Puslapio vaizdai
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the precise meaning of it a point of some interest and cu-
riosity. In respect of the substantive, all that needs to be
remarked is that we have a Saxon plural which survived for
many years a number of its contemporaries, and which may
still be occasionally heard in some parts of England.
Clouted is explained by Warton, when, in his notes on
Comus, he says, "Clouts are thin and narrow plates of iron
affixed with hob-nails to the soles of the shoes of rustics."
The Shakespeare commentators leave the word untouched.
I incline, however, to think that Warton is slightly mistaken,
and that clouted shoon means shoes in the soles of which
hob-nails are inserted, whether there are plates of iron also
or not. And I ground it on the following remarkable
passage, which I find in Poole's English Parnassus, and
which I have not traced to its original owner.
The poet,
whoever he was, is speaking of the ravages made on female
beauty by the small pox-

which ploughs up flesh and blood,
And leaves such prints of beauty if he come,
As clouted shoon do upon floors of lome.

Also of the many kinds of nails which occur in old accompts of works about buildings clout-nails is one. Thus in some accompts of repairs at Woodstock in the sixth year of King Edward the Fourth, "Item solut. Roberto Austyn pro c. cloute-neyle pro le goters in Rosamound;" in this way the bower or hall of Rosamond at Woodstock is usually spoken of. I confess I never heard such plates or nails called by the name of clouts, and had we not such good authority for it I should have been inclined to understand the expression as being allied to patched, finding in the translation of the Scriptures" old shoes and clouted" worn by the ambassadors of the Gibeonites, who came to Joshua with the intention of imposing upon him as if they had performed a long journey.

Joshua ix. 5. The other interpretation is also favoured by a passage in Cymbeline

I thought he slept, and put

MY CLOUTED BROGUES from off my feet, whose rudeness
Answered my steps too loud.

Both Milton and Shakespeare have followed the common voice in using this term to indicate the rustic people. Thus in Kett's rebellion some one had the art to disperse the following couplet among the rebellious people, and thus did something to bring the movement to an end

The country gnoofes, Hob, Dick, and Hick, with clubs and CLOUTED SHOON, Shall fill up Duffyn dale with slaughtered bodies soon.

Nevil, who gives this homely couplet, gives also a Latin version of it, which, however, throws little light on the meaning of clouted

Rustica plebs clavis et agresti induta perone
Duffoni vallem miseranda strage replebunt.

KETTUS, 1582, p. 88.

I shall prolong this note to introduce a criticism of Coleridge on the passage quoted from the Comus, which is singularly elegant, and has never, I believe, been given in any of the books which contain his Notes of Lectures or his Conversations. He regarded the plant, which is compared as to its blessed effects to the Moly which Hermes gave to Ulysses, as the emblem of Christianity, led to it by an analysis of the word Hamony, which none but a mind penetrating as his was would have discovered. Hæmony it is to be observed is not a botanical term, though it might easily be mistaken for one, but is a word of Milton's own invention, and Coleridge's resolution of it was into the words aiua and oivos: a felicity of conjecture which has not many parallels in the criticisms on English poetry at least. This criticism of Cole

ridge's was communicated to me by a friend of the poet, and himself no mean critic, Mr. H. C. Robinson.

IV. 7. CADE.

Ye shall have a hempen caudle then, and the help of a hatchet. Dr. Farmer's emendation ought, I think, to be advanced into the text; pap with a hatchet, a vulgar phrase of the time. The word "caudle" suggested "pap;" and it was perhaps intended by the writer that it should be pronounced in such a manner as to suggest the idea of a "cord," something like "cordial." In reading Shakespeare we should never forget that he wrote lines to be delivered by the human voice.

Shakespeare, who knew human nature well, marks the vulgar character of Cade by representing him as sneering, an infallible sign of innate vulgarity, and often of a mean and base disposition.

IV. 7. DICK.

My lord, when shall we go to Cheapside, and take up commodities

upon our bills?

Here is no difficulty. To take up commodities upon bills, was an ordinary phrase of the time, equivalent to getting goods on credit. But the armed mob would go to Cheapside and take up goods upon bills of another kind, those with which they were armed. We have had similar equivoques from this character before.

IV. 8. CADE.

Hath my sword therefore broke through London Gates, that you should leave me at the WHITE HART in Southwark ?

Some one has conjectured that we have here again an equivoque, White Hart and White Heart, which is not improbable. Shakespeare, however, did not invent the sign for the sake of the pun, since there was a veritable White Hart in Southwark at the time. See the Paston Letters, vol. i. p. 61.

IV. 8. CLIfford.

I see them lording it in London streets

Crying-Villageois! unto all they meet.

To this the following note is appended:-" Villageois! Old copy, Villiago. Corrected by Mr. Theobald.-MALONE." And neither Mr. Theobald nor Mr. Malone deserve any thanks for this mis-called correction. It spoils the melody and the sense, as Villiago, as given by Florio in his dictionary, suits the passage quite as well as any sense of Villageois : viz. "a rascal; a villain; a base, vile, abject, scurvy, fellow; a scoundrel."

IV.9. K. HENRY.

Then heaven, set ope thy EVERLASTING GATES

To entertain my vows of thanks and praise.

The "everlasting doors" is come down to us from an age of poetry antecedent even to that of Homer. Milton remembered both passages when he wrote his

Heaven opened wide her ever-during gates;

Where the substitution of "during" for "lasting," has a beautiful effect, suggesting the idea of the slight sound attending the throwing open of well-hung gates. Mason, whose poetry, like that of Gray, abounds in "recollected terms," falls far short of both in melody,

Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high,

but approaches nearer to the remote and august original of all;

Lift up your heads, O! ye gates,

And be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors.

KING HENRY THE SIXTH.

PART THE THIRD.

I. 2. YORK.

Why, how now, sons and brother at a strife!

THIS is said to Edward and Richard, York's sons, and to the character here called Montague, who, as is shewn in Act ii. sc. 1, is the Neville Marquis Montacute or Montague, brother to Richard Earl of Warwick. This Montague was not, however, brother to the Duke of York, but nephew to his Duchess. Neither was he created Marquis Montacute till some time after. Shakespeare elsewhere makes them brothers. Perhaps he thought they were so.

I. 2. RICHARD.

No, God forbid your grace should be forsworn.

Here is the opening of the character of Richard, specious, plausible, sanctimonious. But Shakespeare has departed entirely from the truth of history in making him so prominent at this period, since he was born only in 1452, on the second day of October, at Fotheringhay Castle. We have an exact account of the births of all the sons of the Duke of York in the Chronicle of William of Worcester.

I. 3. RUTLAND.

But 'twas ere I was born.

Shakespeare probably thought so, since he represents Rutland as quite a child at the time of this battle, and has in this been followed by writers of veritable history. Rutland was born on the seventeenth of May 1443; the father of Clifford was slain in 1455; and the battle of Wakefield was

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