Page:Henry VI Part 1 (1918) Yale.djvu/154

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142
The First Part of

with II. iv (the Temple Garden dispute); a large majority also with II. v (the death of Mortimer), which naturally links itself with the foregoing, and with the whole or most of IV. ii-vii (Talbot's death). With less assurance V. iii. 45-195 (Suffolk's wooing of Margaret) is added. In all these there are strong indications of Shakespeare. Note the plays on words: 'I love no colours, and without all colour' (II. iv. 34); 'And in that ease, I'll tell thee my disease' (II. v. 44); 'And they shall find dear deer of us' (IV. ii. 54), together with the technical deer-hunting allusions in the last passage and the hawk, dog, horse references in II. iv. 11-14.

Compare also the bold use of transferred adjectives, quite Shakespearean and quite unlike the general style of the play as a whole: 'In dumb significants' (II. iv. 26), 'this pale and maiden blossom' (II. iv. 47), 'this pale and angry rose' (II. iv. 107), 'my blood-drinking hate' (II. iv. 108), 'death and deadly night' (II. iv. 127), 'feet whose strengthless stay is numb' (II. v. 13), 'sweet enlargement' (II. v. 30), 'the dusky torch of Mortimer' (II. v. 122), 'your stately and air-braving towers' (IV. ii. 13), 'the process of his sandy hour' (IV. ii. 36), 'sleeping neglection' (IV. iii. 49), 'That ever living man of memory' (IV. iii. 51), 'bring thy father to his drooping chair' (IV. v. 5), 'bold-fac'd victory' (IV. vi. 12).

Especially Shakespearean are the fanciful metaphors and similes which abound in these scenes: 'Were growing time once ripen'd to my will' (II. iv. 99); 'I'll note you in my book of memory' (II. iv. 101); 'these gray locks, the pursuivants of Death' (II. v. 5); 'These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent' (II. v. 8); 'pithless arms, like to a wither'd vine That droops his sapless branches to the ground' (II. v. 11, 12); 'Just death, kind umpire of men's miseries' (II. v. 29); 'But now thy uncle is removing hence, As princes do their courts, when