On any soul removed, but on his own. Wor. Your father's sickness is a maim to us. Were it good All at one cast? to set so rich a main 7 The very list, the very utmost bound Doug. Faith, and so we should; Where now remains a sweet reversion; A comfort of retirement 9 lives in this. Hot. A rendezvous, a home to fly unto, If that the Devil and mischance look big - 5 Possess'd is informed. Often so. See Twelfth Night, page 65, note 25. 6 To see, to learn, to discover are among the old senses of to read. To "read the bottom" is to try the uttermost; to exhaust. 7 List in the sense of edge or border, was quite common. A metaphor from the list of cloth. 8 Where and whereas were used interchangeably in the Poet's time. 9 Retirement is used with the same meaning as reversion, just before; something to fall back upon. Upon the maidenhood of our affairs.10 Wor. But yet I would your father had been here. The quality and hair 11 of our attempt Brooks no division: it will be thought By some, that know not why he is away, May turn the tide of fearful faction, And breed a kind of question in our cause; Hot. Nay, you strain too far. I, rather, of his absence make this use: It lends a lustre and more great opinion,15 A larger dare to our great enterprise, Than if the earl were here; for men must think, 10 The youth, immaturity of our affairs. 11 Hair was used metaphorically for complexion, or character. So in Beaumont and Fletcher's Nice Valour: “A lady of my hair cannot want pitying." And in an old manuscript play entitled Sir Thomas More: "A fellow of your haire is very fitt to be a secretaries follower." 12 The offering side is the assailing side. 13 Loop is the same as loop-hole. 14 Here, again, fear is put for the thing feared. The words draws a curtain (that is, withdraws) show that the Poet had in mind the personage called Fear, who figured on the old stage; something like what we call a fright. 15 Opinion is fame, reputation, in old English, as in Latin. If we, without his help, can make a head To push against the kingdom, with his help Yet all goes well, yet all our joints are whole. Doug. As heart can think: there is not such a word Spoken in Scotland as this term of fear. Enter Sir RICHARD VERNON. Hot. My cousin Vernon! welcome, by my soul. And further, I have learn'd, Where is his son, The King himself in person is set forth, Ver. All furnish'd, all in arms; All plumed like estridges that with the wind Bate it; 18 like eagles having lately bathed ; 19 16 Stowe says of the Prince," He was passing swift in running, insomuch that he, with two other of his lords, without hounds, bow, or other engine, would take a wilde bucke, or doe, in a large parke." 17 Daff is the same as doff, do off. Here it means throw or toss. 18 Estridge is the old form of ostrich. The ostrich's plumage might naturally occur to the Poet, from its being the cognizance of the Prince. To bate is an old term, meaning to flutter or flap the wings, as an ostrich does to aid its speed in running. Here it is used absolutely or indefinitely, and not as referring to any antecedent. So the Poet has such expressions Glittering in golden coats, like images ; as "fight it out," "smooth'st it so,' 'revel it," "trip it as you go," and others. So that the meaning in the text is, "Their plumage showed as if they had been ostriches struggling with, or beating against, the wind." Such is the upshot of the explanation lately given by Mr. A. E. Brae; who supports it by the following apt quotation from one of Lord Bacon's letters to Queen Elizabeth, 1600: "For now I am like a hawk that bates when I see occasion for service, but cannot fly, because I am tied to another's fist." Mr. Brae adds, "There can be no doubt that the first branch of the simile is an allusion to the egregious pluming of the helmets of those days, as represented in many an old illumination; and certainly the streaming of an ostrich's plumage, when struggling against the wind, presents a much more vivid image than when sailing before it." 19 Here, again, I gladly avail myself of Mr. Brae's learned comments : "Eagles were supposed to renew their youth and vigour by plunging in certain springs. In the Bestiare of Philippe de Thaun, the story of the eagles seeking a certain fountain in the East, and, when plunged therein three times, having their youth and vigour renewed, is declared to be typical of baptism." Spenser makes use of the same fable in The Faerie Queene, i. II, where the hero, overcome and desperately wounded in his long fight with the "old Dragon," at last falls back into "a springing well, full of great vertues, and for med'cine good," and lies there all the night. Una, sorely distressed and dismayed at his fall, watches, to see the issue, till morning, when At last she saw, where he upstarted brave And deckt himselfe with feathers youthly gay. 20 The beaver of the helmet was a movable piece, which lifted up to enable the wearer to drink or to breathe more freely. Of course in time of action it was drawn down over the face. 21 into his seat, And vault it with such ease As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds, And witch the world with noble horsemanship. Hot. No more, no more: worse than the Sun in March, This praise doth nourish agues. Let them come; They come like sacrifices in their trim, And to the fire-eyed maid of smoky war, Ver. my horse, There is more news: I learn'd in Worcester, as I rode along, He cannot draw his power this fourteen days. Hot. Forty let it be: My father and Glendower being both away, The powers of us may serve so great a day. 21 Another instance like that remarked in note 18. 22 The Poet repeatedly uses to taste for to try. See Twelfth Night, page 105, note 21. |