Q. Eliz. Come, come, we know your meaning, brother Gloster ;

You envy my advancement, and my friends ;
God grant, we never may have need of you!
Glo. Meantime, God grants that we have need
of you:

Our brother is imprison'd by your means,
Myself disgrac'd, and the nobility

Held in contempt; while great promotions
Are daily given, to ennoble those

That scarce, some two days since, were worth a noble.
Q. Eliz. By Him, that rais'd me to this careful

From that contented hap which I enjoy'd,

I never did incense his majesty

Against the duke of Clarence, but have been
An earnest advocate to plead for him.

My lord, you do me shameful injury,

Falsely to draw me in these vile suspects.

Glo. You may deny that you were not the cause Of my Lord Hastings' late imprisonment. Riv. She may, my lord; for

Glo. She may, Lord Rivers?—why, who knows not so?

She may do more, sir, than denying that:
She may help you to many fair preferments;
And then deny her aiding hand therein,
And lay those honours on your high desert.
What may she not? She may,-ay, marry may she,—
Riv. What, marry, may she?

Glo. What, marry, may she? marry with a king, A bachelor, a handsome stripling too:

I wis3, your grandam had a worser match.

Q. Eliz. My lord of Gloster, I have too long borne Your blunt upbraidings, and your bitter scoffs : By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty,

8 i. e. I think.

Of those gross taunts I often have endur'd.
I had rather be a country servant maid,
Than a great queen, with this condition-
To be so baited, scorn'd, and stormed at:
Small joy have I in being England's queen.

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
I will avouch, in presence of the king:

I dare adventure to be sent to the Tower.
"Tis time to speak, my pains 9 are quite forgot.
Q. Mar. Out, devil! I remember them too well:
Thou kill'dst my husband Henry in the Tower,
And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.

Glo. Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband king,
I was a packhorse in his great affairs;
A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,
A liberal rewarder of his friends;

To royalize his blood, I spilt mine own.

Q. Mar. Ay, 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;

And, Rivers, so were you:-Was not your husband
In Margaret's battle at Saint Albans slain 10?
Let me put in your minds, if you forget,

What you have been ere now, and what you are;
Withal, what I have been, and what I am.

9 Labours.

10 See note on King Henry VI. Part III. Act iii. Sc. 2, p. 323. Margaret's battle is Margaret's army.

Q. Mar. A murd'rous villain, and so still thou artGlo. Poor Clarence did forsake his father Warwick,

Ay, and forswore himself,-Which Jesu pardon!— Q. Mar. Which God revenge!

11

Glo. To fight on Edward's party, for the crown: And, for his meed 11, 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.

I can no longer hold me patient.

[Advancing. Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out In sharing that which you have pill'd 12 from me: Which of you trembles not, that looks on me? If not, that, I being queen, you bow like subjects; Yet that, by you depos'd, you quake like rebels?Ah, gentle 13 villain, do not turn away!

11 Reward.

12 To pill is to pillage. It is often used with to poll or strip. Kildare did use to pill and poll his friendes, tenants, and reteyners.' Holinshed.

13 Gentle is here used ironically.

Glo. Foul wrinkled witch, what mak'st 14 thou in my sight?

Q. Mar. But repetition of what thou hast marr'd; That will I make, before I let thee go.

15

Glo. Wert thou not banished on pain of death 15? Q. Mar. I was; but I do find more pain in banishment,

Than death can yield me here by my abode.
A husband, and a son, thou ow'st to me,-
And thou a kingdom;-all of you, allegiance:
This sorrow that I have, by right is yours;
And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.

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 fall'n upon thee; And God, not we, hath plagu'd 16 thy bloody deed.

14 What dost thou in my sight.' This phrase has been already explained in the notes to Love's Labour's Lost, Act iv. Sc. 3. In As You Like It, Act i. Sc. 1, Shakspeare again plays upon the word make, as in this instance :

'Now, sir, what make you here?

Nothing: I am not taught to make anything.'

15 Margaret fled into France after the battle of Hexham, in 1464, and Edward issued a proclamation prohibiting any of his subjects from aiding her return, or harbouring her, should she attempt to revisit England. She remained abroad till 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. So that her introduction in the present scene is a mere poetical fiction.

16 To plague in ancient language is to punish. Hence the scriptural term of the plagues of Egypt. Thus also in King John:

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. Riv. Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported.

Dors. No man but prophesied revenge for it. Buck. Northumberland, then present, wept to see it 17.

Q. Mar. What! were you snarling all, before I

came,

Ready to catch each other by the throat,

And turn

you all your

hatred now on me?

Did York's dread curse prevail so much with heaven,
That Henry's death, my lovely Edward's death,
Their kingdom's loss, my woful banishment,
Could all but 18 answer for that peevish brat?
Can curses pierce the clouds, and enter heaven?
Why, then give way, dull clouds, to my quick
curses!-

Though not by war, by surfeit die your king 19,
As ours by murder, to make him a king!
Edward, thy son, that now is prince of Wales,
For Edward, my son, that was prince of Wales,
Die in his youth, by like untimely violence!
Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,
Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self!
Long may'st thou live, to wail thy children's loss;
And see another, as I see thee now,

Deck'd in thy rights, as thou art stall'd in mine!
Long die thy happy days before thy death;
And, after many lengthen'd hours of grief,

17 See King Henry VI. Part III. Act 1, Sc. 2:

'What, weeping-ripe, my Lord Northumberland.'

18 But is here used in its exceptive sense: could all this only, or nothing but (i. e. be out or except) this answer for the death of that brat. Vide note on The Tempest, vol. i. p. 19.

19 Alluding to his luxurious life.