Glo. He lives, that loves you better than he could.
Anne. Name him.

Glo.

Anne.

Plantagenet.

Why, that was he.
Glo. The self-same name, but one of better nature.
Anne. Where is he?
Glo.

Here: [She spits at him.
Why dost thou spit at me
Anne. 'Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake!
Glo. Never came poison from so sweet a place.
Anne. Never hung poison on a fouler toad.
Out of my sight! thou dost infect mine eyes.

Glo. Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine.
Anne. 'Would they were basilisks, to strike thee
dead!1

Glo. I would they were, that I might die at once;
For now they kill me with a living death.2
Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears,
Sham'd their aspects with store of childish drops:
These eyes, which never shed remorseful3 tear,-
No,-when my father York and Edward wept,
To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made,
When black-fac'd Clifford shook his sword at him:
Nor when thy warlike father, like a child,
Told the sad story of my father's death;
And twenty times made pause, to sob, and weep,
That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks,
Like trees bedash'd with rain :—in that sad time,
My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear ;4
And what these sorrows could not thence exhale,
Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping.
I never sued to friend, nor enemy;

My tongue could never learn sweet soothing word;
But now thy beauty is propos'd my fee,
My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to
speak. [She looks scornfully at him.
Teach not thy lip such scorn; for it was made
For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.
If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive,
Lo! here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword;
Which if thou please to hide in this true breast,
And let the soul forth that adoreth thee,
I lay it naked to the deadly stroke,
And humbly beg the death upon my knee.

[He lays his breast open; she offers at it with
his sword.

Nay, do not pause; for I did kill King Henry
But 'twas thy beauty that provoked me.5
Nay, now despatch; 'twas I that stabb'd young
Edward ;-
[She again offers at his breast.
But 'twas thy heavenly face that set me on.
[She lets fall the sword.
Take up the sword again, or take up me.
Anne. Arise, dissembler: though I wish thy death,
I will not be thy executioner.

Glo. Then bid me kill myself, and I will do it.
Anne. I have already.
Glo.
That was in thy rage:
Speak it again, and, even with the word,
This hand, which, for thy love, did kill thv love,
Shall, for thy love, kill a far truer love;
To both their deaths shalt thou be accessary.

1 See notes on King Henry V. Act v. Sc. 2. ; and King Henry VI. Part II. Act iii. Sc. 2.

2 We have the same expression in Venus and Adonis applied to love :

'For I have heard it is a life in death That laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath.' Pope adopts it :

— a living death I bear,

Says Dapperwit, and sunk beside his chair.' 3 Pitiful.

4 Here is an apparent reference to King Henry VI. Part III. Act. ii. Sc. 1.

5 Shakspeare countenances the observation that no woman can.ever be offended with the mention of her beauty.

6 Crosby Place is now Crosby Square, in Bishopsgate Street. This magnificent house was built in 1466, by Sir John Crosby, grocer and woolman. He died in 1475. The ancient hall of this fabric is still remaining, though divided by an additional floor, and encumbered with nodern galleries, having been converted into a place of worship for Antinomians, &c. The upper part of it was

Anne. I would, I knew thy heart.
Glo. "Tis figur'd in my tongue.
Anne. I fear me, both are false.
Glo. Then never man was true.
Anne. Well, well, put up your sword.
Glo. Say then, my peace is made.
Anne. That shall you know hereafter.
Glo. But shall I live in hope?
Anne. All men, I hope, live so.
Glo. Vouchsafe to wear this ring.
Anne. To take, is not to give.

[She puts on the ring
Glo. Look, how this ring encompasseth thy finger,
Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart;
Wear both of them, for both of them are thine.
And if thy poor devoted servant may
But beg one favour at thy gracious hand,
Thou dost confirm his happiness for ever.
Anne. What is it?

Glo. That it may please you leave these sad
designs

To him that hath more cause to be a mourner,
And presently repair to Crosby-place:
Where-after I have solemnly interr'd,
At Chertsey monast'ry this noble king,
And wet his grave with my repentant tears,—
I will with all expedient' duty see you:
For divers unknown reasons, I beseech you,
Grant me this boon.

Anne. With all my heart; and much it joys me
too,

To see you are become so penitent.Tressel, and Berkley, go along with me Glo. Bid me farewell. Anne. 'Tis more than you deserve But, since you teach me how to flatter you, | Imagine I have said farewell already. [Exeunt LADY ANNE, TRESSEL, and BERKLEY.

Glo. Sirs, take up the corse.

8

Gent.
Towards Chertsey, noble lord?
Glo. No,to White Friars; there attend my coming
[Exeunt the rest, with the Corse.
Was ever woman in this humour woo'd?
Was ever woman in this humour won?
I'll have her, but I will not keep her long.
What! I, that kill'd her husband, and his father,
To take her in her heart's extremest hate;
With curses in her mouth, tears in her
eyes.
The bleeding witness of her hatred by ;
With God, her conscience, and these bars against

me,

And I no friends to back my suit withal,
But the plain devil, and dissembling looks,
And yet to win her,--all the world to nothing!
Ha!

Hath she forgot already that brave prince,
Edward, her lord, whom I some three months since
Stabb'd in my angry mood at Tewksbury ?9
A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman,-
Fram'd in the prodigality of nature,
Young, valiant, wise, and, no doubt, right royal,-
The spacious world cannot again :fford :

lately the warehouse of an eminent packer. Sir J.
Crosby's tomb is in the neighbouring church of St. He
len the Great.

7 i. e. expeditious.

8 Cibber, who altered King Richard III. for the stage was so thoroughly convinced of the improbability of this scene, that he thought it necessary to make Tresse say :

'When future chronicles shall speak of this, They will be thought romance, not history.' The embassy under Lord Macartney to China witnessed the representation of a play in a theatre at Tien-sing with a similar incongruous plot.

9 This fixes the exact time, of the scene to August, 1471. King Edward, however, is introduced in the second act dying. That king died in April, 1483; consequently there is an interval between this and the next act of almost twelve years. Clarence, who is re presented in the preceding scene as committed to the Tower before the burial of King Henry VI. was in fact not confined nor put to death till March, 1477-8, seven years afterwards.

And will she yet abase her eyes on me,
That cropp'd the golden prime of this sweet prince,
And made her widow to a woful bed?
On me, whose all not equals Edward's moiety?
On me,
that halt, and am misshapen thus ?
My dukedom to a beggarly denier,'
I do mistake my person all this while:
Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot,
Myself to be a marvellous proper man.2
I'll be at charges for a looking-glass;
And entertain a score or two of tailors,
To study fashions to adorn my body:
Since I am crept in favour with myself,
I will maintain it with some little cost.
But, first, I'll turn yon fellow in3 his grave;
And then return lamenting to my love.-
Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,
That I may see my shadow as I pass.

[Exit.

SCENE III. The same. A Room in the Palace.
Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, LORD RIVERS, and
LORD GREY.

Buck. Ay, madam: he desires to make atone

Between the duke of Gloster and your brothers,
And between them and my lord chamberlain ;
And sent to warn them to his royal presence.
Q. Eliz. 'Would all were well!-But that will
never be ;-
I fear, our happiness is at the height.

Enter GLOSTER, HASTINGS, and DORSET.

Glo. They do me wrong, and I will not endure
it:-

Who are they, that complain unto the king,
That I, forsooth, am stern, and love them not?
By holy Paul, they love his grace but lightly,
That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours.
Because I cannot flatter, and speak fair,
Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog
Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,

I must be held a rancorous enemy.
Cannot a plain man live, and think no harm,
But thus his simple truth must be abus'd

Riv. Have patience, madam; there's no doubt By silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

his majesty

Will soon recover his accustom'd health.

Grey. In that you brook it ill, it makes him worse:
Therefore, for God's sake, entertain good comfort,
And cheer his grace with quick and merry words.
Q. Eliz. If he were dead, what would betide of
me?

Grey. No other harm, but loss of such a lord.
Q. Eliz. The loss of such a lord includes all

harms.

Grey. The heavens have bless'd you with a goodly son,

To be your comforter when he is gone.

Q. Eliz. Ah, he is young; and his minority
Is put unto the trust of Richard Gloster,
A man that loves not me, nor none of you.

Riv. Is it concluded, he shall be protector?
Q. Eliz. It is determin'd, not concluded yet :4
But so it'must be, if the king miscarry.

Enter BUCKINGHAM and Stanley.”

Grey. Here come the lords of Buckingham and
Stanley.

Buck. Good time of day unto your royal grace!
Stan. God make your majesty joyful as you have
been!

Q. Eliz. The Countess Richmond, good my
lord of Stanley,

To your good prayer will scarcely say-amen.
Yet, Stanley, notwithstanding she's your wife,
And loves not me, be you, good lord, assur'd,
I hate not you for her proud arrogance.

Stan. I do beseech you, either not believe
The envious slanders of her false accusers;
Or, if she be accus'd on true report,
Bear with her weakness, which, I think, proceeds
From wayward sickness, and no grounded malice.
Q. Eliz. Saw you the king to-day, my lord of
Stanley?

Stan. But now, the duke of Buckingham, and I,
Are come from visiting his majesty.

Q. Eliz. What likelihood of his amendment, lords? Buck. Madam, good hope; his grace speaks cheerfully.

Q. Eliz. God grant him health! Did you confer with him?

1 A small coin, the twelfth part of a French sous. 2 Marvellous is here used adverbially. A proper man, in old language, was a well-proportioned one. 3 In for into.

4 Determin'd signifies the final conclusion of the will: concluded, what cannot be altered by reason of some act, consequent on the final judgment.

5 By inadvertence, in the old copies Derby is put for Stanley. The person meant was Thomas Lord Stanley, lord steward of King Edward the Fourth's household. But he was not created earl of Derby, till after the accession of King Henry VII. In the fourth and fifth acts of this play, he is every where called Lord Stanley. 6 Margaret, daughter to John Beaufort. first duke of

Grey. To whom in all this presence speaks your
grace?

Glo. To thee, that hast nor honesty, nor grace.
When have I injured thee? when done thee wrong?
Or thee?-or thee?-or any of
your faction?
A plague upon you all! His royal grace,—
Whom God preserve better than you would wish!
Cannot be quiet scarce a breathing while,
But you must trouble him with lewds complaints.
Q. Eliz. Brother of Gloster, you mistake the

matter:

The king, of his own royal disposition,
And not provok'd by any suitor else;
Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred,
That in your outward action shows itself,
Against my children, brothers, and myself,
Makes him to send that thereby he may gather
The ground of your ill will, and so remove it.

Glo. I cannot tell ;9-The world is grown so bad,
That wrens may prey where eagles dare not perch:
Since every Jacki became a gentleman,
There's many a gentle person made a Jack.
Q. Eliz. Come, come, we know your meaning,
brother Gloster;

You envy my advancement, and my friends';
God grant, we never may have need of you!

Glo. Meantime, God grants that we have need

of you:

Our brother is imprison'd by your means,
Myself disgrac❜d, and the nobility
Held in contempt; while great promotions
Are daily given, to ennoble those

That scarce, some two days since, were worth a
noble.

Q. Eliz. By Him, that rais'd me to this careful
height,

From that contented hap which I enjoy'd,
I never did incense his majesty
Against the duke of Clarence, but have been
An earnest advocate to plead for him.
My lord, you do me shameful injury,
Falsely to draw me in these vile suspects.

Glo. You may deny that you were not the cause
Of my Lord Hastings' late imprisonment.
Riv. She may, my lord, for-

Glo. She may, Lord Rivers?-why, who knows
not so?

Somerset. After the death of her first husband, Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond, half-brother to King Henry VI. by whom she had only one son, afterwards King Henry VII., she married Sir Henry Stafford, uncle to Humphry, duke of Buckingham.

7 i. e. summon.

8 Lewd here signifies idle, ungracious; and not rude, ignorant, as Steevens asserts.

9 i. e. I cannot tell what to say or think of it. 10 This proverbial expression at once demonstrates the origin of the term Jack, so often used by Shakspeare. It means one of the very lowest class of people, amorg whom this name is most common and familiar

She may do more, sir, than denying that:
She may help you to many fair preferments;
And then deny her aiding hand therein,
And lay those honours on your high desert.
What may she not? She may,-ay, marry, may As little joy you may suppose in me,
she,-

Glo. If I should be ?—I had rather be a pedlar ·
Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof!
Q. Eliz. As little joy, my lord, as you suppose
You should enjoy, were you this country's king.

Riv. What, marry, may she?

That I enjoy, being the queen thereof.
Q. Mar. A little joy enjoys the queen thereof,

Glo. What, marry, may she? marry with a king, For I am she, and altogether joyless.
A bachelor, a handsome stripling too;
I wis,1 your grandam had a worser match.
Q.'Eliz. My lord of Gloster, I have too long borne
Your blunt upbraidings, and your bitter scoffs:
By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty,
Of those gross taunts I often have endur'd.
I had rather be a country servant maid,
Than a great queen, with this condition-
To be so baited, scorn'd, and stormed at:
Small joy have ĺ in being England's queen.

I can no longer hold me patient.- [Advancing.
Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out
In sharing that which you have pill'd' from me :
Which of you trembles not, that looks on me?
If not, that, I being queen, you bow like subjects;
Yet that, by you depos'd, you quake like rebels ?-
Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away!

Enter QUEEN MARGARET, behind.

Q. Mar. And lessen'd be that small, God, I be-
seech thee!

Thy honour, state, and seat, is due to me.
Glo. What? threat you me with telling of the
king?

Tell him, and spare not: look, what I have said
I will avouch, in presence of the king:
I dare adventure to be sent to the Tower.
"Tis time to speak, my pains2 are quite forgot.
Q. Mar. Out, devil! I remember them too well:
Thou kill'dst my husband Henry in the Tower,
And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.

Glo. Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband
king,

I was a packhorse in his great affairs;
A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,
A liberal rewarder of his friends;

To royalize his blood, I spilt mine own.

Q. Mar. Ay, and much better blood than his, or

thine.

Glo. In all which time, you, and your husband
Grey,

Were factious for the house of Lancaster ;

And, Rivers, so were you :-Was not your husband
In Margaret's battle at Saint Albans slain ?3
Let me put in your minds, if you forget,
What you have been ere now, and what you are;
Withal, what I have been, and what I am.

Glo. Foul wrinkled witch, what makʼst' thou in my sight?

Q. Mar. But repetition of what thou hast marr'd; That will I make, before I let thee go.

Glo. Wert thou not banished on pain of death ?8
Q. Mar. I was; but I do find more pain in ban-
ishment,

Than death can yield me here by my abode.
A husband, and a son, thou ow'st to me,-
And thou a kingdom;-all of you, allegiance :
This sorrow that I have, by right is yours;
And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.

Glo. The curse my noble father laid on thee, When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper,

And with thy scorns drew'st rivers from his eyes ;

And then, to dry them, gav'st the duke a clout,
Steep'd in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland
His curses, then from bitterness of soul
Denounc'd against thee, are all fall'n thee
upon
And God, not we, hath plagu'd' thy bloody deed
Q. Eliz. So just is God, to right the innocent.
Hast. O, 'twas the foulest deed to slay that babe
And the most merciless that e'er was heard of.
Riv. Tyrants themselves wept when it was re
ported.

Dors. No man but prophesied revenge for it.
Buck. Northumberland, then present, wept to sea

it.10

Q. Mar. What! were you snarling all, before I

came,

your

Ready to catch each other by the throat, And turn all you hatred now on me! Q. Mar. A murderous villain, and so still thou art. Did York's dread curse prevail so much with heaver, Glo. Poor Clarence did forsake his father War-That Henry's death, my lovely Edward's death,

wick,

Ay, and forswore himself,-Which Jesu pardon!
Q. Mar. Which God revenge!

Glo. To fight on Edward's party, for the crown:
And, for his meed,4 poor lord, he is mew'd up:
I would to God, my heart were flint like Edward's,
Or Edward's soft and pitiful, like mine

I am too childish-foolish for this world.

Their kingdom's loss, my woful banishment,
Could all but11 answer for that neevish brat?
Can curses pierce the clouds, and enter heaven.—
Why, then give way, dull clouds, to my quick

curses!

Though not by war, by surfeit die your king,1a
As ours by murder, to make him a king!
Edward, thy son, that now is prince of Wales,

Q. Mar. Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave For Edward, my son, that was prince of Wales

this world,

Thou cacodæmon! there thy kingdom is.

Riv. My lord of Gloster, in those busy days,
Which here you urge, to prove us enemies,
We follow'd then our lord, our lawful king;
So should we you, if you should be our king.

1 i. e. I think.

2 Labours.

Die in his youth, by like untimely violence!
Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,
Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self!
Long may'st thou live, to wail thy children's loss
And see another, as I see thee now,

Deck'd in thy rights, as thou art stall'd in mine!
Long die thy happy days before thy death;

;

hibiting any of his subjects from aiding her return, of

3 See note on King Henry VI. Part III. Act iii. Sc. 2. harbouring her, should she attempt to revisit England Margaret's battle is Margaret's army.

4 Reward.

5 To pill is to pillage. It is often used with to poll or strip. Kildare did use to pill and poll his friendes, tenants, and reteyners.'-Holinshed.

6 Gentle is here used ironically.

7.'What dost thou in my sight.' This phrase has been already explained in the notes to Love's Labour's Lost, Act iv. Sc. 3. In As You Like It, Act i. Sc. 1, Shakspeare again plays upon the word make, as in this

instance:

Now, sir, what make you here?

Nothing: I am not taught to make any thing.'

She remained abroad till April, 1471, when she landed at Weymouth. After the battle of Tewksbury, in May, 1471, she was confined in the Tower. where she continued a prisoner till 1475, when she was ransomed by her father Regnier, and removed to France, where she died in 1482. So that her introduction in the present scene is a mere poetical fiction.

9 To plague in ancient language is to punish. Hence the scriptural term of the plagues of Egypt.

10 See King Henry VI. Part III. Act 1, Sc. 2 :'What, weeping-ripe, my Lord Northumberland.' 11 But is here used in its exceptive sense: could al this only, or nothing but (i. e. be out or except) this an

8 Margaret fled into France after the battle of Hex-swer for the death of that brat. bam, in 1464, and Edward issued a proclamation pro

12 Alluding to his luxurious life.

T'heersons aimed at in this rhyme, were the king, and he could not give that weight to her curses, without Catesby, Ratcliff, and Lovell.