Let them have scope: though what they do impart Enter KING RICHARD, and his Train, marching. From all the slaughters, wretch, that thou hast done. Q. Eliz. Hid'st thou that forehead with a golden crown, Where should be branded, if that right were right, The slaughter of the prince that ow'd that crown, And the dire death of my poor sons, and brothers? Tell me, thou villain slave, where are my children? Duch. Thou toad, thou toad, where is thy brother Clarence? And little Ned Plantagenet, his son? Q. Eliz. Where is the gentle Rivers, Vaughan, Grey? Duch. Where is kind Hastings? K. Rich. A flourish, trumpets!-strike alarum, drums! Let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women [Flourish. Alarums. exclamations. 16 Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.' Macbeth. Duch. Art thou my son? K. Rich. Ay; Ithank God, my father, and yourself. Duch. Then patiently hear my impatience. K. Rich. Madam, I have a touch of your condition 17, That cannot brook the accent of reproof. Duch. O, let me speak. K. Rich. Do, then; but I'll not hear. Duch. I will be mild and gentle in my words. K. Rich. And brief, good mother; for I am in haste. Duch. Art thou so hasty? I have staid for thee, God knows, in torment and in agony. K. Rich. And came I not at last to comfort you? Duch. No, by the holy rood, thou know'st it well, Thou cam'st on earth to make the earth my hell. A grievous burden was thy birth to me; Tetchy 18 and wayward was thy infancy; Thy school-days, frightful, desperate, wild, and furious; Thy prime of manhood, daring, bold, and venturous; K. Rich. 'Faith, none, but Humphrey Hour 19, that call'd your grace 17 A spice or particle of your disposition. So in Chapman's translation of the twenty-fourth Iliad :— Of anger,' &c. 18 Touchy, fretful. 19 I know not what to make of this, unless we suppose with Steevens that it is an allusion to some affair of gallantry of which the duchess had been suspected. There is no mention of any thing of the kind in the Chronicles. Malone conjectures that Humphrey Hour is merely used as a ludicrous periphrasis To breakfast once, forth of my company. Let me march on, and not offend you, madam.- Strike Duch. I pr'ythee, hear me speak. Hear me a word; K. Rich. You speak too bitterly. Duch. For I shall never speak to thee again. K. Rich. So. Duch. Either thou wilt die, by God's just ordi nance, Ere from this war thou turn a conqueror ; Therefore take with thee my most heavy curse; And promise them success and victory. Shame serves 20 thy life, and doth thy death attend. [Exit. Q. Eliz. Though far more cause, yet much less spirit to curse Abides in me; I say amen to her. [Going. K. Rich. Stay, madam, I must speak a word with you. for hour, like Tom Troth, for truth, in Gabriel Harvey's Letter to Spenser. There can hardly be any allusion to the phrase of dining with Duke Humphrey,' used to express those who dined upon air, or passed their dinner hour in admiring his supposed monument in old St. Paul's Cathedral. See Mr. Nares's Glossary, or a late edition of Hall's Satires by the writer of this note, p. 62. Q. Eliz.. I have no more sons of the royal blood For thee to murder: for my daughters, Richard,They shall be praying nuns, not weeping queens; And therefore level not to hit their lives. K. Rich. You have a daughter call'd—Elizabeth, Virtuous and fair, royal and gracious. Q. Eliz. And must she die for this? O, let her live, So she may live unscarr'd of bleeding slaughter, K. Rich. Wrong not her birth, she is of royal blood. Q. Eliz. No, to their lives bad friends were con- K. Rich. All unavoided 21 is the doom of destiny. Q. Eliz. True, when avoided grace makes destiny: My babes were destin'd to a fairer death, If grace had bless'd thee with a fairer life. K. Rich. You speak, as if that I had slain my cousins. Q. Eliz. Cousins, indeed; and by their uncle Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life. No doubt the murderous knife was dull and blunt, 21 Unavoidable. Thus before: Whose unavoided eye is dangerous.' Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart 22, But that still 23 use of grief makes wild grief tame, K. Rich. Madam, so thrive I in my enterprise, Q. Eliz. What good is cover'd with the face of heaven, To be discover'd, that can do me good? K. Rich. The advancement of your children, gentle lady. Q. Eliz. Up to some scaffold, there to lose their heads? K. Rich. No, to the dignity and height of fortune, The high imperial type of this earth's glory 24. Q. Eliz. Flatter my sorrows with report of it; Tell me, what state, what dignity, what honour, Canst thou demise 25 to any child of mine? 22 This conceit seems to have been a favourite with Shakspeare: Thou hidst a thousand daggers in thy thoughts, King Henry VI. P. 11. 24 i. e. the crown, the emblem of royalty. See note on King Henry VI. Part III. Act i. Sc. 4. 25 To demise is to grant, from demittere, Lat. But as no example of the use of the word, except in legal instruments, offers itself, I cannot help thinking we should read devise, with the second folio. |