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,
Nearer in bloody thoughts, and not in blood*,

'I do not know that Englishman alive,
With whom my soul is any jot at odds,
More than the infant that is born to-night;

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,
Comfort's a cripple, and comes ever slow.'

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,
And yet go current from suspicion.

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.
K. Edw. Have I a tongue to doom my

death 6,

brother's

And shall that tongue give pardon to a slave?
My brother kill'd no man, his fault was thought,
And yet his punishment was bitter death.

Who sued to me for him? who, in my wrath,
Kneel'd at my feet, and bade me be advis'd??
Who spoke of brotherhood? who spoke of love?
Who told me, how the poor soul did forsake
The mighty Warwick, and did fight for me?
Who told me, in the field at Tewksbury,
When Oxford had me down, he rescued me,

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?
Who told me, when we both lay in the field,
Frozen almost to death, how he did lap me
Even in his garments; and did give himself,
All thin and naked, to the numb-cold night?
All this from my remembrance brutish wrath
Sinfully pluck'd, and not a man of you
Had so much grace to put it in my mind.
But when your carters, or your waiting-vassals,
Have done a drunken slaughter, and defac'd
The precious image of our dear Redeemer,
You straight are on your knees for pardon, pardon;
And I, unjustly too, must grant it you:—
But for my brother, not a man would speak,-
Nor I (ungracious) speak unto myself
For him, poor soul. The proudest of you all
Have been beholden to him in his life;

Yet none of you would once plead for his life.—
O God! I fear, thy justice will take hold
On me, and you, and mine, and yours, for this.-
Come, Hastings, help me to my closet3.
Poor Clarence!

[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:
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 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:
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, gran-
dam?

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..