I am a soldier, and now bound to France. BAST. Brother, take you my land, I'll take my chance : Your face hath got five hundred pounds a year; ELI. Nay, I would have you go before me thither. BAST. Our country manners give our betters way. K. JOHN. What is thy name? BAST. Philip, my liege; so is my name begun; Philip, good old sir Robert's wife's eldest son. K. JOHN. From henceforth bear his name whose form thou bear'st: 5 Kneel thou down Philip, but rise more great3 ; BAST. Brother, by the mother's side, give me your hand; My father gave me honour, yours gave land :— ELI. The very spirit of Plantagenet !— 4- unto the death.] This expression (a Gallicism,-à la mort) is common among our ancient writers. Steevens. but ARISE more great;] The old copy reads only-rise. STEEVENS. Perhaps, as Colonel Roberts suggested to me- rise up more great." But I rather think more is a dissyllable. MALONE. 66 6 Arise sir Richard, and PLANTAGENET.] It is a common opinion, that Plantagenet was the surname of the royal house of England, from the time of King Henry II.; but it is, as Camden observes, in his Remaines, 1614, a popular mistake. Plantagenet was not a family name, but a nick-name, by which a grandson of Geffrey, the first Earl of Anjou, was distinguished, from his wearing a broom-stalk in his bonnet. But this name was never borne either by the first Earl of Anjou, or by King Henry II. the son of that Earl by the Empress Maude; he being always called Henry Fitz-Empress; his son, Richard Coeur-de-lion; and the prince who is exhibited in the play before us, John sans-terre, or lackland. MALONE. I am thy grandame, Richard; call me so. BAST. Madam, by chance, but not by truth: What though?? Something about, a little from the right 8 , In at the window, or else o'er the hatch?: Who dares not stir by day, must walk by night; And have is have, however men do catch: Near or far off, well won is still well shot; And I am I, howe'er I was begot. K. JOHN. GO, Faulconbridge; now hast thou thy desire, A landless knight makes thee a landed 'squire.Come, madam, and come, Richard; we must speed For France, for France; for it is more than need. 7 Madam, by chance, but not by truth: What though ?] I am your grandson, madam, by chance, but not by honesty ;-what then? JOHNSON. 8 Something about, a little from the right, &c.] This speech, composed of allusive and proverbial sentences, is obscure. I am, says the sprightly knight, your grandson, a little irregularly, but every man cannot get what he wishes the legal way. He that dares not go about his designs by day, must make his motions in the night; he, to whom the door is shut, must climb the window, or leap the hatch. This, however, shall not depress me; for the world never enquires how any man got what he is known to possess, but allows that to have is to have, however it was caught, and that he who wins, shot well, whatever was his skill, whether the arrow fell near the mark, or far off it. JOHNSON. 66 - 9 In at the window, &c.] These expressions mean, to be 'born out of wedlock.' So, in The Family of Love, 1608: "Woe worth the time that ever I gave suck to a child that came in at the window!" So, in Northward Hoe, by Decker and Webster, 1607: kindred that comes in o'er the hatch, and sailing to Westminster," &c. Such another phrase occurs in Any Thing for a Quiet Life: then you keep children in the name of your own, which she suspects came not in at the right door." Again, in The Witches of Lancashire, by Heywood and Broome, 1634: It appears then by your discourse that you came in at the window."" I would not have you think I scorn my grannam's cat to leap over the hatch." Again: to escape the dogs hath leaped in at a window."- "Tis thought you came into the world that way,because you are a bastard." STEEVENS. 66 BAST. Brother, adieu; Good fortune come to thee ! For thou wast got i' the way of honesty. [Exeunt all but the Bastard. A foot of honour' better than I was; But many a many foot of land the worse. Well, now can I make any Joan a lady: Good den, sir Richard.-God-a-mercy, fellow ;And if his name be George, I'll call him Peter : For new-made honour doth forget men's names; "Tis too respective, and too sociable, For your conversion. Now your traveller,— I A foot of honour -] A step, un pas. JOHNSON. 2 Good den,] i. e. a good evening. So, in Romeo and Juliet: "God ye good den, fair gentlewoman." STEEVENS. 3 sir Richard,] Thus the old copy, and rightly. In Act IV. Salisbury calls him sir Richard, and the King has just knighted him by that name. The modern editors arbitrarily read, sir Robert. Faulconbridge is now entertaining himself with ideas of greatness, suggested by his recent knighthood.-Good den, sir Richard, he supposes to be the salutation of a vassal; God-amercy, fellow, his own supercilious reply to it. STEEVENS. 4 'Tis too RESPECTIVE, and too sociable 66 For your CONVERSION.] Respective is respectful, formal. So, in The Case is Altered, by Ben Jonson, 1609: I pray you, sir; you are too respective in good faith." Again, in the old comedy called Michaelmas Term, 1607: "Seem respective, to make his pride swell like a toad with dew." Again, in The Merchant of Venice, Act V.: "You should have been respective," &c. Again, in Chapman's version of the eleventh Iliad : 66 66 his honourable blood "Was struck with a respective shame; For your conversion" is the reading of the old copy, and may be right. It seems to mean, his late change of condition from a private gentleman to a knight.' STEEVENS. Mr. Pope, without necessity, reads-for your conversing. Our author has here, I think, used a licence of phraseology that he often takes. The Bastard has just said, that "new-made honour doth forget men's names;" and he proceeds as if he had said, "does not remember men's names. To remember the name of an inferior, he adds, has too much of the respect which is paid to superiors, and of the social and friendly familiarity of equals, for He and his tooth-pick at my worship's mess 7; your conversion,—for your present condition, now converted from the situation of a common man to the rank of a knight. MALONE. 5 Now your TRAVELLER,] It is said, in All's Well That Ends Well, that "a traveller is a good thing after dinner." In that age of newly excited curiosity, one of the entertainments at great tables seems to have been the discourse of a traveller. JOHNSON. So, in The Partyng of Frendes, a Copy of Verses subjoined to Tho. Churchyard's Praise and Reporte of Maister Martyne Forboisher's Voyage to Meta Incognita, &c. 1578: "At church or market, in some sort, will talke of trav'lar now." STEEVENS. 6 He and his TOOTH-PICK] It has been already remarked, that to pick the tooth, and wear a piqued beard, were, in that time, marks of a man's affecting foreign fashions. JOHNSON. Among Gascoigne's poems I find one entitled, Councell given to Maister Bartholomew Withipoll a little before his latter Journey to Geane, 1572. The following lines may, perhaps, be acceptable to the reader who is curious enough to enquire about the fashionable follies imported in that age: "Now, Sir, if I shall see your mastership "Come home disguis'd, and clad in quaint array ;· "Your brave mustachios turn'd the Turkie way; "A coptankt hat made on a Flemish blocke; "A night-gowne cloake down trayling to your toes; 66 A curtolde slipper, and a short silk hose," &c. Again, in Cynthia's Revels, by Ben Jonson, 1601: "- A traveller, one so made out of the mixture and shreds of forms, that himself is truly deformed. He walks most commonly with a clove or pick-tooth in his mouth." So also, Fletcher: 66 You that trust in travel; You that enhance the daily price of tooth-picks." Again, in Shirley's Grateful Servant, 1630: "I will continue my state-posture, use my tooth-pick with discretion," &c. STEEVENS. So, in Sir Thomas Overbury's Characters, 1616, [Article, an Affected Traveller:] He censures all things by countenances and shrugs, and speaks his own language with shame and lisping: he will choke rather than confess beere good drink; and his tooth-pick is a main part of his behaviour." MAlone. Why then I suck my teeth, and catechise 7 8 at my worship's MESS;] Means, at that part of the table where I, as a knight, shall be placed. See The Winter's Tale, vol. xiv. p. 258, n. 1. 8 66 Your worship" was the regular address to a knight or esquire, in our author's time, as your honour" was to a lord. MALONE. My PICKED man of countries :] The word picked may not refer to the beard, but to the shoes, which were once worn of an immoderate length. To this fashion our author has alluded in King Lear, where the reader will find a more ample explanation. Picked may, however, mean only spruce in dress. Chaucer in one of his prologues : "Fresh and new her says, geare ypiked was." And in The Merchant's Tale: "He kembeth him, and proineth him, and piketh." In Hyrd's translation of Vives's Instruction of a Christian Woman, printed in 1591, we meet with "" picked and apparelled goodly-goodly and pickedly arrayed.-Licurgus, when he would have women of his country to be regarded by their virtue, and not their ornaments, banished out of the country, by the law, all painting, and commanded out of the town all crafty men of picking and apparelling." Again, in a comedy called All Fools, by Chapman, 1602: 66 'Tis such a picked fellow, not a haire "About his whole bulk, but it stands in print." Again, in Love's Labour's Lost: "He is too picked, too spruce, &c. Again, in Greene's Defence of Coney-catching, 1592, in the description of a pretended traveller: "There be in England, especially about London, certain quaint pickt, and neat companions, attired, &c. alamode de France," &c. If a comma be placed after the word man,"I catechise my picked man, of countries: the passage will seem to mean, "I catechise my selected man, about the countries through which he travelled." STEEVENS. The last interpretation of picked, offered by Mr. Steevens, is undoubtedly the true one. So, in Wilson's Art of Rhetorique, 1553:"such riot, dicyng, cardyng, pyking," &c. Piked or picked, (for the word is variously spelt,) in the writings of our author and his contemporaries, generally means, spruce, affected, effeminate. See also Minsheu's Dict. 1617: "To picke or trimme. Vid. Trimme." Malone. My "picked man of countries" is-my travelled fop. HOLT WHITE. The word picked is still used in Devonshire, and when spoken of a man it means a keen, sharp fellow; a picked knife is the common description of a pointed knife. PHILLIPPS. |