He has here taken account of all the kinds of land there are, from an agricultural standpoint, except one. That is the waste land at the steep banks and water-soaked edges of streams. As he has, in each preceding instance, considered the kind of land, what its products are and what the crop is used for, it is reasonable to expect that he is going to do the same with this. The waste land along the edge of the stream, where nature herself has full opportunity, produces wild flowers, sedge and reeds. These are useful to make wreaths "chaste crowns" for virgin nymphs.

Therefore, without any etymological assistance at all, we can see that a "pioned" bank is one covered with pionies, and a "twilled” bank is one woven with reeds and sedge.

In weaving, a twill or quill or tweel is a small hollow reed on which the weaver winds his thread. Shakespeare evidently spoke of these sedgy and reedy banks as twilled because the word is reminiscent of weaving; the reeds are to weave crowns for nymphs.

MY BROTHER GENERAL

Archbishop. My brother general, the commonwealth, To brother born an household cruelty,

I make my quarrel in particular.

(2nd Henry IV, iv, 1, 95)

SPEDDING wrote to the Cambridge editors, who were looking for help in the solution of this passage, "Conjecture seems hopeless in such a case." Clark and Wright accordingly said in their notes to the play, "On the whole we are of opinion that several lines have been omitted, and those which remain displaced, and that this is one of the many passages in which the true text is irrecoverable." In keeping with this view, the Globe edition has the first line of this passage signalized with the dagger; and other editors seem to regard all proposed readings as mere conjecture.

The passage is open to two possible interpretations. One is that the Archbishop is addressing Westmoreland as the General of the king's forces; the other is that the Archbishop, at the head of his rebels, is referring to the commonwealth as his brother in general for whom he intends to fight. Most editors have taken the former view; but more recently, Clark's paraphrase, which prefers the

latter, is considered, as Gollancz says, "as good as any." The difficulty is that when we consider the Archbishop using "general" simply as the military form of address it is impossible to account satisfactorily for the rest of the sentence; and as to the other view that the Archbishop is referring to the commonwealth as his brother in a general way

no one seems

to have been able to prove, to the general satisfaction of editors, that this is what Shakespeare intended. Hence the continual doubt and the conclusion that the passage is hopeless.

There ought to be no doubt of the meaning here. The use of antithesis is characteristic of Shakespeare: it is a device by which he most quickly defines his own meanings and points out to us, by various arts in its use, whatever he wishes particularly to set forth. In this passage we find "brother general” balanced off with "brother born"; and as there can be no doubt as to the meaning of the latter, so there can be no doubt as to the sense of the former. Again, the word general calls our attention to the word particular. Besides this, "brother general" when understood as meaning the commonwealth or public weal, stands in apposition to "household" or private weal. There is here a triple antithesis showing that Shakespeare knew that we would take "general" in the military sense, but wished to enforce it particularly upon us in the other sense.

If this is not quite conclusive, there is a

question of character-drawing to consider. Shakespeare's people must always speak in character. The speaker here is an Archbishop. He represents that religion of which the very basis is brotherhood as founded on the fatherhood of God. As a Christian, he is not only a brother to any man as a man, but, because an Archbishop had co-ordinate political power in the English government, and held this authority because he represented Christianity in the large, he would properly speak of himself from the very Christian standpoint of being a brother in general to the commonwealth. This point of view would be quite natural and would serve to keep his calling before us.

But a view of the plot itself will unfold to us still more plainly the meaning of these words and of the passage as a whole. These three lines are the Archbishop's answer to a question which began sixty-four lines before. It is a very biting question. The gist of it is simply an inquiry as to why a man of God, who stands for the idea of love and peace, should be leading rebels to bloody war. The Earl of Westmoreland speaks for a space of twenty-three lines in asking it, piling on the invidious contrast between the Archbishop's proper calling and his present one.

The two men, the Archbishop and the Earl, stand facing each other on the field of battle, or rather in the rebel camp. Aside from the embarrassment of Westmoreland's caustic way

of characterizing his present position, the Archbishop is in ticklish straits and he does not know exactly how to answer. His chief grievance is that the king has ignored him and has refused to give him personal audience when he wished to present a written protest and demand justice against those who had killed his brother Scroop. The king has always put him off and dealt with him through others, and not as if he were a peer of the realm; and this is the real grievance that has caused the Archbishop to raise forces for the rebels. This being the case, it will readily be seen that the Archbishop, who still has his written complaint and insists upon presenting it to the king, is not going to tell his troubles, willingly, to this man whom the king has sent. Westmoreland is one of those whom the prelate is jealous of.

Another feature of the Archbishop's situation is that an important detachment has failed to arrive. Northumberland has failed

to come with his

forces and has sent excuses instead; and this makes it look dubious for the rebel cause. Besides this, the churchman is essentially a diplomat, anyway, even in his making cause with the rebels; he hoped thus to get the church properly recognized by the king by this bold show of force. He did not go to war so much as a soldier as a shrewd schemer, and with this sudden turn of affairs, in which the much-expected Northumberland