ACT III. SCENE I. London. A Street. The Trumpets sound. Enter the Prince of Wales, GLOSTER, BUCKINGHAM, CARDINAL BOURCHIER1, and Others. Buck. Welcome, sweet prince, to London, to your chamber2. Glo. Welcome, dear cousin, my thoughts' sovereign: The weary way hath made you melancholy. Prince. No, uncle; but our crosses on the way Have made it tedious, wearisome, and heavy: I want more uncles here to welcome me. Glo. Sweet prince, the untainted virtue of your Hath not yet div'd into the world's deceit: Than of his outward show; which, God he knows, Those uncles, which you want, were dangerous; 1 Thomas Bourchier was made a cardinal, and elected Archbishop of Canterbury in 1464. He died in 1486. 2 London was anciently called Camera Regis. See Coke's Institutes, 4. 243; Camden's Britannia, 374; and Ben Jonson's Entertainment to King James, passing to his Coronation. Lon don is called the king's special chamber in the duke of Buckingham's oration to the citizens (apud More), which Shakspeare has taken other phrases from. 3 To jump with is to agree with, to suit, or correspond with. Thus in King Henry IV. Part 1.:-' Well, Hal, well; and in some sort it jumps with my humour, as well as waiting in the court, I can tell you.' 'Wert thou my friend, thy mind would jump with mine.' Solyman and Perseda. Your grace attended to their sugar'd words, were none. Glo. My lord, the mayor of London comes to greet you. Enter the Lord Mayor, and his Train. May. God bless your grace with health and happy days! you all. Prince. I thank you, good my lord;—and thank [Exeunt Mayor, &c. I thought, my mother, and my brother York, Would long ere this have met us on the way: Fye, what a slug is Hastings! that he comes not To tell us whether they would come, or no. Enter HASTINGS. Buck. And in good time, here comes the sweating lord. Prince. Welcome, my lord: What, will our mother come? Hast. On what occasion, God he knows, not I, The queen your mother, and your brother York, Have taken sanctuary: The tender prince Would fain have come with me to meet your grace, But by his mother was perforce withheld. Buck. Fye! what an indirect and peevish course Is this of hers?-Lord cardinal, will your grace Persuade the queen to send the duke of York Unto his princely brother presently? If she deny, Lord Hastings, go with him, tory Can from his mother win the duke of York, Of blessed sanctuary! not for all this land, Buck. You are too senseless-obstinate, my lord, Too ceremonious, and traditional*: Weigh it but with the grossness of this age, To those whose dealings have deserv'd the place, But sanctuary children, ne'er till now. Card. My lord, you shall o'errule my mind for once. Come on, Lord Hastings, will you go with me? Prince. Good lords, make all the speedy haste [Exeunt Cardinal and HAST. you may. 4 Ceremonious for superstitious; traditional for adherent to old customs. 5 Grossness here means plainness, simplicity. Warburton, not understanding the word, would have changed it. Johnson has misinterpreted it; and Malone, though he defends the reading, leaves it unexplained. 6 This argument is from More's History, as printed in the Chronicles, where it is very much enlarged upon. Verelye I have often heard of saintuarye men, but I never heard erste of saintuarye chyldren ***. But he can be no saintuarye manne, that neither hath wisedome to desire it, nor malice to deserve it, whose lyfe or libertye can by no lawfull processe stand in jeopardie. And he that taketh one oute of saintuary to dooe hym good, I saye plainely that he breaketh no saintuary.'-More's History of Kinge Richard the Thirde. Edit. 1821, p. 48. Say, uncle Gloster, if our brother come, Glo. Where it seems best unto your royal self. Prince. I do not like the Tower, of any place:Did Julius Cæsar build that place, my lord? Glo. He did, my gracious lord, begin that place; Which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified. Prince. Is it upon record? or else reported Successively from age to age he built it? Buck. Upon record, my gracious lord, Prince. But say, my lord, it were not register❜d; Methinks, the truth should live from age to age, As 'twere retail'd' to all posterity, Even to the general all-ending day. Glo. So wise so young, they say, do ne'er live long8. Prince. What say you, uncle? Glo. I [Aside. say, without characters, fame lives long. Thus, like the formal9 vice, Iniquity, I moralize two meanings in one word. } Aside. 7 i. e. recounted. Minsheu, in his Dictionary, 1617, besides the verb retail, in the mercantile sense, has the verb to retaile or retell. G. renombrer, à LAT. renumerare: and in that sense it appears to be employed here. Richard uses the word again in the fourth act, where, speaking to the queen of her daughter, he says: To whom I will retail my conquests won.' I have knowne children languishing of the splene, obstructed and altered in temper, talke with gravity and wisdome surpassing those tender years, and their judgments carrying a marvellous imitation of the wisdome of the ancient, having after a sorte attained that by disease which other have by course of yeares; whereon I take it the proverbe ariseth, that they be of shorte life who are of wit so pregnant.' — Bright's Treatise of Melancholy, 1586, p. 52. 9 For an account of the vice in old plays, see note on Twelfth Prince. That Julius Cæsar was a famous man; With what his valour did enrich his wit, His wit set down to make his valour live. Prince. An if I live until I be a man, Glo. Short summers lightly 10 have a forward spring. [Aside. Enter YORK, HASTINGS, and the Cardinal, Buck. Now, in good time, here comes the duke of York. Prince. Richard of York! how fares our loving brother? Night, Act iv. Sc. 2. 'He appears (says Mr. Gifford) to have been a perfect counterpart of the harlequin of the modern stage, and had a two-fold office,-to instigate the hero of the piece to wickedness, and, at the same time, to protect him from the devil, whom he was permitted to buffet and baffle with his wooden sword, till the process of the story required that both the protector and the protected should be carried off by the fiend, or the latter driven roaring from the stage by some miraculous interposition in favour of the repentant offender.' Iniquity the Vice is one of the characters in Ben Jonson's Devil is an Ass. Shakspeare has again used moralize as a verb active in his Rape of Lucrece : Nor could she moralize his wanton sight, More than his eyes were open to the light.' In which passage it means to interpret or investigate the latent meaning of his wanton looks,' as in the present passage it signifies to extract the double and latent meaning of one word or sentence. Moral, for secret meaning, will be found in Much Ado about Nothing, Act iii. Sc. 4. The word which Richard uses in a double sense is live, which in his former speech he had used literally, and in the present metaphorically. The formal vice means the regular or accustomed vice. 10 Short summers commonly have a forward spring.' So in an old proverb preserved by Ray:— 'There's lightning lightly before thunder." |