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And teaches me to kill or hang myself:

If I were mad, I should forget my son;
Or madly think, a babe of clouts were he :
I am not mad; too well, too well I feel
The different plague of each calamity.

K. PHI. Bind up those tresses3: O, what love I

note

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In the fair multitude of those her hairs!
Where but by chance a silver drop hath fallen,
Even to that drop ten thousand wiry friends *
Do glew themselves in sociable grief;
Like true, inseparable, faithful loves,
Sticking together in calamity.

CONST. TO England, if you will 3.

3 Bind up those tresses :] It was necessary that Constance should be interrupted, because a passion so violent cannot be borne long. I wish the following speeches had been equally happy; but they only serve to show how difficult it is to maintain the pathetick long. JOHNSON.

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-wiry FRIENDS ] The old copy reads-wiry fiends. Wiry is an adjective used by Heywood, in his Silver Age, 1613: "My vassal furies, with their wiery strings,

"Shall lash thee hence." STEEVENS.

Mr. Pope made the emendation. MALONE.

Fiends is obviously a typographical error. As the epithet wiry is here attributed to hair; so, in another description, the hair of Apollo supplies the office of wire. In The Instructions to the Commissioners for the Choice of a Wife for Prince Arthur, it is directed" to note the eye-browes" of the young Queen of Naples, (who, after the death of Arthur, was married to Henry VIII. and divorced by him for the sake of Anna Bulloygn). They answer, "Her browes are of a browne heare, very small, like a wyre of heare." Thus also, Gascoigne :

"First for her head, her hairs were not of gold,
"But of some other mettall farre more fine,
"Whereof each crinet seemed to behold,

"Like glist'ring wyars against the sunne that shine."

HENLEY.

5 To England, if you will.] Neither the French king nor Pandulph has said a word of England since the entry of Constance. Perhaps, therefore, in despair, she means to address the absent King John: "Take my son to England, if you will;"

K. PHI.

Bind up your hairs. CONST. Yes, that I will; And wherefore will I

do it?

I tore them from their bonds; and cried aloud,
O that these hands could so redeem my son,
As they have given these hairs their liberty!
But now I envy at their liberty,

And will again commit them to their bonds,
Because my poor child is a prisoner.--
And, father cardinal, I have heard you say,
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:
If that be true, I shall see my boy again;

For, since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday suspire",
There was not such a gracious creature born 7.

now that he is in your power, I have no prospect of seeing him again. It is, therefore, of no consequence to me where he is. MALONE.

6but yesterday SUSPIRE,] To suspire, in Shakspeare, I believe, only means to breathe. So, in King Henry IV. Part II. : "Did he suspire, that light and weightless down

"Perforce must move."

Again, in a Copy of Verses prefixed to Thomas Powell's Passionate Poet, 1601:

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Beleeve it, I suspire no fresher aire,

"Than are my hopes of thee, and they stand faire."

STEEVENS.

-a GRACIOUS creature born.] Gracious, i. e. graceful. So, in Albion's Triumph, a Masque, 1631: “ on the which (the freeze) were festoons of several fruits in their natural colours, on which, in gracious postures, lay children sleeping."

Again, in the same piece: "-they stood about him, not in set ranks, but in several gracious postures."

Again, in Chapman's version of the eighteenth Iliad : then tumbled round, and tore,

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"His gracious curles." STEEVENS.

A passage quoted by Mr. Steevens from Marston's Malcontent, 1604, induces me to think that gracious likewise, in our author's time, included the idea of beauty: "he is the most exquisite in forging of veins, spright'ning of eyes,-sleeking of skinnes, blushing of cheeks,-blanching and bleaching of teeth, that ever made an ould lady gracious by torch-light." MALone.

But now will canker sorrow eat my bud,

And chase the native beauty from his cheek,
And he will look as hollow as a ghost;

As dim and meagre as an ague's fit;
And so he'll die; and, rising so again,

When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him: therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.

PAND. You hold too heinous a respect of grief.
CONST. He talks to me, that never had a son.
K. PHI. You are as fond of grief, as of your

child.

CONST. Grief fills the room up of my absent

child 9,

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief.
Fare you well had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort1 than you do.-
I will not keep this form upon my head,

[Tearing off her head-dress. 8 He talks to me, that never had a son.] To the same purpose Macduff observes

"He has no children."

This thought occurs also in King Henry VI. Part III.

STEEVENS.

9 Grief fills the room up of my absent child,]
Perfruitur lachrymis, et amat pro conjuge luctum.

Maynard, a French poet, has the same thought:
Qui me console, excite ma colere,

I

Et le repos est un bien que je crains :

Lucan, lib. ix.

Mon deuil me plaît, et me doit toujours plaire,

Il me tient lieu de celle que je plains. MALONE.

had you such a loss as I,

I could give better comfort -] This is a sentiment which great sorrow always dictates. Whoever cannot help himself casts his eyes on others for assistance, and often mistakes their inability for coldness. JOHNSON.

When there is such disorder in my wit.

O lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son !
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrow's cure! [Exit.
K. PHI. I fear some outrage, and I'll follow her.

[Exit. LEW. There's nothing in this world, can make me joy 2:

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale 3,
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man;

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That it yields naught, but shame, and bitterness.

PAND. Before the curing of a strong disease,

Even in the instant of repair and health,
The fit is strongest; evils, that take leave,
On their departure most of all show evil:

Shame operates
disgrace be less
JOHNSON.
Our author here,

2 There's nothing in this, &c.] The young prince feels his defeat with more sensibility than his father. most strongly in the earlier years; and when can welcome than when a man is going to his bride? 3 Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale,] and in another play, seems to have had the 90th Psalm in his thoughts. "For when thou art angry, all our days are gone, we bring our years to an end, as it were a tale that is told." So again, in Macbeth :

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"Life's but a walking shadow ;

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"Told by an ideot, full of sound and fury,
"Signifying nothing." MALONE.

the sweet WORDS taste,] The sweet word is life; which, says the speaker, is no longer sweet, yielding now nothing but shame and bitterness. Mr. Pope, with some plausibility, but certainly without necessity, reads-" the sweet world's taste." MALONE.

I prefer Mr. Pope's reading, which is sufficiently justified by the following passage in Hamlet:

"How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable

"Seem to me all the uses of this world!" Our present rage for restoration from ancient copies may induce some of our readers to exclaim, with Virgil's Shepherd:

Claudite jam rivos, pueri, sat prata biberunt. STEEVENS.

What have you lost by losing of this day? LEW. All days of glory, joy, and happiness. PAND. If you have won it, certainly, you had. No, no: when fortune means to men most good, She looks upon them with a threatening eye. 'Tis strange, to think how much king John hath lost

In this which he accounts so clearly won:

Are not you griev'd, that Arthur is his prisoner ?
LEW. As heartily, as he is glad he hath him.
PAND. Your mind is all as youthful as your
blood.

Now hear me speak, with a prophetick spirit;
For even the breath of what I mean to speak
Shall blow each dust, each straw, each little rub,
Out of the path which shall directly lead

Thy foot to England's throne; and, therefore, mark.

John hath seiz'd Arthur; and it cannot be,

That, whiles warm life plays in that infant's veins,
The misplac'd John should entertain an hour,
One minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest:
A scepter, snatch'd with an unruly hand,
Must be as boisterously maintain❜d as gain'd:
And he, that stands upon a slippery place,
Makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up:
That John may stand, then Arthur needs must fall;
So be it, for it cannot be but so.

LEW. But what shall I gain by young Arthur's

fall?

PAND. You, in the right of lady Blanch your

wife,

May then make all the claim that Arthur did.

LEW. And lose it, life and all, as Arthur did. PAND. How green you are, and fresh in this old world 5!

s How green, &c.] Hall, in his Chronicle of Richard III.

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