RIV. She may, my lord; for GLO. She may, lord Rivers ?-why, who knows not so? She may do more, sir, than denying that: And lay those honours on your high desert. Riv. What, marry, may she? GLO. What, marry, may she? marry with a king, A bachelor, a handsome stripling too : I wis, your grandam had a worser match. Q. ELIZ. My lord of Gloster, I have too long borne Your blunt upbraidings, and your bitter scoffs: Enter Queen MARGARET, behind. Q. MAR. And lessen'd be that small, God, I beseech thee! Thy honour, state, and seat, is due to me. GLO. What? threat you me with telling of the king? Tell him, and spare not: look, what I have said 2 I will avouch, in presence of the king: So quarto 1597; folio, To be so baited, scorn'd, and stormed at. 2 Tell him, and spare not: look, what I have said-] This verse I have restored from the old quartos. THEOBALD. Here we have another proof of a line being passed over by the transcriber, or the compositor at the press, when the first folio was printed, for the subsequent line is not sense without this. MALONE. I dare adventure to be sent to the Tower 3. 4 Tis time to speak, my pains are quite forgot. GLO. Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband king, I was a pack-horse in his great affairs; To royalize his blood, I spilt mine own. Q. MAR. Yea, and much better blood than his, or thine. GLO. In all which time, you, and your husband Grey, Were factious for the house of Lancaster; 7 And, Rivers, so were you :-Was not your husband 3 I dare adventure to be sent to the Tower.] thor elliptically omitted the first-to in this line. "To help thee curse," &c. i. e. to curse. STEEVENS. See also p. 29, n. 8. 4 Perhaps our au So, in p. 48: my pains-] My labours; my toils. JOHNSON. 5 OUT, devil!] Mr. Lambe observes, in his notes on the ancient metrical history of The Battle of Floddon Field, that out is an interjection of abhorrence or contempt, most frequent in the mouths of the common people of the north. It occurs again in Act IV. : 66 6 -royalize rius Nero, 1607: 7 out on ye, owls!" STEEVENS. i. e. to make royal. So, in Claudius Tibe "Who means to-morrow for to royalize "The triumphs," &c. STEEVENS. Was not your husband In Margaret's BATTLE, &c.] It is said in Henry VI. that he died in quarrel of the house of York. JOHNSON. The account here given is the true one. See this inconsistency accounted for in vol. xviii. p. 454, n. 3, and in the Dissertation at the end of The Third Part of King Henry VI. MALONE. Margaret's battle is-Margaret's army. RITSON. What you have been ere now, and what you are; Withal, what I have been, and what I am. Q. MAR. A murd'rous villain, and so still thou art. GLO. Poor Clarence did forsake his father Warwick, Ay, and forswore himself,-Which Jesu pardon !Q. MAR. Which God revenge! GLO. To fight on Edward's party, for the crown; And, for his meed, poor lord, he is mew'd up: I would to God, my heart were flint like Edward's, Or Edward's soft and pitiful, like mine; I am too childish-foolish for this world. Q. MAR. Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave this world, Thou cacodæmon! there thy kingdom is. RIV. My lord of Gloster, in those busy days, Which here you urge, to prove us enemies, We follow'd then our lord, our lawful king; So should we you, if you should be our king. GLO. If I should be ?-I had rather be a pedlar : Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof! Q. ELIZ. As little joy, my lord, as you suppose You should enjoy, were you this country's king; As little joy you may suppose in me, That I enjoy, being the queen thereof. Q. MAR. A little joy enjoys the queen thereof; For I am she, and altogether joyless. So, in King Henry VI. Part I. : "What may the king's whole battle reach unto ?" STEEVENS. —our LAWFUL king;] So the quartos 1597, 1598, and the subsequent quartos. The folio has-sovereign king. 8. In this play the variations between the original copy in quarto, and the folio, are more numerous 'than, believe, in any other of our author's pieces. The alterations, it is highly probable, were made, not by Shakspeare, but by the players, many of them being very injudicious. The text has been formed out of the two copies, the folio, and the early quarto; from which the preceding editors have in every scene selected such readings as appeared to them fit to be adopted. To enumerate every variation between the copies would encumber the page with little use. MALONE. I can no longer hold me patient. [Advancing. GLO. Foul wrinkled witch, what mak'st thou in my sight3 ? Q. MAR. But repetition of what thou hast marr'd; 9 Hear me, you wrangling pirates, &c.] This scene of Margaret's imprecations is fine and artful. She prepares the audience, like another Cassandra, for the following tragic revolutions. WARBURTON. Surely, the merits of this scene are insufficient to excuse its improbability. Margaret bullying the court of England in the royal palace, is a circumstance as absurd as the courtship of Gloster in a publick street. STEEVENS. which you have PILL'D from me:] To pill is to pillage. So, in The Martyr'd Soldier, by Shirley, 1638: "He has not pill'd the rich, nor flay'd the poor." STEEVENS. To pill is literally to take off the outside or rind, Thus they say in Devonshire, to pill an apple, rather than pare it; and Shirley uses the word precisely in this sense. HENLEY. 2 Ah, GENTLE villain,] We should read: ungentle villain." WARBurton. The meaning of gentle is not, as the commentator imagines, tender or courteous, but high-born. An opposition is meant between that and villain, which means at once a wicked and a lowborn wretch. So before: "Since every Jack is made a gentleman, "There's many a gentle person made a Jack." JOHNSON. Gentle appears to me to be taken in its common acceptation, but to be used ironically. M. MASON. 3 what MAK'ST thou in my sight?] An obsolete expression for-what dost thou in my sight. So, in Othello: 66 Ancient, what makes he here?" Margaret in her answer takes the word in its ordinary acceptation. MALONE. So does Orlando, in As You Like It: 66 Nothing I am not taught to make any thing.” STEEVENS. That will I make, before I let thee go. GLO. Wert thou not banished, on pain of death*? Q. MAR. I was; but I do find more pain in banishment, Than death can yield me here by my abode. GLO. The curse my noble father laid on thee,When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper, And with thy scorns drew'st rivers from his eyes; And then, to dry them, gav'st the duke a clout, Steep'd in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland ;His curses, then from bitterness of soul Denounc'd against thee, are all fallen upon thee; And God, not we, hath plagu'd thy bloody deed 5. Q. ELIZ. So just is God, to right the innocent. HAST. O, 'twas the foulest deed to slay that babe, And the most merciless, that e'er was heard of. 4 Wert thou not banished, on pain of death ?] Margaret fled into France after the battle of Hexham in 1464, and Edward soon afterwards issued a proclamation, prohibiting any of his subjects from aiding her to return, or harbouring her, should she attempt to revisit England. She remained abroad till the 14th of April, 1471, when she landed at Weymouth. After the battle of Tewksbury, in May, 1471, she was confined in the Tower, where she continued a prisoner till 1475, when she was ransomed by her father Regnier, and removed to France, where she died in 1482. The present scene is in 1477-8. So that her introduction in the present scene is a mere poetical fiction. MALONE. 5 hath PLAGU'D thy bloody deed.] So, in King John : "That he's not only plagued for her sin." To plague, in ancient language, is to punish. Hence the scriptural term-" the plagues of Egypt." STEEVENS. So just is God, to right the innocent.] So, in Thomas Lord Cromwell, 1602: "How just is God, to right the innocent!" RITSON. |