Bright star of Venus, fall'n down on the earth, How may I reverently worship thee enough?9 ALEN. Leave off delays, and let us raise the siege. REIG. Woman, do what thou canst to save our honours s; Drive them from Orleans, and be immortaliz❜d. CHAR. Presently we'll try:-Come, let's away about it: No prophet will I trust, if she prove false. [Exeunt. SCENE III. London. Hill before the Tower. Enter, at the Gates, the Duke of GLOSTER, with his Serving-men, in blue Coats. GLO. I am come to survey the Tower this day; Since Henry's death, I fear there is conveyance. Where be these warders, that they wait not here? Open the gates; Gloster it is that calls. [Servants knock. 1 WARD. [Within.] Who is there that knocks so imperiously? 1 SERV. It is the noble duke of Gloster. 9 How may I reverently worship thee enough?] Perhaps this unmetrical line originally ran thus: How may I reverence, worship thee enough? 1 STEEVENS. -there is conveyance.] Conveyance means theft. HANMER. So Pistol, in The Merry Wives of Windsor: " Convey the wise it call: Steal! foh; a fico for the phrase." STEEVENS, 2 WARD. [Within.] Whoe'er he be, you may not be let in. 1 SERV. Answer you so the lord protector, villains? 1 WARD. [Within.] The Lord protect him! so we answer him : We do no otherwise than we are will'd. GLO. Who willed you? or whose will stands, but mine ? 2 There's none protector of the realm but I.- Servants rush at the Tower Gates. Enter, to the Gates, WOODVILLE, the Lieutenant. WOOD. [Within.] What noise is this? what traitors have we here? GLO. Lieutenant, is it you, whose voice I hear? Open the gates; here's Gloster, that would enter. WOOD. [Within.] Have patience, noble duke; I may not open; Break up the gates,] I suppose to break up the gate is to force up the portcullis, or by the application of petards to blow up the gates themselves. STEevens. To break up in Shakspeare's age was the same as to break open. Thus, in our translation of the Bible: "They have broken up, and have passed through the gate." Micah, ii. 13. So again, in St. Matthew, xxiv. 43: "He would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up." Some one has proposed to read Break ope the gates, WHALLEY. but the old copy is right. So Hall, HENRY VI. folio 78, b: "The lusty Kentishmen hopyng on more friends, brake up the gaytes of the King's Bench and Marshalsea," &c. MALONE. The cardinal of Winchester forbids: From him I have express commandement, Arrogant Winchester? that haughty prelate, Whom Henry, our late sovereign, ne'er could brook? Thou art no friend to God, or to the king: 1 SERV. Open the gates unto the lord protector; Or we'll burst them open, if that you come not quickly. 3 Enter WINCHESTER, attended by a Train of Servants in tawny Coats.3 WIN. How now, ambitious Humphry? what means this ?4 tawny coats.] It appears from the following passage in a comedy called, A Maidenhead well lost, 1634, that a tawny coat was the dress of a summoner, i. e. an apparitor, an officer whose business it was to summon offenders to an ecclesiastical court: "Tho I was never a tawny-coat, I have played the summoner's part." These are the proper attendants therefore on the Bishop of Winchester. So, in Stowe's Chronicle, p. 822: "—and by the way the bishop of London met him, attended on by a goodly company of gentlemen in tawny-coats," &c. Tawny was likewise a colour worn for mourning, as well as black; and was therefore the suitable and sober habit of any person employed in an ecclesiastical court: "A croune of bayes shall that man weare "That triumphs over me; "For blacke and tawnie will I weare, The Complaint of a Lover wearing blacke and tawnie; by E. O. [i. e. the Earl of Oxford.] Paradise of Dainty Devises, 1576. STEEVENS. How now, ambitious Humphry? what means this?] The GLO. Piel'd priest, dost thou command me to be shut out? WIN. I do, thou most usurping proditor, And not protector of the king or realm. GLO. Stand back, thou manifest conspirator; Thou, that contriv❜dst to murder our dead lord; Thou, that giv'st whores indulgences to sin:" 6 first folio has itumpheir. The traces of the letters, and the word being printed in Italicks, convince me that the Duke's christian name lurked under this corruption. THEOBALD. Piel'd priest,] Alluding to his shaven crown. POPE. In Skinner (to whose Dictionary I was directed by Mr. Edwards) I find that it means more: Pill'd or peel'd garlick, cui pel lis, vel pili omnes ex morbo aliquo, præsertim è lue venerea,“defluxerunt. In Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, the following instance occurs: "Ill see them p-'d first, and pil❜d and double pil'd." STEEVENS. In Weever's Funeral Monuments, p. 364, Robert Baldocke, bishop of London, is called a peeld priest, pilide clerk, seemingly in allusion to his shaven crown alone. So, bald-head was a term of scorn and mockery. TOLLET, The old copy has-piel'd priest. Piel'd and pil'd were only the old spelling of peel'd. So, in our poet's Rape of Lucrece, 4to, 1594: "His leaves will wither, and his sap decay, "So must my soul, her bark being pil'd away." See also Florio's Italian Dictionary, 1598: « Pelare. To pill or pluck, as they do the feathers of fowle; to pull off the hair or skin." MALone. 6 Thou, that giv'st whores indulgences to sin:] The public stews were formerly under the district of the bishop of Winchester. POPE. There is now extant an old manuscript (formerly the officebook of the court-leet held under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Winchester in Southwark,) in which are mentioned the several fees arising from the brothel-houses allowed to be kept in the bishop's manor, with the customs and regulations of them. One of the articles is: "De his, qui custodiunt mulieres habentes nefandam infirmi tatem." I'll canvas thee in thy broad cardinal's hat," WIN. Nay, stand thou back, I will not budge a foot; This be Damascus, be thou cursed Cain, 3 To slay thy brother Abel, if thou wilt. . "Item. That no stewholder keep any woman within his house, that hath any sickness of brenning, but that she be put out upon pain of making a fyne unto the lord of C shillings." UPTON. "I'll canvas thee in thy broad cardinal's hat,] This means, I believe,-I'll tumble thee into thy great hat, and shake thee, as bran and meal are shaken in a sieve. So, Sir W. D'Avenant, in The Cruel Brother, 1630: "I'll sift and winnow him in an old hat." To canvas was anciently used for to sift. So, in Hans Beerpot's invisible Comedy, 1618: 66 66 We'll canvas him. I am too big 66 Again, in the Epistle Dedicatory to Have with you to Saffron Walden, or Gabriel Harvey's Hunt is up, &c. 1596: -canvaze him and his angell brother Gabriell, in ten sheets of paper," &c. STEEVENS. Again, in The Second Part of King Henry IV. Doll Tearsheet says to Falstaff" If thou dost, I'll canvas thee between a pair of sheets." M. MASON. Probably from the materials of which the bottom of a sieve is made. Perhaps, however, in the passage before us Gloster means, that he will toss the cardinal in a sheet, even while he was invested with the peculiar badge of his ecclesiastical dignity.Coarse sheets were formerly termed canvass sheets. See K. Henry IV. P. II. Act II. sc. iv. MALONE. 8. This be Damascus, be thou cursed Cain,] About four miles from Damascus is a high hill, reported to be the same on which Cain slew his brother Abel.. Maundrel's Travels, p. 131. POPE Sir John Maundeville says: "And in that place where Damascus was founded, Kaym sloughe Abel his brother." Maundeville's Travels, edit. 1725, p. 148. REED. "Damascus is as moche to saye as shedynge of blood. For there Chaym slowe Abell, and hydde him in the sonde." Polychronicon, fo. xii. RITSON. |