Glo. Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York; " And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings;
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled
front;

And now, instead of mounting barbed ↳ steeds,
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

a An allusion to the cognizance of Edward IV., which was adopted after the battle of Mortimer's Cross:

"Dazzle mine eyes, or do I see three suns?"

b Barbed. Barbed and barded appear to have been indifferently applied to a caparisoned horse. In Hall we have, "About the time of prime came to the barriers of the lists the duke of Hertford, mounted on a white courser barbed with blue and green velvet." In Lord Berners' Froissart we read, "It was a great beauty to behold the banners and standards waving in the wind, and horses barded, and knights and squires richly armed."

He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber,
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

But I, that am not shap'd for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amourous looking-glass ;-
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's ma-

jesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;-
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them ;-
Why I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to see my shadow in the sun,
And descant on mine own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,b
I am determined to prove a villain,

a

a See, in the folio; the quartos, spy.

b Malone would read, "fair well-spoken dames." In Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour,' we have the same epithet of well-spoken applied to days: "ignorant well-spoken days."

241

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And, if king Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says, that G
Of Edward's heirs the murtherer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul! here Clarence

:

He should, for that, commit your godfathers :-
O, belike, his majesty hath some intent
That you should" be new christen'd in the
Tower.

But what's the matter, Clarence? may I know? Clar. Yea, Richard, when I know; for I protest

As yet I do not: But, as I can learn,
He hearkens after prophecies and dreams;
And from the cross-row plucks the letter G,
And says, a wizard told him, that by G
His issue disinherited should be;
And, for my name of George begins with G,
It follows in his thought that I am he:
These, as I learn, and such like toys as these,
Have mov'd his highness to commit me now.
Glo. Why, this it is when men are rul'd by

women:

'Tis not the king that sends you to the Tower;
My lady Grey his wife, Clarence, 't is she
That tempers him to this extremity.
Was it not she and that good man of worship
Antony Woodville, her brother there,

That made him send lord Hastings to the Tower,
From whence this present day he is deliver❜d?
We are not safe, Clarence, we are not safe.

Clar. By heaven, I think there is no man

secure

a Should, in the folio; the quartos, shall.

b Tempers. We print this line as in the quarto of 1597.

In the folio we read,

"That tempts him to his harsh extremity."

But the queen's kindred, and night-walking heralds

That trudge betwixt the king and mistress Shore.
Heard you not what an humble suppliant
Lord Hastings was to her for his delivery? *
Glo. Humbly complaining to her deity
Got my lord chamberlain his liberty.
I'll tell you what,-I think it is our way,
If we will keep in favour with the king,
To be her men and wear her livery:
The jealous o'er-worn widow, and herself,
Since that our brother dubb'd them gentle-

women,

Are mighty gossips in our monarchy.

Brak. I beseech your graces both to pardon

me;

His majesty hath straitly given in charge
That no man shall have private conference,
Of what degree soever, with his brother.

Glo. Even so; an please your worship, Brakenbury,

You may partake of anything we say:
We speak no treason, man:-we say, the king
Is wise and virtuous; and his noble queen
Well struck in years, fair, and not jealous :-
We say, that Shore's wife hath a pretty foot,
A cherry lip, a bonny eye, a passing pleasing

But I shall live, my lord, to give them thanks
That were the cause of my imprisonment.

Glo. No doubt, no doubt, and so shall Cla-
rence too;

For they that were your enemies are his,
And have prevail'd as much on him as you.

Hast. More pity that the eagle should be
mew'd,

While kites and buzzards prey at liberty.

Glo. What news abroad?

Hast. No news so bad abroad as this at home; The king is sickly, weak, and melancholy, And his physicians fear him mightily.

Glo. Now, by St. Paul, this news is bad indeed.

O, he hath kept an evil diet long,

And over-much consum'd his royal person; "T is very grievous to be thought upon. Where is he? in his bed?"

And, if I fail not in my deep intent,
Clarence hath not another day to live:
Which done, God take king Edward to his
mercy,

And leave the world for me to bustle in!
For then I'll marry Warwick's youngest daugh-

ter.

What though I kill'd her husband and her father,
The readiest way to make the wench amends
Is to become her husband and her father:
The which will I: not all so much for love
As for another secret close intent,

By marrying her, which I must reach unto.
But yet I run before my horse to market:
Clarence still breathes; Edward still lives and
reigns;

When they are gone then must I count my
gains.
[Exit.

SCENE II.-The same. Another Street. Enter the corpse of KING HENRY THE SIXTH, borne in an open coffin, Gentlemen bearing halberds, to guard it; and Lady ANNE as

mourner.

Anne. Set down, set down, your honourable load,

a

If honour may be shrouded in a hearse,-
Whilst I a while obsequiously lament
The untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster.
Poor key-cold figure of a holy king!
Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster!
Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood!
Be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost,
To hear the lamentations of poor Anne,
Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughter'd son,
Stabb'd by the self-same hand that made these
wounds!

Lo, in these windows that let forth thy life,
pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes:

I

O, cursed be the hand that made these holes!
Cursed the heart that had the heart to do it!
Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence!
More direful hap betide that hated wretch,
That makes us wretched by the death of thee,
Than I can wish to adders, spiders, toads,

a Obsequiously-performing obsequies.

b Key-cold. This epithet is common in the old writers. Shakspere himself has it in the Lucrece:

"And then in key-cold Lucrece' bleeding stream
He falls."

But surely Steevens' explanation that the epithet is derived from the application of a cold key to stop bleeding is very forced. In Gurnall's 'Christian in complete Armour,'-a popular work of the seventeenth century, we have, "but for Christ, and obtaining an interest in him, O how key-cold are they."

e So the quartos; the folio, " to wolves, to spiders, toads." 243