Through my burn'd bosom; nor entreat the north
To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips,
And comfort me with cold:-I do not ask you much,
I beg cold comfort; and you are so strait,5

And so ingrateful, you deny me that.

P. Hen. O, that there were some virtue in my

tears,

That might relieve you!

K. John.

The salt in them is hot.

Within me is a hell; and there the poison

Is, as a fiend, confin'd to tyrannize

On unreprievable condemned blood.

Bast. O, I am scalded with my violent motion, And spleen of speed to see your majesty.

K. John. O cousin, thou art come to set mine

eye:

The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burn'd;
And all the shrouds, wherewith my life should sail,
Are turned to one thread, one little hair:
My heart hath one poor string to stay it by,
Which holds but till thy news be uttered;
And then all this thou see'st, is but a clod,
And module of confounded royalty."

Bast. The Dauphin is preparing hitherward;

Where, heaven he knows, how we shall answer him:

For, in a night, the best part of my power,
As I upon advantage did remove,
Were in the washes, all unwarily,
Devoured by the unexpected flood."

5

the word.

[The King dies.

so strait,] i. e. narrow, avaricious; an unusual sense of

• And module of confounded royalty.] i. e. model.

Were in the washes, all unwarily, &c.] This untoward accident really happened to King John himself. As he passed from Lynn to Lincolnshire, he lost by an inundation all his treasure, carriages, baggage, and regalia.

Sal. You breathe these dead news in as dead an

ear.

My liege! my lord!—But now a king,—now thus. P. Hen. Even so must I run on, and even so stop. What surety of the world, what hope, what stay, When this was now a king, and now is clay!

Bast. Art thou gone so? I do but stay behind,
To do the office for thee of revenge;

And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven,
As it on earth hath been thy servant still.-

Now, now, you stars, that move in your right spheres,

Where be your powers? Show now your mended faiths;

And instantly return with me again,

To push destruction, and perpetual shame,
Out of the weak door of our fainting land:
Straight let us seek, or straight we shall be sought;
The Dauphin rages at our very heels.

Sal. It seems, you know not then so much as we: The cardinal Pandulph is within at rest,

Who half an hour since came from the Dauphin;
And brings from him such offers of our peace
As we with honour and respect may take,
With purpose presently to leave this war.

Bast. He will the rather do it, when he sees
Ourselves well sinewed to our defence.

Sal. Nay, it is in a manner done already;
For many carriages he hath despatch'd
To the seaside, and put his cause and quarrel
To the disposing of the cardinal:

With whom yourself, myself, and other lords,

If

you think meet, this afternoon will post

To cónsummate this business happily.

Bast. Let it be so:-And you, my noble prince, With other princes that may best be spar'd, Shall wait upon your father's funeral.

P. Hen. At Worcester must his body be interr'd;" For so he will'd it.

Bast.

Thither shall it then.

And happily may your sweet self put on
The lineal state and glory of the land!
To whom, with all submission, on my knee,
I do bequeath my faithful services

And true subjection everlastingly.

Sal. And the like tender of our love we make, To rest without a spot for evermore.

P. Hen. I have a kind soul, that would give you thanks,

And knows not how to do it, but with tears.

Bast. O, let us pay the time but needful woe,
Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.-
This England never did, (nor never shall,)
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.
Now these her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms,

And we shall shock them: Nought shall make us

rue,

If England to itself do rest but true.

[Exeunt.

At Worcester must his body be interr'd;] A stone coffin, containing the body of King John, was discovered in the cathedral church of Worcester, July 17, 1797. STEEVENS.

9 The tragedy of King John, though not written with the utmost power of Shakspeare, is varied with a very pleasing interchange of incidents and characters. The lady's grief is very affecting; and the character of the Bastard contains that mixture of greatness and levity which this author delighted to exhibit.

JOHNSON.

KING RICHARD II.*

VOL. V.

I

* THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING RICHARD II.] But this history comprises little more than the last two years of this prince. The action of the drama begins with Bolingbroke's appealing the Duke of Norfolk, on an accusation of high treason, which fell out in the year 1398; and it closes with the murder of King Richard at Pomfret Castle towards the end of the year 1400, or the beginning of the ensuing year. THEOBALD.

It is evident from a passage in Camden's Annals, that there was an old play on the subject of Richard the Second; but I know not in what language. Sir Gillie Merick, who was concerned in the hare-brained business of the Earl of Essex, who was hanged for it, with the ingenious Cuffe, in 1601, is accused, amongst other things, quod exoletam tragoediam de tragicâ abdicatione regis Ricardi Secundi in publico theatro coram conjuratis datâ pecuniâ agi curasset.'

"

I have since met with a passage in my Lord Bacon, which proves this play to have been in English. It is in the arraignments of Cuffe and Merick, Vol. IV. p. 412, of Mallet's edition: "The afternoon before the rebellion, Merick, with a great company of others, that afterwards were all in the action, had procured to be played before them the play of deposing King Richard the Second;- when it was told him by one of the players, that the play was old, and they should have loss in playing it, because few would come to it, there was forty shillings extraordinary given to play, and so thereupon played it was.”

It may be worth enquiring, whether some of the rhyming parts of the present play, which Mr. Pope thought of a different hand, might not be borrowed from the old one. Certainly, however, the general tendency of it must have been very different; since, as Dr. Johnson observes, there are some expressions in this of Shakspeare, which strongly inculcate the doctrine of indefeasible right. FARMer.

Bacon elsewhere glances at the same transaction: "And for your comparison with Richard II. I see you follow the example of them that brought him upon the stage, and into print in Queen Elizabeth's time." Works, Vol. IV. p. 278. The partizans of Essex had, therefore, procured the publication as well as the acting of this play. HOLT WHITE.

It is probable, I think, that the play which Sir Gilly Merick procured to be represented, bore the title of HENRY IV. and not of RICHARD II.

Camden calls it "exoletam tragediam de tragica abdicatione regis Ricardi secundi;" and (Lord Bacon in his account of The Effect of that which passed at the arraignment of Merick and others,) says: "That the afternoon before the rebellion, Merick had procured to be played before them, the play of deposing King Richard the Second." But in a more particular account of