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Queen. By Him, that rais'd me to this careful height 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. the may, lord Rivers?-why, who knows

not fo?

She may do more, fir, 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 defert.
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 batchelor, a handsome stripling too:
I wis, your grandam had a worser match.

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Queen. My lord of Glofter, I have too long borne Your blunt upbraidings, and your bitter scoffs: By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty, Of those grofs taunts I often have endur'd. I had rather be a country fervant-maid, Than a great queen, with this conditionTo be fo baited, scorn'd, and stormed at: Small joy have I in being England's queen.

Enter Queen Margaret, behind.

2.Mar. And lessen'd be that small, God, I beseech

thee!

Thy honour, state, and feat, is due to me.

Glo. What! threat you me with telling of the king? Tell him, and spare not; look, what I have faid

Tell him, and spare not; look, what I have faid] This verse

I have restored from the old quarto's. THEOBALD.

I

I will avouch in prefence of the king: I dare adventure to be sent to the Tower. 'Tis time to speak, my pains are quite forgot. 2. Mar. Out, devil! I remember them too well: Thou kill'dst my husband Henry in the Tower, And Edward, my poor fon, at Tewksbury.

Glo. Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband king,

I was a pack-horse 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.

2. 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 faint Alban's flain?
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.

2. 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!

1

-my pains) My labours; my toils. JOHNSON.

* Out, devil!--]

Mr. Lambe observes in his notes on the ancient metrical hiftory 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:

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out on ye, owls!" STEEVENS.

3 royalize,] i. e. to make royal. So, in Claudius Tiberius Nero, 1607:

"Who means to-morrow for to reyalize

"The triumphs &c." STEEVENS.

4

In Margaret's battle,

- Was not your busband,

It is faid in Henry VI. that he died in quarrel of the house of York.

JOHNSON.

2. Mar. 2. 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.

2. Mar. Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave this

world,

Thou cacodæmon! there thy kingdom is.
Riv. My lord of Glofter, in those busy days,
Which here you urge, to prove us enemies,
* We follow'd then our lord, our fovereign 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!

Queen. 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.

[She advances.

2. Mar. A little joy enjoys the queen thereof; For I am fhe, and altogether joyless. I can no longer hold me patient. *Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out In sharing that which you have pill'd from me 7: Which of you trembles not, that looks on me? If not, that, I being queen, you bow like fubjects;

5 We follow'd then our lord, our sovereign king;] The quarto of 1613 reads:- our lawful king; which is, perhaps, bet ter, as it juftifies the attachment of his followers. MALONE.

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.

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.

Yet that, by you depos'd, you quake like rebels?
Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away!

Glo. Foul wrinkled witch, what mak'ft thou in my

fight??

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

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

nishment,

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

Glo. The curse my noble father laid on thee,-.
When thou didft 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 foul
Denounc'd against thee, are all fallen upon thee;
And God, not we, hath plagu'd thy bloody deed.
Queen. So just is God, to right the innocent.
Haft. 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 re-
ported.

& 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:

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Since ev'ry Jack is made a gentleman,
There's many a gentle perfon made a Jack. JOHNSON.

what mak'st thou in my fight?] An obsolete expression

for what doit thou in my fight. So, in Othello : Ancient, what makes he here?"

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Margaret in her answer takes the word in its ordinary accepta tion. MALONE.

Dorf.

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Dorf. No man but prophesy'd revenge for it. Buck. Northumberland, then present, wept to seeit'. 2. 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 woeful banishment,
3 Could all but answer for that peevish brat?
Can curses pierce the clouds, and enter heaven?-
Why, then give way, dull clouds, to my quick

curfes!

Though not by war, 4 by furfeit die your king,
As ours by murder, to make him a king!
Edward, thy fon, 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,
Out-live thy glory, like my wretched self!
Long may'st thou live, to wail thy children's loss;
And fee another, as I see thee now,

Deck'd in thy rights, as thou art stall'd in mine!

I

* Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.] Alluding to a

scene in K. Hen. VI. p. 3.

What weeping ripe, my lord Northumberland?

STEEVENS.

2 And turn you all your hatred now on me?] I would point thus:

And turn you all, your hatred now on me?

to shew that all is not to be joined in construction with hatred. That the poet did not intend that it should be connected with batred, appears, I think, from the foregoing line:

What! were you snarling ali &c.

The quarto reads, perhaps better:

And turn you now your hatred, all on me? MALONE,

3 Could, &c.] The folio reads :

Should all

which is, perhaps, better. MALONE.

by surfeit die your king!] Alluding to his luxurious

life. JOHNSON.

Long

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