-the battles fought in fields before The war-god's thundring cannons dreadful rore, God Mars laid by his launce, and tooke his lute, STEEVENS.. 9. Grim-visag'd war, &c.] Shakspere, as Mr. Reed thinks, seems to have had the following passage from Lyly's Alexander and Campaspe, 1584, before him, when he wrote these lines: "Is the warlike sound of drum and trump turn'd to the soft noise of lyre and lute? The neighing of barbed steeds, whose loudness filled the air with terror, and whose breaths dimned the sun with smoak, converted to delicate tunes and amorous glances?" &c. EDITOR. 10. -barbed steeds,] I. Haywarde, in his Life and Raigne of Henry IV. 1599, says-The duke of Hereford came to the barriers, mounted upon a white courser, barbed with blue and green velvet, &c. So, in Jarvis Markham's English Arcadia, 1607: ❝armed in a black armour, curiously damask'd with interwinding wreaths of cypress and ewe, his barbe upon his horse, all of black abrosetta, cut in broken hoopes upon curled cypress.". B Again, Again, in the Second Part of K. Edward IV. by Heywood, 1626: "With barbed horse, and valiant armed foot.” Barbed, however, may be no more than a corruption of barded. Equus bardatus, in the Latin of the middle ages, was a horse adorned with military trappings. I have met with the word barded many times in our ancient chronicles and romances. An instance or two may suffice. "They mounted him surely upon a good and mighty courser, well barded," &c. Hist. of Helyas Knight of the Swanne, bl. let. no date. Again, in Barrett's Alvearie, or Quadruple Dictionary, 1580: "Bardes or trappers of horses. Phalera, Lat." Again, Holinshed speaking of the preparations for the battle of Agincourt: "to the intent that if the barded horses ran fiercely upon them," &c. Again, p. 802, he says, that bards and trappers had the same meaning. It is observed in the Turkish Spy, that the German cuirassiers, though armed and barbed, man and horse, were not able to stand against the French cavalry. STEEVENS. 12. He capers -] War capers. This is poetical, though a little harsh; if it be York that capers, the antecedent is at such a distance, that it is almost forgotten. JOHNSON. 19. Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,] By dissembling is not meant hypocritical nature, that pretends one thing and does another; but nature that puts puts together things of a dissimilar kind, as a brave soul and a deformed body. WARBURTON. Dissembling is here put very licentiously for fraudful, deceitful. JOHNSON. Dr. Johnson hath certainly mistaken, and Dr. Warburton rightly explained, the word dissembling; as is evident from the following extract: "Whyle thinges stoode in this case, and that the manner of addyng was sometime too short and sometime too long, els dissembled and let slip together." Arthur Golding's translation of Julius Solinus, 1587. HENLEY. 27. And descant on mine own deformity:] Descant is a term in musick, signifying in general that kind of harmony wherein one part is broken and formed into a kind of paraphrase on the other. The propriety and elegance of the above figure, without such an idea of the nature of descant, could not be discerned. Sir J. HAWKINS. 28. And therefore-since I cannot prove a lover,] Shakspere very diligently inculcates, that the wickedness of Richard proceeded from his deformity, from the envy that rose at the comparison of his own person with others, and which incited him to disturb the pleasures that he could not partake. JOHNSON. 31. And hate the idle pleasures-] Perhaps we might read : And bate the idle pleasures— Bij JOHNSON. 32. 32. -inductions dangerous,] Preparations for mischief. The induction is preparatory to the action of the play. JOHNSON. Marston has put this line, with little variation, into the mouth of Fame: 36. “Plots ha' you laid ? inductions dangerous ?” STEEVENS. -Edward be as true and just,] i. e. if Ed ward keeps his word. JOHNSON. 60. And, for my name of George begins with G, &c.] So, in Nicols's Tragical Life and Death of King Richard III. 66 By that blind riddle of the letter G, STEEVENS. 62.toys-] Fancies, freaks of imagination. So Hamlet, act i. sc. 4. JOHNSON. "The very place puts toys of desperation "Without more motive,” REED. 78. Humbly complaining, &c.] I think these two lines might be better given to Clarence. JOHNSON. 83. The jealous o'er-worn widow, and herself,] That is, the queen and Shore. JOHNSON. 94. Well struck in years;] This odd expression in our language was preceded by one as uncouth though of a similar kind. "Well shot in years he seem'd," &c. Spenser's Faery Queen, B. V. c. 6. The meaning of neither is very obvious; but as Mr. Warton Warton has observed in his Essay on the Faery Queen, by an imperceptible progression from one kindred sense to another, words at length obtain a meaning entirely foreign to their original etymology. 108. STEEVENS. the queen's abjects,- -] That is, not the queen's subjects, whom she might protect, but her abjects, whom she drives away. So, in Case is altered. 1604. JOHNSON. How? Ask Dalio and Millo, "This ougly object, or rather abject of nature.' 111. HENDERSON. Were it, to call king Edward's widow-sister,] This is a very covert and subtle manner of insinuating treason. The natural expression would have been, were it to call king Edward's wife, sister. I will solicit for you, though it should be at the expence of so much degradation and constraint, as to own the lowborn wife of King Edward for a sister. But by slipping, as it were casually, widow into the place of wife, he tempts Clarence with an oblique proposal to kill the king. JOHNSON. King Edward's widow is, I believe, only an expression of contempt, meaning the widow Grey, whom Edward had chosen for his queen. Gloster has already called her the jealous o'er-worn widow. 119. STEEVENS. -I must perforce.] Alluding to the proverb, "Patience, perforce, is a medicine for a mad dog." Biij STEEVENS. 135. |