Chapter XCIII: Act III: SCENE 2. Page 310

L. GREY. But, mighty lord, this merry inclination
Accords not with the _sadness_ of my suit.

The following is offered as a very select instance of the use of _sadness_ for _seriousness_. It is from Tom Coriat's speech that he made to a Mahometan who had called him an infidel. "But I pray thee tell me thou Mahometan, dost thou in _sadness_ call me _Giaur_? That I doe, quoth he. Then quoth I, in very _sober sadness_ I retort that shameful word in thy throate."

SCENE 2. Page 314.

GLO. Like to a chaos, or an _unlick'd bear-whelp_.

The common opinion which Dr. Johnson mentions of the bear bringing forth unformed lumps of animated flesh, and afterwards licking them into proper shape, has been very properly exposed and confuted by Sir Thomas Brown in his _Enquiries into vulgar errors_, book iii. ch. 6. His adversary Ross, in his _Arcana microcosmi_, p. 115, has attempted a solution of this matter, by stating it as a fact that bears bring forth their young deformed and mis-shapen, by reason of the thick membrane in which they are wrapped, that is, covered over with a mucous and phlegmatick matter. This, he says, the dam contracts in the winter time, by lying in hollow caves without motion, so that to the eye the cub appears like an unformed lump. The above mucilage is afterwards licked away by the dam, and the membrane broken, whereby that which before seemed to be unformed appears now in its right shape. And this, he contends, against Dr. Brown, is all that the ancients meant. See more on the subject of the old opinion in Bartholomæus _De proprietat. rerum_, lib. xviii. c. 112.

ACT IV.

SCENE 7. Page 359.

GLO. For many men that _stumble at the threshold_.

To understand this phrase rightly, it must be remembered that some of the old thresholds or steps under the door, were, like the hearths, raised a little, so that a person might stumble over them unless proper care was taken. A very whimsical reason for this practice is given in a curious little tract by Sir Balthazar Gerbier, entitled, _Councel and advice to all builders_, 1663, 24mo, in these words, "A good surveyour shuns also the ordering of doores with _stumbling-block-thresholds_, though our forefathers affected them, perchance to perpetuate the antient custome of bridegroomes, when formerly at their return from church [they] did use to lift up their bride, and to knock their head against that of the doore, for a remembrance, that they were not to passe the threshold of their house without their leave."

ACT V.

SCENE 7. Page 403.

CLAR. What will your grace have done with Margaret?
Reignier her father, to the king of France
Hath pawn'd the Sicils and Jerusalem,
And hither have they sent _it_ for her ransom.

Unless there be some omission in this speech, it must either be regarded as improperly elliptical, or as ungrammatical. _It_ refers to the sum of money borrowed by Margaret's father, which is mentioned by the French historians to have been fifty thousand crowns. The author of the play followed Holinshed.

* * * * *

The right accentuation of Hĕcătē, as well as the proper description of Althea's torch, which Shakspeare, in _King Henry the Fourth_, had misrepresented, are additional arguments that he did _not_ write the whole of these plays; but that they were composed by some person who had more classical knowledge, but infinitely less genius than our author.

KING RICHARD III.