Q. Eliz. A holy-day shall this be kept hereafter:I would to God, all strifes were well compounded.My sovereign lord, I do beseech your highness To take our brother Clarence to your grace. Glo. Why, madam, have I offer'd love for this, To be so flouted in this royal presence? Who knows not, that the gentle duke is dead? [They all start. You do him injury to scorn his corse. K. Edw. Who knows not he is dead! who knows he is? Q. Eliz. All-seeing heaven, what a world is this! Buck. Look I so pale, Lord Dorset, as the rest? Dor. Ay,my good lord; and no man in the presence, But his red colour hath forsook his cheeks. K. Edw. Is Clarence dead? the order was revers'd. Glo. But he, poor man, by your first order died, And that a winged Mercury did bear; Some tardy cripple bore the countermand3, That came too lag to see him buried:-- God grant, that some, less noble, and less loyal, 'I do not know that Englishman alive, I thank my God for my humility.' Other stuff of this sort may be read throughout the tragedy, wherein the poet used not much licence in departing from the truth of history, which delivers him a deep dissembler, not of his affections only, but his religion.' 3 This is an allusion to a proverbial expression which Drayton has versified in his Baron's Wars: 'Ill news hath wings, and with the wind doth go, Canto II. Ed. 1619. We have the same play on words in Macbeth : the near in blood The nearer bloody.' Deserve not worse than wretched Clarence did, Enter STANLEY. Stan. A boon, my sovereign, for my service done! K. Edw. I pr'ythee, peace; my soul is full of sorrow. Stan. I will not rise, unless your highness hear me. K. Edw. Then say at once, what is it thou request'st. Stan. The forfeit5, sovereign, of my servant's life; Who slew to-day a riotous gentleman, Lately attendant on the duke of Norfolk. death 6, brother's And shall that tongue give pardon to a slave? Who sued to me for him? who, in my wrath, 5 He means the remission of the forfeit. 6 This lamentation is very tender and pathetic. The recollection of the good qualities of the dead is very natural, and no less naturally does the king endeavour to communicate the crime to others.'-Johnson. The hint for this pathetic speech is to be found in Sir Thomas More's History of Edward V. inserted in the Chronicles. 7 i. e. be circumspect, deliberate, or consider what I was about. 'And bid me be advised how I tread.' King Henry VI. Part II. Act ii. Sc. 4. Thus in the Paston Letters, vol. ii. p. 279: 'Written in haste with short advisement.' And said, Dear brother, live, and be a king? Yet none of you would once plead for his life.— [Exeunt King, Queen, HASTINGS, RIVERS, DORSET, 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. 9 Hastings was lord chamberlain to King Edward IV. SCENE II. The same. Enter the DUCHESS of YORK1, 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 loath to lose him, not your father's death: Son. Then, grandam, you conclude that he is dead. Duch. Peace, children, peace! the king doth love you well: Incapable 3 and shallow innocents, 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, 1 Cecily, daughter of Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmoreland, and widow of Richard duke of York, who was killed at the battle of Wakefield, 1460. She survived her husband thirtyfive years, living till the year 1495. 2 The duchess is here addressing her grand-children; but cousin seems to have been used instead of our kinsman and kinswoman, and to have supplied the place of both. 3 Unsusceptible. Thus in Hamlet: 'As one incapable of her own distress.' Devis'd impeachments to imprison him: 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, 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. 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; 4 This word gave no offence to our ancestors; one instance will show that it was used even in the most refined poetry:And on thy dugs the queen of love doth tell Her godhead's power in scrowles of my desire.' Constable's Sonnets, 1594. Dec. vi. Son. 4. 5 In the language of our elder writers, to dissemble signified to feign or simulate, as well as to cloak or conceal feelings or dispositions. Milton uses dissembler in this sense in the extract in a note on a former page.. |