PROLOGUE.

I come no more to make you laugh; things now, That bear a weighty and a serious brow,

Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,
Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow,
We now present. Those that can pity, here
May, if they think it well, let fall a tear;
The subject will deserve it. Such as give
Their money out of hope they may believe,
May here find truth too. Those that come to see
Only a show or two, and so agree

The play may pass, if they be still and willing,

I'll undertake may see away their shilling

Richly in two short hours. Only they
That come to hear a merry, bawdy play,
A noise of targets; or to see a fellow
In a long motley coat, guarded with yellow,
Will be deceiv'd: for, gentle hearers, know,
To rank our chosen truth with such a show

As fool and fight is, besides forfeiting

Our own brains, and the opinion that we bring,

(To make that only true we now intend,)

Will leave us never an understanding friend.

Therefore, for goodness' sake, and, as you are known
The first and happiest hearers of the town,
Be sad, as we would make you: Think, ye see
The very persons of our noble story,

As they were living; think, you see them great,
And follow'd with the general throng and sweat
Of thousand friends; then, in a moment, see
How soon this mightiness meets misery!
And if you can be merry then, I'll say
A man may weep upon his wedding-day.

SCENE 1.-London. An Antechamber in the Palace.

Enter the DUKE OF NORFOLK, at one door; at the other, the DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM and the LORD ABERGAVENNY'.

BUCK. Good morrow, and well met. How have you done

Since last we saw in France?

NOR.

I thank your grace:
Healthful; and ever since a fresh admirer
Of what I saw there.

BUCK.

An untimely ague

NOR.

Stay'd me a prisoner in my chamber, when
Those suns of glory, those two lights of men,
Met in the vale of Andrena.

'Twixt Guynes and Arde:
I was then present, saw them salute on horseback;
Beheld them, when they lighted, how they clung
In their embracement as they grew together;

Which had they, what four thron'd ones could have weigh'd
Such a compounded one?

BUCK.

NOR.

All the whole time

I was my chamber's prisoner.

Then you lost
The view of earthly glory: Men might say,
Till this time pomp was single, but now married
To one above itself. Each following day
Became the next day's master, till the last
Made former wonders its: To-day, the French,
All clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods,
Shone down the English; and, to-morrow, they
Made Britain, India: every man that stood
Show'd like a mine. Their dwarfish pages were
As cherubins, all gilt: the madams too,
Not us'd to toil, did almost sweat to bear
The pride upon them, that their very labour
Was to them as a painting: Now this mask
Was cried incomparable; and the ensuing night
Made it a fool, and beggar. The two kings,
Equal in lustre, were now best, now worst,
As presence did present them; him in eye
Still him in praise: and, being present both,
'T was said they saw but one; and no discerner
Durst wag his tongue in censure. When these suns
(For so they phrase them) by their heralds challeng'd

The noble spirits to arms, they did perform

Beyond thought's compass; that former fabulous story,
Being now seen possible enough, got credit,

Andren. So the original; so the Chroniclers. But the modern editors write "the vale of Arde." Arde, or Ardres, is the town, which in the next line is spelt Arde in the original. Andren, or Ardren, is the village near the place of meeting.

Clinquant-bright with gingling ornaments.

• Censure-not in dispraise-but in comparative judgment.

■ It is usual, contrary to the original, to give to Norfolk the sentence beginning “All was royal," and then make Buckingham ask the question, "Who did guide?" &c. Theobald made the change, and Warburton says it was improperly given to Buckingham, “ for he wanted information, having kept his chamber during the solemnity." But what information does he communicate? After the eloquent description by Norfolk of the various shows of the pageant, he makes a general observation that "order" must have presided over these complicated arrangements—“ gave each thing view." He then asks, “Who did guide?"—who made the body and the limbs work together? Norfolk then answers, "As you guess;"-(which words have been transferred to Buckingham by the revisers of the text)—according to your guess, one did guide:-" one, certes," &c.

⚫ Element-constituent quality of mind. Thus in 'Twelfth Night' (Act III., Scene 4) Malvolio says, "Go, hang yourselves all! you are idle shallow things: I am not of your element.”

Keech. Steevens thinks this term has a peculiar application to Wolsey, as the son of a butcher; as a butcher's wife is called in Henry IV., Part II.,' “Goody Keech." But Falstaff, in the First Part, is called by Prince Henry "a greasy tallow keech." A "keech" is a lump of fat; and it appears to us that Buckingham here denounces Wolsey, not as a butcher's son, but as an overgrown bloated favourite, that

66 can with his very bulk Take up the rays o' the beneficial sun."

What Heaven hath given him, let some graver eye
Pierce into that; but I can see his pride

Peep through each part of him: Whence has he that?
If not from hell, the devil is a niggard,
Or has given all before, and he begins
A new hell in himself.

Виск.

Why the devil,

Upon this French going-out, took he upon him,

Without the privity o' the king, to appoint

Who should attend on him? He makes up the file

Of all the gentry; for the most part such

To whom as great a charge as little honour

He meant to lay upon b: and his own letter (The honourable board of council out)

Must fetch him in he papers c.

This passage has been corrupted by the modern editors, and, as we think, misunderstood. It is ordinarily printed thus:

"spider-like,

Out of his self-drawing web, he gives us note,

The force of his own merit makes his way;

A gift that Heaven gives for him," &c.

“O! give us note," the original reading, is one of Shakspere's happy parentheses to break a long sentence, and meaning only, mark what I say. The whole speech is intended to render the ironical close emphatic. Wolsey is without ancestry, without the credit of great service, without eminent assistants; but, spider-like, deriving everything from himself, the force of his own self-sustained merit makes his way-his course-his good fortune-a gift from Heaven, which buys, &c. If we were to receive the passage in the sense of the revisers of the text, we ought to read his own merit makes its way." To "make way," in Shakspere, is to go away, as in 'The Taming of the Shrew:'

"While I make way from hence to save my life."

To make way, in the colloquial sense of to get on in the world, is, we think, a forced and unauthorised meaning of the words before us. That Wolsey should give note that he made his way only by his own merit would have been utterly at variance with the stately pomp and haughtiness of

To, the preposition of the original, appeared to the editors a redundancy, because we have "lay upon." But if lay upon has not here the force of a compound verb, examples of redundant prepositions are most common in Shakspere; for example, in 'Coriolanus:'—

"In what commodity is Marcius poor in?”

The feeble expletive too, with its unmetrical pause, appears to us a corruption, though unnoticed altogether by the editors.

The construction of this passage is difficult; the meaning is in Holinshed:-"The peers of the realm, receiving letters to prepare themselves to attend the king in this journey, and no apparent necessary cause expressed, why or wherefore, seemed to grudge that such a costly journey should be taken in hand, without consent of the whole board of the council." In Wolsey's letter the "board of council" was "out"-omitted; the letter alone "must fetch him in [whom] he papers"