Q. Mar. Be woe for me,' more wretched than 1. he is.

What, dost thou turn away, and hide thy face? I am no loathsome leper, look on me. *What, art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf?? Be poisonous too, and kill thy forlorn queen. Is all thy comfort shut in Gloster's tomb? *Why, then dame Margaret was ne'er thy joy: Erect his statue then, and worship it,

And make my image but an alehouse sign. Was I, for this, nigh wreck'd upon the sea; And twice by awkward wind from England's

bank

Drove back again unto my native clime? What boded this, but well forewarning wind Did seem to say,--Seek not a scorpion's nest, *Nor set no footing on this unkind shore?

What did I then, but curs'd the gentle gusts,
And he that loos'd them from their brazen caves;
And bid them blow towards England's blessed

shore,

*Or turn our stern upon a dreadful rock? *Yet Æolus would not be a murderer,

* But left that hateful office unto thee: *The pretty vaulting sea refus'd to drown me; * Knowing, that thou would'st have me drown'd on shore,

With tears as salt as sea, through thy unkindness; The splitting rocks cower'd in the sinking sands, And would not dash me with their ragged sides; * Because thy flinty heart, more hard than they, Might in thy palace perish Margaret. *As far as I could ken thy chalky cliffs, *When from the shore the tempest beat us back, *I stood upon the hatches in the storm:

*And when the dusky sky began to rob

*

My earnest-gaping sight of thy land's view,

*I took a costly jewel from my neck,

A heart it was, bound in with diamonds,--
And threw it towards thy land;--the sea re-

ceiv'd it;

* And so, I wish'd, thy body might my heart: *And even with this, I lost fair England's view, Aud bid mine eyes be packing with my heart; And call'd them blind and dusky spectacles, * For losing ken of Albion's wished coast. *How often have I tempted Suffolk's tongue *(The agent of thy foul inconstancy) *To sit and witch me, as Ascanius did, * When he to madding Dido would unfold *His father's acts, commenc'd in burning Troy? Am I not witch'd like her? or thou not false like

him?

*་

1.e. let not woe be to the för Gloster, but for me. 2 This allusion, which has been borrowed from the Proverbs of Solomon, and Psalan Ivili, by many writers, is oddly illustrated in a passage of Gower's Confessio Amanis, . i. fo. x. ed. 1532.

3 The same uncommon epithet is applied to the wind by Marlowe in his Edward II. :—

With awkward winds, and with sore tempest driven To fall on shore.

And by Drayton, Epistle from Richard II. to Queen Isabell:

And undertook to travaile dangerous wales, Driven by awkward winds and boisterous seas.' 4 The verb perish is here used actively. Thus in Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid's Tragedy :— let not my sins

Perish your noble youth.'

5 The old copy reads watch me the emendation is Theobald's, who observes that it was Cupid in the semblance of Ascanius who bewitched Dido. She, taking him for Ascanius, would naturally speak to him about his father, and would be witched by what she learned from him, as well as by the more regular narrative she had heard from Æneas himself.

6 Steevens thinks the word or should be omitted in this line, which would improve both the sense and metre. Mason proposes to read art instead of or.

7 Steevens proposed to read rain instead of drain.

By Suffolk and the Cardinal Beaufort's means. The commons, like an angry hive of bees, That want their leader, scatter up and down, And care not who they sting in his revenge. 'Myself have calm'd their spleenful mutiny, Until they hear the order of his death.

K. Hen. That he is dead, good Warwick, 'tis ton

*

[WARWICK goes into an inner Room, and SALISBURY retires,

*K. Hen. O thou that judgest all things, stay my

thoughts:

My thoughts, that labour to persuade my soul, * Some violent hands were laid on Humphrey's life' *If my suspect be false, forgive me, God; *For judgment only doth belong to thee! *Fain would I go to chafe his paly lips Upon his face an ocean of salt tears; * With twenty thousand kisses, and to drain"

*To tell my love unto his dumb deaf trunk, *And with my fingers feel his hand unfeeling: * But all in vain are these mean obsequies; * And, to survey his dead and earthly image, *What were it but to make my sorrow greater? The folding Doors of an inner Chamber are thrown open, and GLOSTER is discovered dead in his Bed: WARWICK and others standing by it." *War. Come hither, gracious sovereign, view this body,

*K. Hen. That is to see how deep my grave is

made:

*For, with his soul, fled all my worldly solace; For seeing him, I see my life in death." 'War. As surely as my soul intends to live With that dread King that took our state upon him To free us from his Father's wrathful curse,

I do believe that violent hands were laid
Upon the life of this thrice-famed duke.
Suff. A dreadful oath, sworn with a solemn
tongue!

What instance gives Lord Warwick for his vow? War. See, how the blood is settled in his face! Oft have I seen a timely parted ghost,19

Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless,

8 This stage direction was inserted by Malone as best suited to the exhibition. The stage direction in the quarto is, Warwick draws the curtaines, and shows Duke Humphrey in his bed. In the folio, A bed with Gloster's body put forth. By these and other circumstances it seems that the theatres were then unfurnished with scenes. In those days, it appears that curtains were occasionally hung across the middle of the stage on an iron rod, which being drawn open formed a se. cond apartment, when a change of scene was required, See Malone's Account of the ancient Theatres, prefixed to the variorum editions of Shakspeare.

9 How much discussion there has been about this simple passage, which evidently means I see my own life threatened with extermination, or surrounded by death. Thus in a passage of the Burial Service, to which I am surprised none of the commentators have adverted, In the midst of life we are in death.'

10 Shakspeare has confounded the terms which sig. nify body and sout together. So in A Midsummer Night's Dream:--

Being all descended to the labouring heart;
Who, in the conflict that it holds with death,
Attracts the same for aidance 'gainst the enemy:
Which with the heart there cools and ne'er re-
turneth

To blush and beautify the cheek again.
But, see, his face is black, and full of blood;

His eyeballs further out than when he liv'd,
Staring full ghastly like a strangled man:
His hair uprear'd, his nostrils stretched with
struggling;

His hands abroad display'd, as one that grasp'd
And tugg'd for life, and was by strength subdu'd.
Look on the sheets, his hair, you see, is sticking;
His well proportion'd beard made ruff and
rugged,

Like to the summer's corn by tempest lodg'd.
It cannot be, but he was murder'd here;
The least of all these signs were probable.

Suff. Why, Warwick, who should do the duke to death?

Myself, and Beaufort, had him in protection;
And we, I hope, sir, are no murderers.

phrey's foes;

And you, forsooth, had the good duke to keep: "Tis like, you would not feast him like a friend; And 'tis well seen he found an enemy.

'Q. Mar. Then you, belike, suspect these noble

men

'As guilty of Duke Humphrey's timeless death. War. Who finds the heifer dead, and bleeding fresh,

And sees fast by a butcher with an axe,

But will suspect, 'twas he that made the slaughter?
Who finds the partridge in the puttock's nest,
But may imagine how the bird was dead,
Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?
Even so suspicious is this tragedy.

'Q. Mar. Are you the butcher, Suffolk; where's your knife?

Is Beaufort term'd a kite? where are his talons?
Suff. I wear no knife, to slaughter sleeping men;
But here's a vengeful sword, rusted with ease,
That shall be scoured in his rancorous heart,
That slanders me with murder's crimson badge :—
Say, if thou dar'st, proud lord of Warwickshire,
That I am faulty in Duke Humphrey's death.

[Exeunt Cardinal, SoM. and others. War. What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him?

Q. Mar. He dares not calm his contumelious spirit,

Nor cease to be an arrogant controller,

Though Suffolk dare him twenty thousand times. War. Madam, be still; with reverence may I say; 1

For every word, you speak in his behalf,
Is slander to your royal dignity.

Suff. Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanour!
If ever lady wrong'd her lord so much,
Thy mother took into her blameful bed
Some stern untutor'd churl, and noble stock
Was graft with crab-tree slip; whose fruit thou art,
And never of the Nevils' noble race.

War. But that the guilt of murder bucklers thee, And I should rob the deathsman of his fee, Quitting thee thereby of ten thousand shames, And that my sovereign's presence makes me mild, I would, false murderous coward, on thy knee Make thee beg pardon for thy passed speech, And say it was thy mother that thou meant'st, That thou thyself wast born in bastardy: And, after all this fearful homage done, Give thee thy hire, and send thy soul to hell, Pernicious bloodsucker of sleeping men!

of nature; to which violence has not brought a timeless end.' But Mr. Dotee has justly observed, that timely may mean early, recently, newly.

1. e. the fingers being widely distended. Herein was the Emperor Domitian so cunning, that let a boy a good distance off hold up his hand, and stretch his

mind.

Noise of a Crowd within. Re-enter SALISBURY. *Sal. Sirs, stand apart; the king shall know your [Speaking to those within. Dread lord, the commons send you word by me, Unless false Suffolk straight be done to death, Or banished fair England's territories,

They will by violence tear him from your palace, *And torture him with grievous ling'ring death. They say, by him the good Duke Humphrey died; They say, in him they fear your highness' death; And mere instinct of love and loyalty,Free from a stubborn opposite intent, As being thought to contradict your liking,Makes them thus forward in his banishment. They say, in care of your most royal person, That, if your highness should intend to sleep, *And charge-that no man should disturb your rest, *In pain of your dislike, or pain of death; * Yet notwithstanding such a strait edict, *Were there a serpent seen, with forked tongue, That slily glided towards your majesty, It were but necessary you were wak'd; *Lest, being suffer'd in that harmful slumber,

The mortal worm3 might make the sleep eternal, *And therefore do they cry, though you forbid, *That they will guard you, whe'r you will, or no, From such fell serpents as false Suffolk is; *With whose envenomed and fatal sting *Your loving uncle, twenty times his worth, *They say, is shamefully bereft of life.

Commons. [Within.] An answer from the king, my lord of Salisbury.

Suff. 'Tis like the commons, rude unpolish'd hinds,

Could send such message to their sovereign:
But you, my lord, were glad to be employ'd,
To show how quaint an orator you are:
But all the honour Salisbury hath won,
Is-that he was the lord ambassador,
Sent from a sort of tinkers to the king.
Commons. [Within.] An answer from the king,
or we'll all break in.

'K. Hen. Go, Salisbury, and tell them all from me,
I thank them for their tender loving care;
And had I not been 'cited so by them,
Yet do I purpose as they do entreat;
For sure, my thoughts do hourly prophesy
'Mischance unto my state by Suffolk's means.
And therefore-by His majesty I swear,
Whose far unworthy deputy I am,—
I

fingers abroad, he would shoote through the spaces without touching the boy's hand, or any finger.'Peacham's Complete Gentleman, 1622, p. 181. 2 Thus in Marlowe's Lust's Dominion :Come, Moor; I'm arm'd with more than complete steel, The justice of my quarrel.

3 Deadly serpent, 4 i e dexterous. 5 A company

'K. Hen. Ungentle queen, to call him gentle Suffolk.

No more, I say; if thou dost plead for him,
Thou wilt but add increase unto my wrath.
'Had I but said, I would have kept my word:
But, when I swear, it is irrevocable :—

* If, after three days' space, thou here be'st found, *On any ground that I am ruler of,

*The world shall not be ransom for thy life,Come, Warwick, come, good Warwick, go with

So, get thee gone, that I may know my grief; ''Tis but surmis'd whilst thou art standing by, *As one that surfeits thinking on a want. I will repeal thee, or, be well assur'd, 'Adventure to be banished myself:

* And banished I am, if but from thee.

Go, speak not to me; even now be gone.-O, go not yet!-Even thus two friends condemn'd * Embrace, and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves, Loather a hundred times to part than die.

Q. Mar. Fye, coward woman, and soft-hearted wretch!

Hast thou not spirit to curse thine enemies?
Suff. A plague upon them! wherefore should I
curse them?

Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,2
I would invent as bitter-searching terms,
*As curst, as harsh, and horrible to hear,
Deliver'd strongly through my fixed teeth,
With full as many signs of deadly hate,
As lean-fac'd Envy in her loathsome cave:
My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words:
Mine eyes should sparkle like the beaten flint;
My hair be fix'd on end, as one distract;
Ay, every joint should seem to curse and ban:
And even now my burden'd heart would break,
Should I not curse them. Poison be their drink!
Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest that they taste!
Their sweetest shade, a grove of cypress trees!3
Their chiefest prospect, murdering basilisks!
Their softest touch, as smart as lizards' stings!+
Their music, frightful as the serpent's hiss:
And boding screechowls make the concert full!
All the foul terrors in dark-seated hell-

Q. Mar. Enough, sweet Suffolk; thou torment'st

thyself;

* And these dread curses-like the sun 'gainst glass, * Or like an overcharged gun-recoil,

* And turn the force of them upon thyself.

Suff. You bade me ban, and will you bid me leave?

Now, by the ground that I am banish'd from,
Well could I curse away a winter's night,
Though standing naked on a mountain top,
Where biting cold would never let grass grow,
And think it but a minute spent in sport.
* Q. Mur. O, let me entreat thee, cease!
me thy hand,

Give

1 i. e. he shall not contaminate this air with his infected breath.

2 The fabulous counts of the plant called a mandrake give it an inferior degree of animal life, and relate, that when it is torn from the ground it groans, and that this groan being certainly fatal to him that is offering such unwelcome violence, the practice of those who gathered mandrakes was to tie one end of a string to the plant, and the other to a dog, upon whom the fatal groan discharged its malignity. See Bulleine's Bulwarke of Defence against Sicknesse, &c. fol. 1579, p. 41. 3 Cypress was employed in the funeral rites of the Romans, and hence is always mentioned as an ill-boding piant.

This is one of the vulgar errors in the natural history of our ancestors. The lizard has no sting, and is quite harmless.

Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee! Suff. Thus is poor Suffolk ten times banished, Once by the king, and three times thrice by thee. "Tis not the land I care for, wert thou hence; * A wilderness is populous enough, *So Suffolk had thy heavenly company: For where thou art, there is the world itself, *With every several pleasure in the world; And where thou art not, desolation.'

* I can no more :-Live thou to joy thy life; * Myself no joy in nought, but that thou liv'st,

Enter VAUX.

Q. Mar. Whither goes Vaux so fast? what news, I pr'ythee?

Vaux. To signify unto his majesty, That cardinal Beaufort is at point of death: For suddenly a grievous sickness took him, That makes him gasp, and stare, and catch the air Blaspheming God, and cursing men on earth. Sometime, he talks as if Duke Humphrey's ghost Were by his side; sometime, he calls the king. And whispers to his pillow, as to him, *The secrets of his overcharged soul :" And I am sent to tell his majesty, That even now he cries aloud for him. 'Q. Mar. Go, tell this heavy message to the king. [Exit VAUX. Ah me! what is this world? what news are these? But wherefore grieve I at an hour's poor loss,' Omitting Suffolk's exile, my soul's treasure? Why only, Suffolk, mourn Í not for thee, And with the southern clouds, contend in tears; Theirs for the earth's increase, mine for my sor

row's?

Now, get thee hence: The king, thou know'st, is

coming:

If thou be found by me, thou art but dead,

Suff. If I depart from thee, I cannot live:
And in thy sight to die, what were it else,
But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?
Here could I breathe my soul into the air,
As mild and gentle as the cradle-babe,
Dying with mother's dug between its lips.

begin to rave, they immediately see in them what they could not find in themselves, the deformity and folly of useless rage.

6 That by the impression of my kiss for ever remain. ing on thy hand, thou mightest think on those lips through which a thousand sighs will be breathed for thee.

7 'Nec sine te pulchrum dias in luminis auras Exoritur, neque sit lætum nec amabile quicquam.' Lucretius. And, still more elegantly, Milton, in a passage of his Conius (afterwards omitted,) ver. 214, &c. :while I see you,

8'

This dusky hollow is a paradise,
And heaven gates o'er my head,'
Infected minds

To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets
Macbeth.

9Why do I lament a circumstance of which the im

think on the loss of Suffolk, my affection for whom no time will efface ?1

Suff

Poole ?

Cap.

And so should these, if I might have my will.
Cap. Be not so rash; take ransom, let him live.
Suff. Look on my George, I am a gentleman;
Rate me at what thou wilt, thou shalt be paid.
'Whit. And so am I, my name is Walter Whit-

more.

How now? why start'st thou ? what, doth death affright?

Suff. Thy name affrights me,' in whose sound is death.

A cunning man did calculate my birth,

And told me that by Water I should die :2
Yet let not this make thee be bloody-minded:
Thy name is-Gaultier, being rightly sounded.
"Whit. Gaultier, or Walter, which it is, I care not;
Ne'er yet did base dishonour blur our name,
But with our sword we wip'd away the blot;
Therefore, when merchant-like I sell revenge,
Broke be my sword, my arms torn and defac'd,'
And I proclaim'd a coward through the world!
[Lays hold on SUFFOLK.
Suff. Stay, Whitmore; for thy prisoner is a
prince,

The duke of Suffolk, William de la Poole.

Whit. The duke of Suffolk, muffled up in rags!
Suff. Ay, but these rags are no part of the duke;
Jove sometime went disguis'd, and why not I?
Cap. But Jove was never slain, as thou shalt be.
Suff. Obscure and lowly swain, King Henry's
blood,

The honourable blood of Lancaster,
'Must not be shed by such a jaded groom.4
Hast thou not kiss'd thy hand, and held my stirrup?
Bare-headed plodded by my footcloth mule,
And thought thee happy when I shook my head?
How often hast thou waited at my cup,

Fed from my trencher, kneel'd down at the board, "When I have feasted with Queen Margaret? Remember it, and let it make thee crest-fall'n; Ay, and allay this thy abortive pride:

* How in our voiding lobby hast thou stood, And duly waited for my coming forth? This hand of mine hath writ in thy behalf, And therefore shall it charm thy riotous tongue. *Whit. Speak, captain, shall I stab the forlorn swain?

* Cap. First let my words stab him, as he hath me.

1 Suffolk had heard his name before without being startled by it. In the old play, as soon as ever the captain has consigned him to Walter Whickmore,' he immediately exclaims, 'Walter ! Whickmore asks him why he fears him; and Suffolk replies, "It is thy name affrights me. The poet here, as in other instances, has fallen into an impropriety by sometimes following and sometimes deserting his original.

2 Thus Drayton, in Queen Margaret's Epistle to this Juke of Suffolk :

'I pray thee, Poole, have care how thou dost pass; Never the sea yet half so dangerous was; And one foretold by water thou should'st die A note on these lines says, 'The witch of Eye received answer from the spirit, that the duke of Suffolk should take heed of water. See the fourth Scene of the first Act of this play. The prophecy is differently stated by a contemporary in the Paston Letters, vol. i. p. 40:Also he asked the name of the ship; and when he knew it, he remembered Stacy that said, if he might escape the dangers of the Tower he should be safe, and then his heart failed him.'

3 The new image which Shakspeare has introduced Into this speech-my arms torn and defaced'-is also found in King Richard III. Act iii. Sc. 2. See note on that passage.

4 A jaded groom is a low fellow. Suffolk's boast of his own blood was hardly warranted by his origin. His great grandfather had been a merchant at Hull. If Shakspeare had known his pedigree he would not have failed to make some of his adversaries reproach him with it. 5 Pride that has had birth too soon.

Poole? Sir Poole ? lord! Ay, kennel, puddle, sink; whose filth and dirt Troubles the silver spring where England drinks. Now will I dam up this thy yawning mouth, For swallowing the treasure of the realm: Thy lips, that kiss'd the queen, shall sweep the ground;

And thou, that smil'dst at good Duke Humphrey's death,

Against the senseless winds shalt grin in vain, *Who, in contempt, shall hiss at thee again: *And wedded be thou to the hags of hell, *For daring to affy a mighty lord

* Unto the daughter of a worthless king, * Having neither subject, wealth, nor diadem. By devilish policy art thou grown great, *And, like ambitious Sylla, overgorg'd *With goblets of thy mother's bleeding heart. *By thee, Anjou and Maine were sold to France. The false revolting Normans, thorough thee, Disdain to call us lord; and Picardy *Hath slain their governors, surpris'd our forts, * And sent the ragged soldiers wounded home." * The princely Warwick, and the Nevils all,— *Whose dreadful swords were never drawn in vain, * As hating thee, are rising up in arms: And now the house of York-thrust from the

crown,

By shameful murder of a guiltless king, * And lofty proud encroaching tyranny, Burns with revenging fire: whose hopeful colours * Advance our half-fac'd sun, striving to shine, * Under the which is writ-Invitis nubibus. 1 The commons here in Kent are up in arms : * And, to conclude, reproach, and beggary, * Is crept into the palace of our king, *And all by thee:-Away! convey him hence. * Suff. O that I were a god, to shoot forth thunder Upon these paltry, servile, abject drudges! *Small things make base men proud: this villain

here,

Being captain of a pinnace," threatens more Than Bargulus the strong Illyrian pirate,10 Drones suck not eagles' blood, but rob bee-hives. It is impossible, that I should die

By such a lowly vassal as thyself.

Thy words move rage, and not remorse, in me :14

6 By this expression, charm thy riotous tongue,' the poet meant Suffolk to say that it should be as potent as a charm in stopping his licentious talk. The same expression occurs in Othello, Act iv. Sc. 1.

7 To betroth in marriage. This enumeration of Suf folk's crimes seems to have been suggested by the Mirror for Magistrates. See the Legend of William de là Poole. The rest of this speech is entirely Shakspeare's; there is no trace of it in the original play.

8 Edward III. bore for his device the rays of the sun dispersing themselves out of a cloud.—Cumden's Re

maines.

9 A pinnace then signified a ship of small burthen, built for speed. Vide note on The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act i. Sc. 3.

10 Bargulus, Illyrius Latro, de quo est apud Theopompum, magnas opes habuit.'-Cicero de Officiis, lib. ii. c. 11. Shakspeare, as Dr. Farmer has shown, might have met with this pirate in some of the translations of his time: he points out two in which he is mentioned. In the old play it is, Abradas the great Macedonian pirate.'

11 This line in the original play is properly given to the captain. What remorse (i. e. pity) could Suffolk be called upon to show to his assailant? Whereas the captain might with propriety say to his captive, Thy haughty language exasperates me, instead of exciting my compassion. Mr. Boswell is, I believe, mistaken in asserting that remorse was used in the modern sense. At least I find no instance where it is so used by Shakspeare.