Think that thy babes were fairer1 than they were, Q. Eliz. My words are dull, O, quicken them with thine! like mine. Q. Mar. Thy woes will make them sharp, and pierce [Exit Q. MAR. Duch. Why should calamity be full of words? Q. Eliz. Windy attorneys to their client woes,3 Airy succeeders of intestate joys, 4 Poor breathing orators of miseries! Let them have scope: though what they do impart 1 were fairer -] So, the quarto. The folio reads-sweeter. Malone. 2 Bettering thy loss makes the bad-causer worse;] We must either read this line thus: Bettering thy loss, make the bad-causer worse, which I believe to be the true reading, or include it in a parenthesis. M. Mason. 3 Duch. Why should calamity be full of words? Q. Eliz. Windy attorneys to their client woes,] So, in our author's Venus and Adonis: "So of concealed sorrow may be said: "Free vent of words love's fire doth assuage; The quarto reads-your client woes. The folio-their clients woes. 4 Airy succeeders of intestate joys,] As I cannot understand the reading of the folio-intestine, I have adopted another from the quarto in 1597: Airy succeeders of intestate joys: i. e. words, tun'd to complaints, succeed joys that are dead; and unbequeathed to them, to whom they should properly descend. Theobald. The metaphor is extremely harsh. The joys already possessed being all consumed and passed away, are supposed to have died intestate, that is, to have made no will, having nothing to bequeath; and more verbal complaints are their successors, but inherit nothing but misery. Malone. 5 though what they do impart Help nothing else, yet do they ease the heart.] So, in Macbeth: "Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak, "Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break " The quarto reads-Help not at all, Malone. Duch. If so, then be not tongue-ty'd: go with me, And in the breath of bitter words let's smother My damned son, that thy two sweet sons smother'd. [Drum, within. I hear his drum,-be copious in exclaims. Enter King RICHARD, and his Train, marching. K. Rich. Who intercepts me in my expedition? Duch. O, she, that might have intercepted thee, By strangling thee in her accursed womb, From all the slaughters, wretch, that thou hast done. Q. Eliz. Hid'st thou that forehead with a golden crown, Where should be branded, if that right were right, The slaughter of the prince that ow'd that crown, 6 And the dire death of my poor sons, and brothers? Tell me, thou villain-slave, where are my children? Duch. Thou toad, thou toad, where is thy brother Clarence? And little Ned Plantagenet, his son? Q. Eliz. Where is the gentle Rivers, Vaughan, Grey? 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 say.— [Flourish. Alarums. K. Rich. Ay; I thank God, my father, and yourself. K. Rich. Madam, I have a touch of your condition,7 6 that ow'd that crown,] i. e. that possessed it. So, in King John: 7 "Which owe the crown that thou o'ermasterest." Steevens, a touch of your condition,] A spice or particle of your temper or disposition. Johnson. So, in Chapman's translation of the 24th Iliad: his cold blood embrac'd a fiery touch "Of anger," &c. Again, in the thirteenth Iliad: if any touch appear "Of glory in thee: " Steevens. That cannot brook the accent of reproof. K. Rich. Do, then; but I'll not hear. K. Rich. And came I not at last to comfort you? 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, subtle, sly, and bloody, More mild, but yet more harmful, kind in hatred: What comfortable hour canst thou name, That ever grac'd me in thy company? K. Rich. 'Faith, none, but Humphrey Hour,1 that call'd your grace 8 Tetchy] Is touchy, peevish, fretful, ill-temper'd. So, in Romeo and Juliet: "To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug -" Ritson. Steevens. 9 That ever grac'd me-] To grace seems here to mean the same as to bless, to make happy. So, gracious is kind, and graces are favours. Johnson. We find the same expression in Macbeth: "Please it your highness "To grace us with your royal company." Steevens. 1 Humphrey Hour,] This may probably be an allusion to some affair of gallantry of which the Duchess 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 personify and christen that hour of the day which summon'd his mother to breakfast. So, in The Wit of a Woman, 1604: "Gentlemen, time makes us brief: our old mistress, Houre, is at hand " Shakspeare might indeed by this strange phrase (Humphrey Hour) have designed to mark the hour at which the good Duchess was as hungry as the followers of Duke Humphrey. The common cant phrase of dining with Duke Humphrey, I have never yet heard satisfactorily explained. It appears, however, from a satyrical pamphlet called The Guls Hornbook, 1609, written by T. Deckar, that in the ancient church of St. Paul, one of aisles was called Duke Humphrey's Walk; in which those who had no means of procuring a dinner, affected to loiter. Deckar To breakfast once, forth of my company. If I be so disgracious in your sight, Let me march on, and not offend you, madam.- concludes his fourth chapter thus: "By this, I imagine you have walked your bellyful, and thereupon being weary, or (which is rather, I beleeve) being most gentleman-like hungry, it is fit that as I brought you unto the duke, so (because he followes the fashion of great men in keeping no house, and that therefore you must go secke 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? "In sooth I saw him sit with duke Humfray: "Manie good welcoms, and much gratis cheere, "Keeps he for everie stragling cavaliere; "An open house haunted with greate resort, 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: 66 "to seeke his dinner in Poules with duke Humphrey to licke dishes, to be a beggar." Again, in The Return of the Knight of the Post, &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: " sundry fellowes in their silkes 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 likewise be remembered that cenotaphs were not uncommon. Steevens. It appears from Stowe's Survey, 1598, that Sir John Bewcampe, son to Guy, and brother to Thomas, Earls of Warwick, who dyed in 1358, had "a faire monument" on the south side of the body of St. Paul's Church. "He," says Stowe, " is by ignorant people misnamed to be Humphrey Duke of Gloster, who lyeth honourably buried at Saint Albans, twentie miles from London: And therefore such as merily professe themselues to serue Duke Humphrey in Powles, are to bee punished here, and sent to Saint Albans, there to be punished againe, for theyr absence from theyr maister, as they call him." Ritson. Humphrey Hour,] I believe nothing more than a quibble was meant. In our poet's twentieth Sonnet we find a similar conceit; a quibble between hues (colours) and Hughes, (formerly spelt Hewes) the person addressed. Malone. VOL. XI. Duch. Either thou wilt die, by God's just ordinance, Ere from this war thou turn a conqueror; Or I with grief and extreme age shall perish, Therefore, take with thee my most heavy curse; Shame serves thy life, and doth thy death attend. [Exit. to curse Abides in me; I say amen to her. [Going. K. Rich. Stay, madam,3 I must speak a word with you. Q. Eliz. I have no more sons 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. Q. Eliz. And must she die for this? O, let her live, And I'll corrupt her manners, stain her beauty; Slander myself, as false to Edward's bed; 2 Shame serves thy life,] To serve is to accompany, servants being near the persons of their masters. Johnson. 3 Stay, madam,] On this dialogue 'tis not necessary to bestow much criticism, part of it is ridiculous, and the whole improbable. Johnson. I cannot agree with Dr. Johnson's opinion. I see nothing ridiculous in any part of this dialogue; and with respect to probability, it was not unnatural that Richard, who by his art and wheedling tongue, had prevailed on Lady Anne to marry him in her heart's extremest grief, should hope to persuade an ambitious, and, as he thought her, a wicked woman, to consent to his marriage with her daughter, which would make her a queen, and aggrandize her family. M. Mason. |