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.

8

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

8

our lawful king;] So the quarto 1598, and the subsequent quartos. The folio has-sovereign king.

In this play the variations between the original copy in quarto, and the folio, are more numerous than, I 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.

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.

1

In sharing that which you have pill'd from me :1
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 villain, do not turn away!

GLO. Foul wrinkled witch, what mak'st thou in my sight?3

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

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.

1

i 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 ev'ry 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:

"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 :

"Now, sir, what make you here?

"Nothing: I am not taught to make any thing."

STEEVENS.

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.
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 fallen upon thee; And God, not we, hath plagu'd thy bloody deed. * 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.

* 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 Reignier, and removed to France, where she died in 1482. The present scene is in 1477-8. MALONE. 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.

RIV. Tyrants themselves wept when it was re

ported.

DORS. No man but prophecied revenge for it. BUCK. Northumberland, then present, wept to see it."

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 hea-

ven,

That Henry's death, my lovely Edward's death,
Their kingdom's loss, my woful banishment,
Could all but answer for that peevish brat?s
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,'
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!

▾ Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.] Alluding to a scene in King Henry VI. P. III:

"What, weeping ripe, my lord Northumberland?"

STEEVENS.

Could all but answer for that peevish brat?] This is the reading of all the editions, yet I have no doubt but we ought to read

Could all not answer for that peevish brat? The sense seems to require this amendment; and there are no words so frequently mistaken for each other as not and but.

9

M. MASON.

by surfeit die your king,] Alluding to his luxurious life. JOHNSON.

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,
Die neither mother, wife, nor England's queen!-
Rivers, and Dorset, you were standers by,
And so wast thou, lord Hastings,-when my son
Was stabb'd with bloody daggers; God, Ĭ pray

him,

That none of you may live your natural age,
But by some unlook'd accident cut off!

GLO. Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither'd

hag.

Q. MAR. And leave out thee? stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me.

If heaven have any grievous plague in store,
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,
O, let them keep it, till thy sins be ripe,
And then hurl down their indignation

On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace
The worm of conscience still be-gnaw thy soul!
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv'st,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be while some tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
Thou elvish-mark'd,' abortive, rooting hog!*

1

elvish-mark'd,] The common people in Scotland (as I learn from Kelly's Proverbs,) have still an aversion to those who have any natural defect or redundancy, as thinking them mark'd out for mischief. STEEVENS.

"-rooting hog!] The expression is fine, alluding (in memory of her young son) to the ravage which hogs make, with the finest flowers, in gardens; and intimating that Elizabeth was to expect no other treatment for her sons. Warburton.