Who the mother of Philip was, is not ascertained. It is said that she was a lady of Poictou, and that King Richard bestowed upon her son a lordship in that province. P. 6, 1. 25. Whe'r for whether. STEEVENS. P. 7, first 1. The trick, or trickling, is the same as the tracing of a drawing, meaning that peculiarity of face which may be sufficiently shown by the slightest outline., STEEVENS. By a trick, in this place, is meant some pcculiarity of look or motion. M. MASON. Our author often uses this phrase, and generally in the sense of a peculiar air or cast of countenance or feature. MALONE. P. 7. 1. 12. With that half-face-] The old copy with half that face. But why with half that face? There is no question but the poet wrote, as I have restored the text: With that half-face Mr. Pope, perhaps, will be angry with me for discovering an anachronism of our poet's in the next line, where he alludes to a coin not struck till the year 1504, in the reign of King Henry VII. viz. a groat, which, as well as the half groat, bore but half faces impressed. Vide Stowe's Survey of London, p. 47. Holinshed, Camden's Remains, &c. The poet sneers at the meagre sharp visage of the elder brother, by comparing him to a silver groat, that bore the King's face in profile, so showed but half the face the groats of all our Kings of England, and indeed all their other coins of silver, one or two enly excepted, had a full face crowned; till Henry VII. at the time above mentioned, coined groats and half-groats, as also some shillings, with half faces, i. e. faces in profile, as all our coin has now. The first groats of King Henry VIII. were like those of his father; though afterwards he returned to the broad faces again. These groats, with the impression in profile, are undoubtedly here alluded to; though, as I said, the poet is knowingly guilty of an anachronism in it for in the time of King John there were no groats at all; they being first, as far as appears, coined in the reign of King Edward III. THEOBALD. P. 7, 1. 31. and took it, on his death,] i. e. entertained it as his fixed opinion, when he was dying. STEEVENS. P. 8, 1. 14-16. --- nor your father Being none of his, refuse him:] This is à decisive argument. As your father, if he liked him, could not have been forced to resign him, so not liking him, he is not at liberty to reject him. JOHNSON. P. 8, 1. 28. Lord of thy presence mcans, master of that dignity and grandeur of appearance that may sufficiently distinguish thee from the vulgar, without the help of fortunc. Lord of his presence apparently signifies, great in his own person, and is used in this sense by King John in one of the following scenes. JOHNSON. P. 8, 1. 30. And I had his, sir Robert his, like him;] This is obscure and ill expressed. The meaning is his shape, sir Robert's as he has. • If I had Sir Robert his, for Sir Robert's, is agreeable to the practice of that time, when the 's added to the nominative was believed, I think erroneously, to be a contraction of his. So, Donne: "Who now lives to age, "Fit to be call'd Methusalem his page ?"JOHNSON. This ought to be printed: Sir Robert his, like him. His according to a mistaken notion formerly received, being the sign of the genitive case. As the text before stood there was a double genitive. MALONE. P. 8, 1. 33-35. That in mine ear Fdurst not stick a rose. Lest men should say, Look, where three-farthings goes!] In this very obscure passage our poet is anticipating the date of another coin; humorously to rally a thin face, eclipsed, as it were, by a full blown rose. We must observe to explain this allusion, that Queen Elizabeth was the first, and indeed the only Prince, who coined in England three-halfpence, and three-farthing pieces. She coined shillings, six-pences, groats, three-pences, twopences, three-half-pence, pence, three-farthings, and half-pence. And these pieces all had her head, and were alternately with the rose behind, and without the rose. THEOBALD. Mr. Theobald has not mentioned a material circumstance relative to these three-farthing pieces, on which the propriety of the allusion in some measure depends; viz. that they were made of silver, and consequenty extremely thin. From their thinness they were very liable to be cracked. Hence Ben Jonson, in his Every Man in his Humour, says "He values me at a crack'd three-farthings." MALONE. The sticking roses about them was then all the court-fashion, as appears from this passage of the Confession Catholique du S. de Sancy. L. II. c. i: "Je luy ay appris à mettre des roses par tous les coins," i. e. in every place about him, says the speaker, of one to whom he had taught all the court-fashions. WARBURTON, The roses stuck in the ear, were, I believe, only roses composed of ribbands. I think I remember, among Vandyck's pictures in the Duke of Queensbury's collection at Ambrosbury, to have seen one, with the lock nearest the ear ornamented with ribhands which terminate in roses; and Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, says, "that it was once the fashion to stick real flowers in the ear." At Kirtling, in Cambridgeshire, the magnificent residence of the first Lord North, there is a juvenile portrait (supposed to be of Queen Elizabeth) with a red rose sticking in her ear. STEEVENS. From the epigrams of Sir John Davies, printed at Middleburgh, about 1598, it appears that some men of gallantry in our author's time suffered their ears to be bored, and wore their mistress's silken shoe-strings in them. MALONE. P. 9, 1. 12. I'll follow you unto the death.] This expression (a Gallicism, à la mort) is common among our ancient writers. STEEVENS. P. 9, 1. 23. It is a common opinion, that Plantagenet was the surname of the royal house of England, from the time of King Henry II. but it is, as Camden observes in his Remaines, 1614, a popular mistake. Plantagenet was not a family name, but a nick-name, by which a grandson of Geffrey, the first Earl of Anjou was distinguished, from his wearing a broom-stalk in his bonnet. But this name was never borne either by the first Earl of Anjou, or by King Henry II. the son of that Earl by the Empress Maude; he being always called Henry Fitz-Empress ; his son, Richard Coeur-de-lion; and the Prince who is exhibited in the play before us, John sans-terre, or lackland. MALONE. P. 9, 1. 31. 32. Madam, by chance, but not by truth: What though? I am your grandson, Madam, by chance, but not by honesty; - what then? JOHNSON. P. 9, 1. 35 last 1. and P. 10, 1. 1. 2 Something about, a little from the right,&c.&c.] This speech, composed of allusive and proverbial sentences, is obscure. I am, says the spritely knight, your grandson, a little irregularly, but every man cannot get what he wishes the legal way. He that dares not go about his designs by day, must make his motions in the night; he, to whom the door is shut, must climb the window, or leap the hatch. This, however, shall not depress me; for the world never enquires how any man got what he is known to possess, but allows that to have is to have, however it was caught, and that he who wins, shot well, whatever was his skill, whether the arrow fell near the mark, or far off it. JOHNSON. P. 9, 1. 3. In at the window, or else o'er the hatch. These expressions mean, to be born out of wedlock. STEEVENS. A foot- i. e. A step, P. 10, I. 14. P. 10, 1. 17. un pas. JOHNSON. Good den,] i. e. a good evening. God P. 10, 1. 17. Good den, Sir Richard,a-mercy, fellow; -] Thus the old copy, and rightly. In Act IV. Salisbury calls him Sir Richard, and the King has just knighted him by that name. The modern editors arbitrarily read, Sir Robert. Fanlconbridge is now entertaining himself with ideas of greatness, suggested by his recent knighthood. Good den, Sir Richard, he supposes to be the |