nor never shall Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror.' But the whole play abounds with touches relative to the then posture of affairs.—JOHNSON: This play, as far as I Is scattered and dif-ioyn'd from fellowship. Pand. Courage and comfort,all fhall yet goe well. Fra. What can goe well, when we haue runne fo ill? Are we not beaten? Is not Angiers lost? 5. difioyned] difioyned Ff. disjoin'd Rowe et seq. 6. comfort,] comfort! Cap. et seq. 5 8 can discover, was not played till a long time after the defeat of the armado. The old play, I think, wants this simile. The commentator should not have affirmed what he can only guess.-PYE (p. 145): As a common observer of what passes every day, Johnson should have known that after eight years (for Malone gives this play as written in 1596) that event could not have become uninteresting, which is now highly interesting after the lapse of more than two centuries.-STEEVENS: 'Armado' is a Spanish word signifying a fleet of war. The armado in 1588 was called so by way of distinction. [Compare Burton, Anat. of Melan., 'Better a metropolitan city were sackt, a royal army overcome, an invincible armado sunk, ...then her little finger should ake.'-Pt, 3, Sec. 2, Mem. 4, Subsec. 1.—ED.] 4. conuicted] MALONE: That is, overpowered, baffled, destroyed. To 'convict' and to convince were in our Author's time synonymous. See Minsheu's Dictionary, 1617: 'To convict, or convince, á Lat. convictus, overcome.' Also Florio's World of Words, 1598: Convitto. Vanquished, convicted, convinced.' [MURRAY (N. E. D., s. v. vb. 7) quotes the present line as the earliest example of this use of 'convicted.'-ED.]-J. MONCK MASON (Comments, ed. 1807, p. 553) proposes convented in preference to the Folio reading, since, although 'convicted' may mean vanquished, that was not the fate of this particular armado. [To DYCE (ed. ii.) I am indebted for calling attention to this note which does not appear in any other edition of Mason's Comments. Neither Collier, whose MS. Corrector reads convented, nor Singer, who so reads in his ed. ii, refer to Mason. Collier, after lauding the reading, says: "There is no need, therefore, to strain after a meaning for "convicted," if, as we are assured, it was not the word of the Poet.'— Singer, without referring to Collier's MS. Corrector, rejects the Folio reading on the ground that, 'convicted,' signifying vanquished, overcome, ‘is a very unusual meaning, even would it serve the purpose.' Of Dyce's conjecture, convected, he remarks, 'it is doubtful if such a word existed,' wherein he is quite borne out by the N. E. D. In support of the reading convented, Singer quotes Coriol.: 'We are convented upon a pleasing treaty.'-II, ii, 59.—ED.]—R. G. WHITE: See Cooper's Thesaurus, 1573, 'Convictus, vanquished; overcome; convicted.' The manifest allusion to the fate of the Spanish Armada, which was convicted or conquered quite as much by tempest as by its English enemy, sustains the old text. The reading of Collier's Folio is appropriate and plausible, but nothing more. [In his earlier work, Shakespeare's Scholar, p. 302, White characterises Collier's MS. correction as 'doubtless the right word.'-ED.]—DYCE (ed. ii.) characterises the Folio reading, though it formerly meant vanquished, overpowered,' as here 'utterly improper.-C. & M. COWDEN CLARKE: We have an impression that convicted may be used here by Shakespeare to express condemned, doomed to perdition.WRIGHT: That is, beaten, discomfited. The reference is probably to the great Spanish Armada, which after being harassed and beaten by the English fleet was dispersed by a violent storm. Arthur tane prisoner? diuers deere friends flaine? Dol. What he hath won, that hath he fortified: So hot a speed, with such aduice difpos'd, Of any kindred-action like to this? Fra. Well could I beare that Englandhad this praise, So we could finde fome patterne of our shame: Enter Conftance. Looke who comes heere? a graue vnto a foule, ΙΟ 15 20 22 14. cause] WARBURTON in making his change interprets course as here meaning march.-CAPELL, while accepting as self-evident the change, takes exception to this interpretation since the 'obvious sense of it is—a course in lists, a knight's course, putting it figuratively. We had the same metaphor higher in a line of King Philip's, 1. 7.'-STEEVENS: [Warburton's] change is needless. A 'fierce cause' is a cause conducted with precipitation. 'Fierce wretchedness,' in Timon, IV, ii, 30, is hasty, sudden misery.-DELIUS also considers Warburton's change unnecessary, since it is the very temperateness of the order and the matter in hand which carry all before them in their fierce onrush. 18. So we ... our shame] MOBERLY: That is, If there could be found any precedent for shame like ours; if it were not far worse than anything in our fathers' days. 20-22. a graue vnto a soule . . . afflicted breath] FARMER: I think we should read 'afflicted earth.' The passage seems to have been copied from Sir Thomas More: 'If the body be to the soule a prison, how strait a prison maketh he the body, that stuffeth it with riff-raff, that the soule can have no room to stirre itself -but is, as it were, enclosed not in a prison, but in a grave.'-MALONE: There is surely no need of change. 'The vile prison of afflicted breath' is the body, the prison in which the distressed soul is confined. We have the same image in I prethee Lady goe away with me. Con. Lo; now: now see the issue of your peace. 24. Lo; now:] Ff. Lo, now; Rowe. Lo now; Pope, Han. Lo, now, Theob. Warb. Johns. Var. '73, Huds. i. Lo now, Coll. Del. Dono. Lo, now! Cap. et cet. 23 24. now feel I see Mrs Siddons (Campbell i, 221). you see Marshall conj. 3 Henry VI: 'Now my soul's palace is become her prison.'-[II, i, 74]. Again, more appositely, in Lucrece: "That blow did bail it [the soul] from the deep unrest Of that polluted prison where it breath'd.'-[l. 1726]. Again, in Sir John Davies, Nosce Teipsum: 'Yet in the body's prison so she lies, As through the body's windows she must look.'-[ed. Arber, p. 151].-STEEVENS: Perhaps the old reading is justifiable. So, in Meas. for Meas.: 'To be imprison'd in the viewless winds.'[III, i, 124].-J. MONCK MASON: It appears from the amendment proposed by Farmer, and by the quotation adduced by Steevens in support of the old reading, that they both consider this passage in the same light, and suppose that King Philip intended to say 'that breath was the prison of the soul'; but I think they have mistaken the sense of it; and that by 'the vile prison of afflicted breath' he means the same vile prison in which the breath is confined; that is, the body. King John says to Hubert, speaking of what passed in his own mind, 'Nay, in the body of this fleshly land, This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath,' etc., IV, ii, 255. And Hubert says, in the following scene: 'If I... Be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath Which was embounded in this beauteous clay,' IV, iii, 145. It is evident that in this last passage the breath is considered as embounded in the body; but I will not venture to assert that the same inference may, with equal certainty, be drawn from the former.—ANDERS (p. 274): Compare what Plato says, in his Cratylus, 400: 'For some say that the body is the grave of the soul which may be thought to be buried in our present life; or again the index of the soul, because the soul gives indications to the body; probably the Orphic poets were the inventors of the name and they were under the impression that the soul is suffering the punishment of sin, and that the body is an enclosure or prison in which the soul is incarcerated, kept safe, as the name o&ua implies, until the penalty is paid.'-['The thought,' adds Anders, ‘had no doubt become a commonplace.'-That it was at least common is clearly shown by BAYLEY, who, under the heading Classicisms, p. 181, has collected fourteen examples, including the present passage, wherein this thought in varying phrases occurs, and the number might doubtless be extended. In a foot-note Bayley remarks that 'These views were very contrary to the theology of the time, and even of current creeds.'-As regards the 'prison of afflicted breath,' Mason's interpretation is also that of the present ED.]-Vaughan (i, 50) raises an objection to Malone's and Mason's explanation, since 'the prisoner here is not simply "the soul,” but the spirit, and therefore that the breath of the mortal being might not inaptly be described as the prison of that "spirit." As to "afflicted breath" it is best explained by "Absent thee from felicity awhile And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain."—Hamlet, V, ii, 358.'-[Is not 'eternal spirit' merely a synonym for the soul? The next words, 'against her will,' seem to show this; 'soul' is always feminine. Compare the quotation from Davies, ante.—ED.] 24. the issue of your peace] BUCKNILL (Mad Folk, etc., p. 279): Constance taunts King Philip with his and her own calamities as the result of his peace, 25 Fra. Patience good Lady, comfort gentle Conftance. Con. No, I defie all Counfell, all redresse, But that which ends all counfell, true Redresse: Death, death, O amiable, louely death, Thou odoriferous ftench: found rottennesse, 25. Lady, comfort] Ff. Lady; comfort, Rowe,+, Coll. Wh. i, Dono. Lady! comfort, Cap. et cet. 26. all] and Warb. Johns. 28. Death, death,] Death; death, Pope, Han. Death, death; Theob.+, Cam. Glo. Cla. Wh. ii. Death, Death! Var. '73, Hal. Death, death:- Var. '78, '85, Mal. Rann, Steev. Varr. Sing. Dyce, Words. Death, death. Coll. Wh. i, Ktly, Huds. Del. Rlfe, Dono. Neils. Craig. louely death,] lovely death! Pope et seq. Han. 29. flench...rottennesse,] stench!...rottenness! Cap. et seq. 30. forth from] from forth Coll. MS. the] thy Pope,+ (-Var. '73). this Grey. 32. deteftable bones,] detestable bones; Rowe, Pope, Theob. Warb. Johns. Cap. bones detestable; Han. détestable bones; Mal. Steev. Varr. Sing. Knt, Dyce, Fle. Huds. ii, Words. detestable bones Cam. Glo. Cla. Wh. ii, Neils. 32-35. bones, ... browes, wormes, duft,] bones...brows...wormes...dust] Cam. +, Neils. ... 29. Thou...rottennesse] Om. Pope, whereas they were, in reality, the issue of her war. This is the only point on which her quick intellect ever trips. She shows no signs of bending, though her spirit is wounded unto death. Her invincible pride rejects all comfort, all solace. The charnel-house ideas of her invocation to death is poetic delirium, the frenzy of imagination; Juliet's imagination, embracing the same ideas, is feeble and prosaic compared with this horror. 26. defie] MURRAY (N. E. D., s. v. vb1 5.): To set at nought; to reject, renounce, despise, disdain, revolt at. [SCHMIDT (Lex., s. v. vb. 2.) furnishes many examples of this use of the word.] 28. O amiable, louely death] Rose (New Sh. Soc. Trans., 1880, p. 18): One is apt to take Constance as a passionate, single-minded woman; and much of the expression of her grief might be held to be merely conventional. Such lines as 28 and 29, of course, remind one at once of Juliet's rhetoric. But if we continue the scene, and examine particularly the famous lines, 'Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,' we shall find that Constance's intellect is keenly analysing herself; that, intense as her sorrow is, she thinks about it quite as much as she feels; and that there is little danger of its breaking the o'erfraught heart, as does the speechless grief of more massive characters. 29. Thou... rottennesse] IVOR JOHN: The man who could pen certain passages in The Dunciad rejected this line! 31. hate and terror to prosperitie] CARTER (p. 210) quotes as a probable source of this: 'O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that liveth at rest in his possessions, unto the man that hath nothing to vex him, and that hath prosperitie in all things.'-Ecclesiastes, xli, 1 (Genevan Vers.). |