Yet none of you would once plead for his life.-
( God! I fear, thy justice will take hold
On me, and you, and mine, and yours, for this.-
Come, Hastings, help me to my closet.
O,

Poor Clarence!

[Exeunt King, Queen, HAST. RIV. DOR. and GREY. Glo. This is the fruit of rashness! - Mark'd you not, How that the guilty kindred of the queen Look'd pale, when they did hear of Clarence' death? O! they did urge it still unto the king: God will revenge it. Come, lords; will you go, To comfort Edward with our company?

Buck. We wait upon your grace.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.

The same.

Enter the Duchess of York, with a Son and Daughter

of Clarence.

Son. Good grandam, tell us, is our father dead?
Duch. No, boy.

Daugh. Why do you weep so oft? and beat your breast;

And cry-O Clarence, my unhappy son!

Son. Why do you look on us, and shake your head, And call us-orphans, wretches, cast-aways, If that our noble father be alive?

Duch. My pretty cousins, you mistake me both;

I do lament the sickness of the king,
As loth to lose him, not your father's death;

4 Come, Hastings, help me to my closet.] Hastings was Lord Chamberlain to King Edward IV. Malone.

5 Enter the Duchess of York, Cecily, daughter of Ralph Neville first Earl of Westmoreland, and widow of Richard Duke of York, who was killed at the battle of Wakefield in 1460. She survived her husband thirty-five years, living till the year 1495.

Malone.

6- my pretty cousins,] The Duchess is here addressing her grand-children, but cousin was the term used in Shakspeare's time, by uncles to nephews and nieces, grandfathers to grandchildren, &c. It seems to have been used instead of our kinsman, and kinswoman, and to have supplied the place of both.

See note on Othello, Act I, sc. i. Steevens.

Malone. It were lost sorrow, to wail one that 's lost.

Son. Then, grandam, you conclude that he is dead.

The king my uncle is to blame for this:
God will revenge it; whom I will impórtune

With earnest prayers, all to that effect.

Daugh. And so will I.

Duch. Peace, children, peace! the king doth love you

well:

Incapable and shallow innocents,7

You cannot guess who caus'd your father's death.
Son. Grandam, we can: for my good uncle Gloster
Told me, the king, provok'd to 't by the queen,
Devis'd impeachments to imprison him:
And when my uncle told me so, he wept,
And pitied me, and kindly kiss'd my cheek;
Bade me rely on him, as on my father,
And he would love me dearly as his child.

Duch. Ah, that deceit should steal such gentle shapes,
And with a virtuous visor hide deep vice!
He is my son, ay, and therein my shame,
Yet from my dugs he drew not this deceit.

Son. Think you, my uncle did dissemble, grandam? Duch. Ay, boy.

Son. I cannot think it. Hark! what noise is this? Enter Queen ELIZABETH, distractedly; RIVERS, and DORSET, following her.

Q. Eliz. Ah! who shall hinder me to wail and weep? To chide my fortune, and torment myself? I 'll join with black despair against my soul, And to myself become an enemy.

Duch. What means this scene of rude impatience? Q. Eliz. To make an act of tragick violence:Edward, my lord, thy son, our king, is dead.

7 Incapable and shallow innocents,] Incapable is unintelligent.

So, in Hamlet:

8

"As one incapable of her own distress." Steevens.

Malone

my uncle did dissemble,] Shakspeare uses dissemble in the sense of acting fraudulently, feigning what we do not feel or think; though gh strictly it means to conceal our real thoughts or affections. So also Milton in the passage quoted in p. 61, n. 6.

G2

Malone

Why grow the branches, when the root is gone?
Why wither not the leaves, that want their sap?-
If you will live, lament; if die, be brief;
That our swift-winged souls may catch the king's;
Or, like obedient subjects, follow him
To his new kingdom of perpetual rest."

Duch. Ah, so much interest have I in thy sorrow,
As I had title in thy noble husband!
I have bewept a worthy husband's death,
And liv'd by looking on his images : 1
But now, two mirrors of his princely semblance
Are crack'l in pieces by malignant death;2
And I for comfort have but one false glass
That grieves me when I see my shame in him.
Thou art a widow: yet thou art a mother,
And hast the comfort of thy children left thee;
But death hath snatch'd my husband from my arms,
And pluck'd two crutches from my feeble hands,
Clarence, and Edward. O, what cause have I,
(Thine being but a moiety of my grief)
To over-go thy plaints, and drown thy cries?

Son. Ah, aunt! you wept not for our father's death;
How can we aid you with our kindred tears?
Daugh. Our fatherless distress was left unmoan'd,
Your widow-dolour likewise be unwept!

Q. Eliz. Give me no help in lamentation,
I am not barren to bring forth laments:
All springs reduce their currents to mine eyes,

9

- of perpetual rest.] So the quarto. The folio reads-of neer changing night. Malone.

1

his images:] The children by whom he was represented. Johnson. So, in The Rape of Lucrece, Lucretius says to his daughter: "O, from thy cheeks my image thou hast torn." Malone.

2 But now, two mirrors of his princely semblance

Are crack'd in pieces by malignant death;] So, in our author's Rape of Lucrece:

"Poor broken glass, I often did behold

"In thy sweet semblance my old age new born;
"But now, that fair fresh mirror, dim and old,

"Shows me a bare-bon'd death by time out-worn."

Again, in his 3d Sonnet:

Thou art thy mother's glass," &c. Malone.