So, Heywood, in the Second Part of his Iron Age, 1632 :

-a horse, a horse!

"Ten kingdoms for a horse to enter Troy !"

STEEVENS,

Marston seems to have imitated this line in his Sa

tires, 1599:

"A man, a man, a kingdom for a man!”

MALONE.

422. Five have I slain to-day instead of him :—] Shakspere had employed this incident with historical propriety in the First Part of K. Henry IV. STEEVENS, 423. A horse! a horse! &c,] This line is introduced into Marston's What You Will, act ii. sc. 1. 4to. 1607; "Ha! he mounts Chirall on the wings of fame. "A horse! a horse! my kingdome for a horse! "Looke thee, I speake play scraps," &c.

REED.

430.

read:

-and make use of it.] Some old books

-make much of it.

and therefore Mr. Theobald reads so too: but very foolishly. Without doubt Shakspere himself thus corrected it to

make use of it.

Which signifies, don't abuse it like the tyrant you have destroyed: whereas the other reading :

make much of it,

signifies be fond of it; a very ridiculous moral for the

conclusion of the play.

WARBURTON.

Dr.

Dr. Warburton's reading may receive support from

a passage in K. Henry VIII. where Wolsey is giving advice to Cromwell :

"Neglect him not; make use now, and provide "For thine own future safety."

441.

STEEVENS.

-as we have ta'en the sacrament,] So, in Holinshed, p. 745: “The earle himselfe first tooke a coporall oth on his honor, promising that incontinent after he shuld be possessed of the crowne and dignitie of the realme of England, he would be conjoined in matrimonie with the ladie Elizabeth daughter to king Edward the fourth." STEEVENS.

450. All this divided York and Lancaster,

Divided, in their dire division.-] I think

the passage will be somewhat improved by a slight

alteration :

All that divided York and Lancaster,
Divided in their dire division,

O now let Richmond and Elizabeth,

The true succeeders of each royal house, By God's fair ordinance conjoin together. Let them unite all that York and Lancaster divided.

I shall here subjoin two Dissertations, one by Dr. Warburton, and one by Mr. Upton, upon the Vice.

ACT III. SCENE 1.

THUS like the formal vice, Iniquity, &c.] As this corrupt reading in the common books hath occasioned our saying something of the barbarities of theatrical representations amongst us before the time of Shakspere, it may not be improper, for a better apprehension of this whole matter, to give the reader some general account of the rise and progress of the modern stage.

The first form in which the drama appeared in the west of Europe, after the destruction of learned Greece and Rome, and that a calm of dulness had finished upon letters what the rage of barbarism had begun, was that of the Mysteries. These were the fashionable and favourite diversions of all ranks of people, both in France, Spain, and England. In which last place, as we learn by Stowe, they were in use about the time of Richard the Second and Henry the Fourth. As to Italy, by what I can find, the first rudiments of their stage, with regard to the matter, were prophane subjects, and, with regard to the form, a corruption of the ancient mimes and attellanes: by which means they got sooner into the right road than their neighbours; having had regular plays amongst them wrote as early as the fifteenth century.

As to these mysteries, they were, as their name speaks them, a representation of some scripture-story,

to

to the life as may be seen from the following passage in an old French history, entitled, La Chronique de Metz composée par le curé de St. Euchaire; which will give the reader no bad idea of the surprising absurdity of these strange representations: "L'an 1437 le 3 Juillet (says the honest Chronicler) fut fait le Jeu de la Passion de N. S. en la plaine de Veximiel. Et fut Dieu un sire appellé Seigneur Nicolle Dom. Neufchastel, lequel étoit Curé de St. Victour de Metz, lequel fut presque mort en la Croix, s'il ne fût été secourus; & convient qu'un autre Prêtre fut mis en la Croix pour parfaire le Personnage du Crucifiment pour ce jour; & le lendemain le dit Curé de St. Victour parfit la Resurrection, et fit très hautement son personage; & dura le dit Jeu-Et autre Prêtre qui s'appelloit Mre. Jean de Nicey, qui étoit Chapelain de Metrange, fut Judas: lequel fut presque mort en pendant, car le cuer li faillit, et fut bien hâtivement dependu et porté en Voye. Et étoit la bouche d'Enfer très-bien faite; car elle ouvroit & clooit, quand les Diables y vouloient entrer & isser; & avoit deux gros Culs d' Acier," &c. Alluding to this kind of representations, archbishop Harsnet, in his Declaration of Popish Impostures, p. 71, says, "The little children were never so afraid of Hell-mouth in the old plays, painted with great gang teeth, staring eyes, and foul bottle nose." Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, gives "The a fuller description of them in these words: Guary Miracle, in English a Miracle Play, is a kind of interlude compiled in Cornish out of some scripture

history.

history. For representing it, they raise an earthen amphitheatre in some open field, having the diameter of an inclosed playne, some forty or fifty foot. The country people flock from all sides many miles off, to see and hear it. For they have therein devils and devices, to delight as well the eye as the ear. The players conne not their parts without book, but are prompted by one called the ordinary, who followeth at their back with the book in his hand," &c. &c. There was always a droll or buffoon in these mysteries, to make the people mirth with his sufferings or absurdities and they could think of no better a personage to sustain this part than the devil himself. Even in the mystery of the Passion, mentioned above, it was contrived to make him ridiculous. Which circumstance is hinted at by Shakspere (who has frequent allusions to these things) in the Taming of the Shrew, where one of the players asks for a little vinegar (as a property) to make the devil roar. For after the sponge with the gall and vinegar had been employed in the representation, they used to clap it to the nose of the devil; which making him roar, as if it had been holy water, afforded infinite diversion to the people. that vinegar, in the old farces, was always afterwards in use to torment their devil. We have divers old English proverbs, in which the devil is represented as acting or suffering ridiculously and absurdly, which all arose from the part he bore in these mysteries, as in that, for instance, of-Great cry and little wool, as the devil said when he sheared his hogs. For the sheepshearing

So