The nature of his great offence is dead,
And deeper than oblivion do we bury

The incensing relicks of it: let him approach,
A stranger, no offender; and inform him,

So 'tis our will he should.

Gen.
I shall, my liege. [Exit Gen.
King. What says he to your daughter? have you spoke?
Laf. All that he is hath reference to your highness.
King. Then shall we have a match. I have letters

sent me,

That set him high in fame.

Laf.

Enter BERTRAM.

He looks well on 't.

King. I am not a day of season,2

For thou may'st see a sun-shine and a hail
In me at once: But to the brightest beams
Distracted clouds give way; so stand thou forth,
The time is fair again.

Ber.

My high-repented blames,3

Dear sovereign pardon to me..

All is whole;

King.
Not one word more of the consumed time.
Let's take the instant by the forward top;
For we are old, and on our quick'st decrees
The inaudible and noiseless foot of time

Steals ere we can effect them:4 You remember

Of all

naciously vindicate his own authority and Helen's merit. this Shakspeare could not be ignorant, but Shakspeare wanted to conclude his play. Johnson.

2 I am not a day of season,] That is, of uninterrupted rain: one of those wet days that usually happen about the vernal equinox. A similar expression occurs in The Rape of Lucrece:

"But I alone, alone must sit and pine,

"Seasoning the earth with showers."

The word is still used in the same sense in Virginia, in which government, and especially on the eastern shore of it, where the descendants of the first settlers have been less mixed with later emigrants, many expressions of Shakspeare's time are still current. Henley.

3 My high-repented blames,] High-repented blames, are faults repented of to the height, to the utmost. Shakspeare has highfantastical in Twelfth Night. Steevens.

The daughter of this lord?

Ber. Admiringly, my liege: at first
I stuck my choice upon her, ere my heart
Durst make too bold a herald of my tongue:
Where the impression of mine eye infixing,
Contempt his scornful pérspective did lend me,
Which warp'd the line of every other favour;'
Scorn'd a fair colour, or express'd it stol'n;
Extended or contracted all proportions,

To a most hideous object: Thence it came,
That she, whom all men prais'd, and whom myself,
Since I have lost, have lov'd, was in mine eye
The dust that did offend it.

King.

Well excus'd:

That thou didst love her, strikes some scores away
From the great 'compt: But love, that comes too late,
Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried,

To the great sender turns a sour offence,
Crying, That's good that's gone: our rash faults
Make trivial price of serious things we have,
Not knowing them, until we know their grave:
Oft our displeasures, to ourselves unjust,
Destroy our friends, and after weep their dust:
Our own love waking cries to see what's done,
While shameful hate sleeps out the afternoon.5

4 The inaudible and noiseless foot of time &c.] This idea seems to have been caught from the Third Book of Sidney's Arcadia: "The summons of Time had so creepingly stolne upon him, that hee had heard scarcely the noise of his feet." Steevens.

5 Our own love waking &c.] These two lines I should be glad to call an interpolation of a player. They are ill connected with the former, and not very clear or proper in themselves. I believe the author made two couplets to the same purpose; wrote them both down that he might take his choice; and so they happened to be both preserved.

For sleep I think we should read slept. Love cries to see what was done while hatred slept, and suffered mischief to be done. Or the meaning may be, that hatred still continues to sleep at ease, while love is weeping; and so the present reading may stand.

Johnson.

I cannot comprehend this passage as it stands, and have no doubt but we should read

Our old love waking, &c.
Extinctus amabitur idem.

Be this sweet Helen's knell, and now forget her.
Send forth your amorous token for fair Maudlin:
The main consents are had; and here we 'll stay
To see our widower's second marriage-day.

Count. Which better than the first, O dear heaven, bless!

Or, ere they meet, in me, O nature, cease!"

Laf. Come on, my son, in whom my house's name
Must be digested give a favour from you,
To sparkle in the spirits of my daughter,

That she may quickly come.-By my old beard,
And every hair that 's on 't, Helen, that's dead,
Was a sweet creature; such a ring as this,
The last that e'er I took her leave at court,
I saw upon her finger.

Ber.

Hers it was not.

King. Now, pray you, let me see it; for mine eye, While I was speaking, oft was fasten'd to 't.— This ring was mine; and, when I gave it Helen, I bade her, if her fortunes ever stood

Necessitied to help, that by this token

Our own love, can mean nothing but our self-love, which would not be sense in this place; but our old love waking, means our former affection being revived. M. Mason.

This conjecture appears to me extremely probable; but waking will not, I think, here admit of Mr. Mason's interpretation, being revived; nor, indeed, is it necessary to his emendation. It is clear, from the subsequent line, that waking is here used in its ordinary sense. Hate sleeps at ease, unmolested by any remembrance of the dead, while old love, reproaching itself for not having been sufficiently kind to a departed friend, "wakes and weeps;" crying, "that's good that 's gone." Malone.

6 Which better than the first, O dear heaven, bless!

Or, ere they meet, in me, O nature, cease!] I have ventured, against the authorities of the printed copies, to prefix the Countess's name to these two lines. The King appears, indeed, to be a favourer of Bertram; but if Bertram should make a bad husband the second time, why should it give the King such mortal pangs? A fond and disappointed mother might reasonably not desire to live to see such a day; and from her the wish of dying, rather than to behold it, comes with propriety. Theobald.

7 The last that e'er I took her leave —] The last time that I saw her, when she was leaving the court. Mr. Rowe and the subsequent editors read-that e'er she took, &c. Malone.

I would relieve her: Had you that craft, to reave her Of what should stead her most?

Ber.

My gracious sovereign,

Howe'er it pleases you to take it so,
The ring was never hers.

Count.

Son, on my life,

I have seen her wear it; and she reckon'd it
At her life's rate.

Laf.

I am sure, I saw her wear it. Ber. You are deceiv'd, my lord, she never saw it : In Florence was it from a casement thrown me,9 Wrapp'd in a paper, which contain❜d the name Of her that threw it: noble she was, and thought I stood ingag'd:1 but when I had subscrib'd To mine own fortune, and inform'd her fully, I could not answer in that course of honour As she had made the overture, she ceas'd,

8 I bade her, if her fortunes ever stood

Necessitied to help, that ] Our author here, as in many other places, seems to have forgotten, in the close of the sentence, how he began to construct it. See p. 159, n. 8. The meaning however is clear, and I do not suspect any corruption.

Malone.

9 In Florence was it from a casement thrown me,] Bertram still continues to have too little virtue to deserve Helen. He did not know indeed that it was Helen's ring, but he knew that he had it not from a window. Johnson.

1

noble she was, and thought

I stood ingag'd:] Thus the old copy. Dr. Johnson reads— engaged. Steevens.

The plain meaning is, when she saw me receive the ring, she thought me engaged to her. Johnson.

Ingag'd may be intended in the same sense with the reading proposed by Mr. Theobald, [ungag'd] i.e. not engaged; as Shakspeare, in another place, uses gag'd for engaged. Merchant of Venice, Act I, sc. i. Tyrwhitt.

I have no doubt that ingaged (the reading of the folio) is right. Gaged is used by other writers, as well as by Shakspeare, for engaged. So, in a Pastoral, by Daniel, 1605:

"Not that the earth did

"Unto the husbandman

gage

"Her voluntary fruits, free without fees."

Ingaged, in the sense of unengaged, is a word of exactly the same formation as inhabitable, which is used by Shakspeare and the contemporary writers for uninhabitable. Malone.

In heavy satisfaction, and would never
Receive the ring again.

King.

Plutus himself,

That knows the tinct and multiplying medicine,2
Hath not in nature's mystery more science,

Than I have in this ring: 'twas mine, 'twas Helen's,
Whoever gave it you: Then, if you know

That you are well acquainted with yourself,

3

Confess 'twas hers, and by what rough enforcement
You got it from her: she call'd the saints to surety,
That she would never put it from her finger,
Unless she gave it to yourself in bed,

(Where you have never come) or sent it us
Upon her great disaster.

Ber.

She never saw it.

King. Thou speak'st it falsely, as I love mine honour; And mak❜st conjectural fears to come into me, Which I would fain shut out: If it should prove That thou art so inhuman,-'twill not prove so; And yet I know not:-Thou didst hate her deadly, And she is dead; which nothing, but to close Her eyes myself, could win me to believe, More than to see this ring-Take him away.

[Guards seize BER.

My fore-past proofs, howe'er the matter fall,
Shall tax my fears of little vanity,

2 Plutus himself,

That knows the tinct and multiplying medicine,] Plutus the grand alchemist, who knows the tincture which confers the properties of gold upon base metals, and the matter by which gold is multiplied, by which a small quantity of gold is made to communicate its qualities to a large mass of base metal.

In the reign of Henry the Fourth a law was made to forbid all men thenceforth to multiply gold, or use any craft of multiplication. Of which law, Mr. Boyle, when he was warm with the hope of transmutation, procured a repeal. Johnson.

3 Then, if you know

That you are well acquainted with yourself,

Confess 'twas hers,] i. e. confess the ring was hers, for you know it as well as you know that you are yourself. Edwards. The true meaning of this expression, is, If you know that your faculties are so sound, as that you have the proper consciousness of your own actions, and are able to recollect and relate what you have done, tell me, &c. Johnson,