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Enter King Richard, and his train, marching. K. Rich. Who intercepts me in my expedition? Dutch. O, fhe, that might have intercepted thee, By strangling thee in her accursed womb, From all the flaughters, wretch, that thou haft done. Queen. Hid'ft thou that forehead with a golden

crown,

Where should be branded, if that right were right, The flaughter of the prince that ow'd that crown, And the dire death of my poor fons, and brothers? Tell me, thou villain-flave, where are my children? Dutch. Thou toad, thou toad, where is thy brother

Clarence?

And little Ned Plantagenet, his fon?

Queen. Where is the gentle Rivers, Vaughan, Grey? Dutch. Where is kind Hastings?

K. Rich. A flourish, trumpets!-strike alarum, drums!

Let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women
Rail on the Lord's anointed: Strike, I fay.-

[Flourish. Alarums.

Either be patient, and entreat me fair,
Or with the clamorous report of war
Thus will I drown your exclamations.
Dutch. Art thou my fon?

1

K. Rich. Ay; I thank God, my father, and your

felf.

Dutch. Then patiently hear my impatience.

K. Rich. Madam, I have a touch of your condition,

That cannot brook the accent of reproof.

3

Dutch. O, let me speak.

K. Rich. Do, then; but I'll not hear.

-a touch of your condition, ] A spice or particle of your temper or difpofition. JOHNSON.

So, in Chapman's translation of the 24th Iliad :

"-his cold blood embrac'd a fiery touch
"Of anger, &c." STEEVENS.

6

Dutch.

Dutch. I will be mild and gentle in my words.
K. Rich. And brief, good mother; for I am in

hafte.

Dutch. Art thou so hasty? I have staid for thee, God knows, in torment and in agony.

K. Rich. And came I not at last to comfort you? Dutch. No, by the holy rood, thou know'st it well, Thou cam'st on earth to make the earth my hell. A grievous burden was thy birth to me; Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy; Thy school-days, frightful, desperate, wild, and

furious,

Thy prime of manhood, daring, bold, and venturous;
Thy age confirm'd, proud, fubtle, fly, and bloody,
More mild, but yet more harmful, kind in hatred :
What comfortable hour canst thou name,
4 That ever grac'd me in thy company?

K. Rich. Faith, none, but Humphry Houres, that

call'd your grace

To

4 That ever grac'd me] To grace seems here to mean the fame as to bless, to make happy. So, gracious is kind, and graces are favours. JOHNSON.

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- Humphry Houre,-] This may probably be an allusion to some affair of gallantry of which the dutchefs had been suspected. I cannot find the name in Holinshed. Surely the poet's fondness for a quibble has not induced him at once to perfonify and christen that hour of the day which summon'd his mother to breakfast.

So, in The Wit of a Woman, 1592:

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Gentlemen, time makes us brief: our old mistress, Houre is at hand."

The common cant phrase of dining swith duke Humphrey, I have never yet heard fatisfactorily explained. It appears, however, from a fatirical pamphlet called the Guls Horn-booke, 1609, written by T. Deckar, that in the ancient church of St. Paul, one of the ailes was called Duke Humphrey's Walk; in which those who had no means of procuring a dinner, affected to loiter. Deckar concludes his fourth chapter thus: "By this, I imagine you have walked your bellyful, and therupon being weary, or (which is rather, I beleeve) being most gentleman-like, hungry, it is fit that as I brought you unto the duke, fo (because he followes

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To breakfast once, forth of my company.
If I be fo disgracious in your fight,
Let me march on, and not offend you, madam.-
Strike up the drum.

Dutch. I pry'thee, hear me fpeak.
K. Rich. You speak too bitterly.
Dutch. Hear me a word;

For I shall never speak to thee again.

K. Rich. So.

Dutch. Either thou wilt die, by God's justordinance,
Ere from this war thou turn a conqueror;
Or I with grief and extreme age shall perish,
And never look upon thy face again.

Therefore, take with thee my most heavy curse;

followes the fashion of great men in keeping no house, and that therefore you must go feeke your dinner) suffer me to take you by the hand and leade you into an ordinary." The title of this chapter is, "How a gallant should behave himself in Powles Walkes."

Hall, in the 7th Satire, B. III. seems to confirm this interpretation :

"'Tis Ruffio: Trow'st thou where he din'd to-day t
" In footh I saw him fit with duke Humfray:
"Manie good welcoms, and much gratis cheere,
"Keepes he for everie stragling cavaliere;
" An open house haunted with greate resort,

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Long Service mixt with musicall disport, &c."

Hall's Satires, Edit. 1602, p. 60.

See likewise Foure Letters and certain Sonnets, by Gabriel Harvey, 1592:

"to feeke his dinner in Poules with duke Humphrey to licke dishes, to be a beggar."

Again, in the Return of the Knight of the Poft, &c. by Nash, 1606: "-in the end comming into Poules, to behold the old duke and his guests, &c."

Again, in A wonderful, strange, and miraculous Prognostication, for this Year, &c. 1591, by Nash: "fundry fellowes in their filkes shall be appointed to keepe duke Humfrye company in Poules, because they know not where to get their dinners

abroad."

If it be, objected that duke Humphrey was buried at St. Albans, let it likewife be remember'd that cenotaphs were not uncommon.

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STEEVENS.

Which,

Which, in the day of battle, tire thee more,
Than all the compleat armour that thou wear'st!
My prayers on the adverse party fight;
And there the little fouls of Edward's children
Whisper the spirits of thine enemies,
And promise them success and victory!
Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end;

Shame serves thy life, and doth thy death attend.

[Exit.

Queen. Though far more cause, yet much less spirit to curfe

Abides in me; I say amen to her.

[Going.

K. Rich. "Stay, madam, I must speak a word

with you.

Queen. I have no more fons of the royal blood, For thee to murder: for my daughters, Richard;They shall be praying nuns, not weeping queens; And therefore level not to hit their lives.

K. Rich. You have a daughter call'd-Elizabeth, Virtuous and fair, royal and gracious.

Queen. And must she die for this? O, let her live,
And I'll corrupt her manners, stain her beauty!
Slander myfelf, as false to Edward's bed;
Throw over her the veil of infamy:

So the may live unscarr'd of bleeding flaughter,
I will confefs she was not Edward's daughter.

K. Rich. Wrong not her birth, she is of royal

blood.

Queen. To fave her life, I'll fay-she is not fo.
K. Rich. Her life is fafeft only in her birth.
Queen. And only in that safety dy'd her brothers.

Shame ferves thy life, -) To serve is to accompany, fer

wants being near the perfons of their masters. JOHNSON.

Stay, madam, On this dialogue 'tis not necessary to 'bestow much criticism: part of it is ridiculous, and the whole improbable. JOHNSON.

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she is of royal blood.] The folio reads-she is a royal

princess. STEEVENS.

K. Rick

!

:

K. Rich. Lo, at their births good stars were op-
posite 2.
Queen. No, to their lives bad friends were contrary.
K. Rich. All unavoided is the doom of destiny.
Queen. True, when avoided grace makes destinys
My babes were destin'd to a fairer death,
If grace had bless'd thee with a fairer life.

K. Rich. You speak, as if that I had flain my

cousins.

Queen. Cousins, indeed; and by their uncle cozen'd
Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life.
Whose hands foever lanc'd their tender hearts,
Thy head, all indirectly, gave direction :
No doubt the murderous knife was dull and blunt,
'Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart',
To revel in the entrails of my lambs.

:

But that still use of grief makes wild grief tame,
My tongue should to thy ears not name my boys,
'Till that my nails were anchor'd in thine eyes;
And I, in such a defperate bay of death,
Like a poor bark, of fails and tackling reft,

Rush all to pieces on thy rocky bofom.

K. Rich. Madam, so thrive I in my enterprize,

And dangerous success of bloody wars,
As I intend more good to you and yours,
Than ever you or yours by me were harm'd!

Queen. What good is cover'd with the face of hex

ven,

Lo, at their births-) Perhaps we should read-No, at their births- TYRWHITT.

* Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart,] This conceit feems to have been a great favourite of Shakspeare. We meet with it more than once. In K. Henry IV. 2d Part:

“ Thou hid'st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts,
"Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart,
"To stab, &c."

Again, in the Merchant of Venice:

"Not on thy foal, but on thy foul, harsh Jew,

" Thou mak'st thy knife keen" STEEVENS.

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