And be not fix'd in doom perpetual,

Hover about me with your airy wings,
And hear your mother's lamentation!

Q. Mar. Hover about her; say, that right for
right 3

Hath dimm'd your infant morn to aged night.

Duch. So many miseries have craz'd my voice, That my woe-wearied tongue is still and mute,— Edward Plantagenet, why art thou dead?

Q. Mar. Plantagenet doth quit Plantagenet, Edward for Edward pays a dying debt.

Q. Eliz. Wilt thou, O God, fly from such gentle lambs,

And throw them in the entrails of the wolf?

When didst thou sleep, when such a deed was done? Q.Mar. When holy Harry died, and my sweet son. Duch. Dead life, blind sight, poor mortal-living

ghost,

Woe's scene, world's shame, grave's due by life

usurp❜d,

Brief abstract and record of tedious days,
Rest thy unrest on England's lawful earth,

[Sitting down. Unlawfully made drunk with innocent blood!

Q. Eliz. Ah, that thou would'st as soon afford a

grave,

As thou canst yield a melancholy seat;

Then would I hide my bones, not rest them here! Ab, who hath any cause to mourn, but we?

[Sitting down by her.

3 In the third scene of the first act Margaret was reproached with the murder of young Rutland, and the death of her husband and son were imputed to divine vengeance roused by that wicked act. So just is God to right the innocent.' Margaret now perhaps means to say, The right of me, an injured mother, whose son was slain at Tewksbury, has now operated as powerfully as that right which the death of Rutland gave you to divine justice, and has destroyed your children in their turn.'

Q. Mar. If ancient sorrow be most reverent, Give mine the benefit of seniory 4,

And let my griefs frown on the upper hand.

If sorrow can admit society,

[Sitting down with them. Tell o'er your woes again by viewing mine :I had an Edward, till a Richard kill'd him; I had a husband, till a Richard kill'd him: Thou hadst an Edward, till a Richard kill'd him : Thou hadst a Richard, till a Richard kill'd him. Duch. I had a Richard too, and thou didst kill him;

I had a Rutland too, thou holp'st to kill him.

Q. Mar. Thou hadst a Clarence too, and Richard kill'd him;

From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept
A hell hound, that doth hunt us all to death:
That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes,
To worry lambs, and lap their gentle blood;
That foul defacer of God's handy work;
That excellent grand tyrant of the earth,
That reigns in galled eyes of weeping souls,
Thy womb let loose, to chase us to our graves.-
O upright, just, and true disposing God,
How do I thank thee, that this carnal5 cur
Preys on the issue of his mother's body,
And makes her pew-fellow with others' moan!
Duch. O, Harry's wife, triumph not in my woes;
God witness with me, I have wept for thine.

4 Seniority.

5 Vide Hamlet, Act v. Sc. 2 :—

'Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts.'

Its apparent signification is cruel, sanguinary, fleshly-minded. 6 i. e. partaker of or participator in the grief of others. The word appears to have been used metaphorically for an equal, a companion, or old and intimate acquaintance. Sir John Hawkins asserted that it was still in use. Thus in Northward Hoe,

Q. Mar. Bear with me, I am hungry for revenge, And now I cloy me with beholding it. Thy Edward he is dead, that kill'd my Edward; Thy other Edward dead, to quit my Edward; Young York he is but boot?, because both they Match not the high perfection of my loss.

Thy Clarence he is dead, that stabb'd my Edward;
And the beholders of this tragick play,

The adulterate Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey,
Untimely smother'd in their dusky graves.
Richard yet lives, hell's black intelligencer;
Only reserv'd their factor, to buy souls,
And send them thither: But at hand, at hand,
Ensues his piteous and unpitied end:
Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar,
To have him suddenly convey'd from hence :-
Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray,
may live to say, The dog is dead!

That I

saints pray,

Q. Eliz. O, thou didst prophesy, the time would

come,

That I should wish for thee to help me curse. That bottled spider, that foul bunch-back'd toad.

Q. Mar. I call'd thee then, vain flourish of my fortune;

I call'd thee then, poor shadow, painted queen;
The presentation of but what I was,

a comedy by Decker and Webster :-' He would make him puefellow with a lord's steward at least.' In Westward for Smelts we have it in its literal sense of a person who sat in the same seat at church-Being one day at church, she made mone to her pew fellow.'

7 i. e. thrown into the bargain.

8 Adulterate is stained with adultery. Adulterata, Lat. Thus in Hamlet, the ghost says:

that incestuous, that adulterate beast.' Hastings was adulterate, as he had cohabited with Jane Shore. Margaret may, however, mean to call him false, sophisticate, for she had tried his friendship and found it faithless.

The flattering index9 of a direful pageant,
One heav'd a high, to be hurl'd down below:
A mother only mock'd with two fair babes;
A dream of what thou wast; a garish 10 flag,
To be the aim of every dangerous shot;
A sign of dignity, a breath, a bubble;

A queen in jest, only to fill the scene.

Where is thy husband now? where be thy brothers? Where be thy two sons? wherein dost thou joy? Who sues, and kneels, and says-God save the queen?

11

Where be the bending peers that flatter'd thee?
Where be the thronging troops that follow'd thee?
Decline all this 11, and see what now thou art.
For happy wife, a most distressed widow;
For joyful mother, one that wails the name;
For one being sued to, one that humbly sues;
For queen, a véry caitiff crown'd with care;
For one that scorn'd at me, now scorn'd of me;
For one being fear'd of all, now fearing one;
For one commanding all, obey'd of none.
Thus hath the course of justice wheel'd about,
And left thee but a very prey to time;

Having no more but thought of what thou wert,
To torture thee the more, being what thou art.
Thou didst usurp my place. And dost thou not
Usurp the just proportion of my sorrow?

9 See note on p. 49, and on Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 4:

what act

That roars so loud and thunders in the index,'

Mr. Nares suggests that the index of a pageant was probably a painted cloth hung up before a booth where a pageant was to be exhibited.

10 Alluding to the dangerous situation of those persons to whose care the standards of armies were entrusted.

11 i. e. run through all this from first to last. So in Troilus and Cressida :-'I'll decline the whole question.' the poet borrowed from his grammar.

This phrase

Now thy proud neck bears half my burden'd yoke; From which even here I slip my wearied head, And leave the burden of it all on thee.

Farewell, York's wife, and queen of sad mischance,

These English woes shall make me smile in France. Q. Eliz. O thou well skill'd in curses, stay a while, And teach me how to curse mine enemies.

Q. Mar. Forbear to sleep the night, and fast the day 12;

Compare dead happiness with living woe:
Think that thy babes were fairer than they were,
And he, that slew them, fouler than he is:

Bettering 13 thy loss makes the bad causer worse;
Revolving this will teach thee how to curse.

Q. Eliz. My words are dull, O, quicken them with thine!

Q. Mar. Thy woes will make them sharp, and pierce like mine. [Exit Q. MARGARET. Duch. Why should calamity be full of words? Q. Eliz. Windy attorneys to their client woes 14, Airy succeeders of intestate joys 15,

Poor breathing orators of miseries!

12 Fast has no connection with the preceding word forbear; the meaning being sleep not at night, and fast during the day.

13 Bettering is amplifying, magnifying thy loss. Shakspeare employed the word for the sake of the antithesis between better and loss.

14 Thus in Venus and Adonis :

'So of concealed sorrow may be said:

Free vent of words love's fire doth assuage;
But when the heart's attorney once is mute,
The client breaks as desperate of his suit.'

15 The meaning of this harsh metaphor is: The joys already possessed being all consumed and passed away, are supposed to have died intestate; that is, to have made no will, having nothing to bequeath; and more verbal complaints are their successors, but inherit nothing but misery.