GLO. More wonderful when angels are so an gry. Vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman, ANNE. Vouchsafe, diffus'd infection of a man 1, GLO. Fairer than tongue can name thee, let me have Some patient leisure to excuse myself. ANNE. Fouler than heart can think thee, thou canst make No excuse current, but to hang thyself. GLO. By such despair, I should accuse myself. ANNE. And, by despairing, shalt thou stand excus'd; For doing worthy vengeance on thyself, That didst unworthy slaughter upon others. GLO. Say, that I slew them not? ANNE. Why then, they are not dead2: But dead they are, and, devilish slave, by thee. ANNE. Why, then he is alive. 1 Vouchsafe, DIFFUS'D infection of a man,] I believe, diffus'd in this place signifies irregular, uncouth; such is its meaning in other passages of Shakspeare. JOHNSON. "Diffus'd infection of a man" may mean, thou that art as dangerous as a pestilence, that infects the air by its diffusion.' Diffus'd may, however, mean irregular. So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor: 66 rush at once "With some diffused song." Again, in Greene's Farewell to Follie, 1617: "I have seen an English gentleman so diffused in his sutes; his doublet being for the weare of Castile, his hose for Venice," &c. STEEVENS. 2 Why then, they are not dead :] Thus the quarto. The folio reads" Then say, they were not slain." MALONE. GLO. Nay, he is dead; and slain by Edward's hand. 3 ANNE. In thy foul throat thou liest; queen Margaret saw Thy murderous * faulchion smoking in his blood; The which thou once didst bend against her breast, But that thy brothers beat aside the point. GLO. I was provoked by her sland'rous tongue, That laid their guilt upon my guiltless shoulders. ANNE. Thou wast provoked by thy bloody mind, That never dreamt on aught but butcheries: Didst thou not kill this king? GLO. I grant ye". ANNE. Dost grant me, hedge-hog? then, God grant me too, Thou may'st be damned for that wicked deed! GLO. The fitter for the King of heaven that hath him ". ANNE. He is in heaven, where thou shalt never come. GLO. Let him thank me, that holp to send him thither; * Quarto 1597, bloody. 3 thy sour's throat-] The folio-" thy foul throat." STEEVENS. The quarto 1597 also reads foul. MALONE. 4 That laid their guilt-] The crime of my brothers. He has just charged the murder of Lady Anne's husband upon Edward. s I grant YE.] Read, to perfect the measure: 66 "I grant ye, yea." RITSON. One of the quartos, instead of-ye, reads-yea. 6 O, he was gentle, mild, and virtuous. JOHNSON. Steevens. Glo. The fitter for the King of heaven, &c.] So, in Pericles Prince of Tyre, 1609 : "I'll do't: but yet she is a goodly creature. "Dion. The fitter then the gods should have her." STEEVENS. For he was fitter for that place, than earth. ANNE. And thou unfit for any place but hell. GLO. Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it. ANNE. Some dungeon". GLO. Your bed-chamber. ANNE. Il rest betide the chamber where thou liest. GLO. So will it, madam, till I lie with you. ANNE. I hope so. GLO. I know so. But, gentle lady Anne,— To leave this keen encounter of our wits, And fall somewhat into a slower method ;Is not the causer of the timeless deaths 8 Of these Plantagenets, Henry, and Edward, ANNE. Thou wast the cause, and most accurs'd effect 9. Gzo. Your beauty was the cause of that effect; 7 Some dungeon.] As most of the measure throughout this scene is regular, I cannot help suspecting that our author originally wrote: "Some dungeon, perhaps. "Your bed-chamber." STEEVENS. 8 a SLOWER method ;] As quick was used for spritely, so slower was put for serious. In the next scene Lord Grey desires the Queen to— 66 cheer his grace with quick and merry words." STEEVENS. 9 Thou wast the cause, and most accurs'd effect.] Effect, for executioner. He asks, was not the causer as ill as the executioner? She answers, Thou wast both. But, for causer, using the word cause, this led her to the word effect, for execution, or executioner. But the Oxford editor, troubling himself with nothing of this, will make a fine oratorical period of it: "Thou wast the cause, and most accurs'd the effect." WARBURON. I cannot but be rather of Sir T. Hanmer's opinion than Dr. Warburton's, because effect is used immediately in its common sense, in answer to this line. JOHNSON. I believe the obvious sense is the true one. So, in The Yorkshire Tragedy, 1608: Your beauty, which did haunt me in my sleep, So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom. ANNE. If I thought that, I tell thee, homicide, These nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks. GLO. These eyes could not endure that beauty's wreck, You should not blemish it, if I stood by: ANNE. Black night o'ershade thy day, and death thy life! GLO. Curse not thyself, fair creature; thou art both. ANNE. I would I were, to be reveng'd on thee. GLO. It is a quarrel most unnatural, To be reveng❜d on him that loveth thee. ANNE. It is a quarrel just and reasonable, To be reveng'd on him that kill'd my husband. GLO. He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband, Did it to help thee to a better husband. ANNE. His better doth not breathe upon the earth. GLO. He lives that loves you better than he could. ANNE. Name him. GLO. ANNE. Plantagenet. Why, that was he. GLO. The self-same name, but one of better 66 66 nature. thou art the cause, Effect, quality, property; thou, thou." Again, in King Henry IV. Part II. :" I have read the cause of his effects in Galen." Again, in Sidney's Arcadia, book ii. : "Both cause, effect, beginning, and the end, "Are all in me." STEEVENS. Our author, I think, in another place uses effect, for efficient MALONE. cause. GLO. Here: [She spits at him.] Why dost thou spit at me? ANNE. 'Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake! GLO. Never came poison from so sweet a place. ANNE. Never hung poison on a fouler toad. Out of my sight! thou dost infect mine eyes. GLO. Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine. ANNE. 'Would they were basilisks, to strike thee dead1! GLO. I would they were, that I might die at once. For now they kill me with a living death". ''Would they were BASILISKS, to strike thee dead!] "Among the serpents the Basiliske doth infecte and kill people with his looke." Summary of Secret Wonders, &c. bl. 1. by John Alday, no date. STEEVENS. So, in The Winter's Tale: "Make me not sighted like the basilisk ; "I have look'd on thousands, who have sped the better 66 By my regard, but kill'd none so." See also, King Henry VI. Part II. vol. xviii. p. 255, n. 1. MALONE. In Cornucopia, &c. 1596, sign. B. 4: "The eye of the Basiliske is so odious to man, that it sleeth man before he come nere him, even by looking upon him." REED. 2 they kill me with a LIVING DEATH.] In imitation of this passage, and, I suppose, of a thousand more, Pope writes: 66 66 a living death I bear, Says Dapperwit, and sunk beside his chair." JOHNSON. The same conceit occurs in The Trimming of Thomas Nash, 1597: "How happy the rat, caught in a trap, and there dies a living death?" Again, in Phineas Fletcher's Locusts, or Apollyonists, 4to. 1627: "It lives, yet's death: it pleases full of paine: "Monster! ah who, who can thy beeing faigne? "Thou shapelesse shape, live death, paine pleasing, servile raigne." STEEVENS. So, in Watson's Sonnets, printed about 1580: "Love is a sowre delight, a sugred griefe, "A living death, an ever-dying life." We have again the same expression in Venus and Adonis : "For I have heard it [love] is a life in death, “That laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath." MALONE. |