Riv. She may, my lord; for→→

Glo. She may, Lord Rivers?-why, who knows not so out over of pero largo en 1 She may do more, sir, than denying that:show Å She may help you to many fair preferments; And then deny her aiding hand therein,liates And lay those honours on your high desert. What may she not? She may, ay, marry may she,

Riv. What, marry, may she?

Glo. What, marry, may she? marry with a king, A bachelor, a handsome stripling too:

I wis, your grandam had a worser match.

Q. Eliz. My lord of Gloster, I have too long borne

Your blunt upbraidings, and your bitter scoffs:f

By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty,

湯

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 I in being England's queen.

Enter QUEEN MARGARET, behind.húnow, I Q. Mar. And lessen'd be that small, God, I beseech thee! 83 29 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 pains9 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.

8 i. e. I think.

9 Labours.

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

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. par Cd then, dirty qua tokle 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 slain10?
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.

Q. Mar. A murd'rous villain, and so still thou art. Glo. Poor Clarence did forsake his father Warwick,

Ay, and forswore himself,-Which Jesu pardon!-
Q. Mar. Which God revenge! Avalor downf
Glo. To fight on Edward's party, for the crown:
And, for his meed11, 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.

Q. Mar. Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave 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. 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

10 See note on King Henry VI. Part III. Act ili. Sc. 2, p. 299. Margaret's battle is Margaret's army.

it Reward.

You should enjoy, were you this country's king; As little joy you may suppose in me,

That I enjoy, being the queen thereof.

Q. Mar. A little joy enjoys the queen thereof; For I am she, and altogether joyless. I

I can no longer hold me patient.[Advancing. Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out

In sharing that which you have pill'd12 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, gentle13 villain, do not turn away!

Glo. Foul wrinkled witch, what mak'st14 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 death15? Q. Mar. I was; but I do find more pain in

banishment, and more pain in

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,

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

13 Gentle is here used ironically.

14 What dost thou in 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 anything.'

16 Margaret fled into France after the battle of Hexham, in 1464, and Edward issued a proclamation prohibiting any of his subjects from aiding her return, or harbouring her, should she attempt to revisit England. 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. A

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 upon thee;
And God, not we, hath plagu'd16 thy bloody deed.
Q. Eliz. So just is God, to right the innocent.
Hast. 0, '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 see it17.

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

came,

Ready to catch each other by the throat,
And turn you all your hatred now on me?

Did York's dread curse prevail so much with heaven,
That Henry's death, my lovely Edward's death,
Their kingdom's loss, my woful banishment,
Could all but18 answer for that peevish brat?
Can curses pierce the clouds, and enter heaven?-
Why, then give way, dull clouds, to my quick

Thou Curses!

not by war, by surfeit die your king19, As ours by murder, to make him a king! Edward, thy son, that now is prince of Wales, For Edward, my son, that was prince of Wales, Die in his youth, by like untimely violence! Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen, Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self!

10 To plague in ancient language is to punish. Hence the scriptural term of the plagues of Egypt. Thus also in King John:That he's not only plagued for her sin,'

17 See King Henry VI. Part 11. Act 1, Sc. 2:

What, weeping-ripe, my Lord Northumberland.'

18 But is here used in its exceptive sense could all this only, or nothing but (i. e. be out or except) this answer for the death of that brat. Vide note on The Tempest, vol. i. p. 18.

19 Alluding to his luxurious life.

Long may'st thou live, to wail thy children's loss; And see another, as I see thee n now,

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

lengthen'd hours of grief,

And, after many wife,

Die neither mother, wife, nor England's queen!
Rivers, and Dorset, you were standers by,-
And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son
Was stabb'd with bloody daggers: God, I pray him,
That none of you may live your natural age,
But by some unlook'd accident cut off!

Glo. Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither'd hag.

Q. Mar. And leave out thee? stay, dog, for thou
shalt hear me. Asepta 30% bun pagi f
If heaven have any grievous plague in store,"
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,b
O, let them keep it, till thy sins be ripe,
And then hurl down their indignation

On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace!
The worm of conscience still be-gnaw thy soul!
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv'st,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be while some tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog20!
Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity
The slave of nature, and the son of hell!
Thou slander of thy mother's heavy womb!
Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins!
Thou rag of honour! thou detested-

20Thou elvish mark'd, abortive, rooting hog.' It was an old prejudice which is not yet quite extinct, that those who are defective or deformed are marked by nature as prone to mischief. She calls him hog, in allusion to his cognizance, which was a boar. The expression (says Warburton) is fine, remembering her son, she alludes to the ravage which hoge make with the gest Bowers in gardens; and intimating that Elizabeth was to expect ne other treatment for her sons. The rhyme for which Collingborne was executed, as given by Heywood in his Metrical History of King Edward IV. will illustrate this:

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