2°d S. No 102., Dec. 12. '57.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



469 



" We may read : — 



" ' . . . . this I have to say, — 

 That he's not only plagued for her sin, 

 But God hath made her sin and her the plague 

 On this removed issue, plagued for her ; 

 And, with her sin, her plague, his injury, 

 Her inj ury, the beadle to her sin.' 



i. e. God hath made her and her sin together the 

 plague of her most remote descendants, who a7-e 

 plagued for her ; the same power hath like\vis§ 

 made her sin her oum plague, and the injury she 

 has done to him her own injury, as a beadle to lash 

 that sin : i. e. Providence has so ordered it, that 

 she who is made the instrument of punishment to 

 another, has, in the end, converted that other 

 into an instrument of punishment for herself." 

 (Steevens.) 



" Constance observes that he (iste, pointing to 

 King John, 'whom from the flow of gall she 

 names not,') is not only plagued [with the pre- 

 sent war] for his mother's sin, but God hath made 

 her son and her the plague also on this removed 

 issue, Arthur, plagued on her account, and by 

 the means of her sinful offspring ; whose injury 

 [the usurpation of Arthur's rights] may be con- 

 sidered as her injury, or the injury of her sin- 

 conceiving womb ; and John's injury may also be 

 considered as the beadle or officer of correction 

 employed by her crimes to inflict all these punish- 

 ments on the person of this child." (Toilet.) 

 (Johnson & Steevens's Shahspeare, London, 1778.) 



I have quoted the annotators upon this invec- 

 tive discourse of the Lady Constance at full, to 

 show how the plain meaning of an easy text may 

 be smothered under a mass of erroneous or cloudy 

 comment. The ambiguity and confusion, which 

 Johnson ascribes to it, is all of his own creating. 

 Toilet improves upon him, makes confusion worse 

 confounded, besides taking occasion to pervert 

 the words which he cites from K. Henry VIII. A 

 too literal interpretation of the phrase "sin-con- 

 ceiving womb," betrayed Johnson into the absurd 

 blunder of making sin one while to be crime, 

 another while to be King John. And this blun- 

 der, as is commonly the case, led to corruption of 

 the text ; a corruption, in the present instance, 

 so foul, as worthily to rank its author with the 

 vilest adulterators. Hovr Mr. Koderick under- 

 stood the text does not appear, but he cobbles it ; 

 ever a bad sign. A glimpse of the true meaning, 

 but hazy and uncertain, seems to have dawned 

 upon Steevens ; his comment is therefore loose 

 and vague, and he also tampers with the text. 

 The fault is in the commentators, not in the text : 

 nor is its sense obscure, though it was so to them. 

 The original text then is right, and, strange to 

 say, is the received one with modern editors. Its 

 import I have never seen correctly given, which 

 must be my apology for obtruding the exposition 

 of it upon the pages of " N. & Q." 



At their commencement the reproaches of Con- 

 stance are couched in general terms. Elinor and 

 Arthur are an exemplification of the canon of the 

 law, of the sins (in the plural) of the grandmother 

 visited upon the grandchild, punished, as she ag- 

 gravates the case, in the second generation. The 

 phrase " sin-conceiving womb," being alike appli- 

 cable to all mothers, has no farther special force 

 here, than as the motJier of a King John may be 

 considered an eminent illustration of its truth. 

 To attach such a significance to the epithet " sin- 

 conceiving " as, by and bye, in the same sentence, 

 under the word sin to jumble together the guiit, 

 for which Elinor was justly accountable, with a 

 sinful offspring, from which no mother is exempt, 

 introduces a solecism in discourse that requires 

 better warrant than the lame and impotent con- 

 struction of the sequel, which it was devised to 

 bolster up. 



When she resumes her upbraidings, Constance 

 enters into particulars ; and shuffling then with 

 that logical finesse in which Shakspeare, like 

 many of his contemporaries, often indulges, she 

 descants upon the reciprocal action between the 

 evil and the guilt of sin, complicated, as here it 

 is, by the relationship of the innocent to the 

 criminal sufferer. It is sin in the singular, a spe^ 

 cific sin, of which Constance now speaks : that sin, 

 the second line, and the rest of the context, clearly 

 show to be Elinor's instrumentality in depriving 

 Arthur, the rightful heir, of his kingdom. God 

 hath made her sin and her (the crime and the 

 criminal) the plague on this removed issue : before, 

 when speaking generally, it was, as we have seen, 

 an aggravation that the sins should be visited 

 upon "but the second generation ;" now, the re- 

 moteness of the issue adds emphasis to the wrong ; 

 that injury should be sustained immediately at 

 the hands of the grandmother by an issue so fur 

 removed as her grandchild. Plagued for her and 

 with her plague, her sin : he is plagued for her, 

 and he is plagued by and with her. He suffers 

 for the guilt of her sin, and he suffers the evil of 

 her sin ; and that evil he suffers as penalty for 

 the guilt : so that the evil of the sin being iden- 

 tical with the penalty of its guilt, the whole mis- 

 chief of the sin lights upon him : but, by virtue 

 of the relationship between them, It also recoils 

 upon Elinor, because the defeat of a grandchild's 

 inheritance, whether she so regard it or not, is an 

 Injury to the grandmother ; or, as Shakspeare 

 pursues the argument, his injury is her injury, and 

 thus the evil of her sin, redounding upon heriself, 

 becomes the beadle to its guilt : yet as Elinor 

 was a willing agent, and volenti nonjfit injuria, it is 

 " all punished in the person of this child, and all 

 for her, a plague upon her ; and I fear the Intelli» 

 gent reader will add, a plague upon you too, that 

 have superfluously explained what again and 

 again explains itself. 



