I will maintain it with some little cost.

But, first, I'll turn yon' fellow in a his grave;
And then return lamenting to my love.

Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,
may see my shadow as I pass.

That I

[Exit.

SCENE III.-The same. A Room in the Palace.

Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, LORD RIVERS, and LORD GREY.

RIV. Have patience, madam; there's no doubt his majesty
Will soon recover his accustom'd health.

GREY. In that you brook it ill it makes him worse:

Therefore, for God's sake, entertain good comfort,
And cheer his grace with quick and merry words b.
Q. ELIZ. If he were dead, what would betide on me?
GREY. No other harm but loss of such a lord.
Q. ELIZ. The loss of such a lord includes all harms.
GREY. The Heavens have bless'd you with a goodly son,
To be your comforter when he is gone.

Q. ELIZ. Ah, he is young; and his minority
Is put unto the trust of Richard Gloster,
A man that loves not me, nor none of you.
RIV. Is it concluded he shall be protector?
Q. ELIZ. It is determin'd, not concluded yet:
But so it must be if the king miscarry.

Enter BUCKINGHAM and STANLEY.

GREY. Here come the lords of Buckingham and Stanley.
BUCK. Good time of day unto your royal grace!

STAN. God make your majesty joyful as you have been!
Q. ELIZ. The countess Richmond, good my lord of Stanley,
To your good prayer will scarcely say amen.

Yet, Stanley, notwithstanding she 's your wife,
And loves not me, be you, good lord, assur'd
I hate not you for her proud arrogance.

STAN. I do beseech you, either not believe

The envious slanders of her false accusers;

a In-into.

Words, in the quartos; the folio, eyes.

Stanley. In the early part of this play Lord Stanley, who is named such in the fourth and fifth Acts, is called Derby. He was not created Earl of Derby till after the accession of Henry VII. The necessary correction throughout was made by Theobald.

HISTORIES.-VOL. II.

X

Or, if she be accus'd on true report,

Bear with her weakness, which, I think, proceeds
From wayward sickness, and no grounded malice.
Q. ELIZ. Saw you the king to-day, my lord of Stanley?
STAN. But now, the duke of Buckingham and I

Are come from visiting his majesty.

Q. ELIZ. What likelihood of his amendment, lords?
BUCK. Madam, good hope; his grace speaks cheerfully.
Q. ELIZ. God grant him health! did you confer with him?
BUCK. Ay, madam: he desires to make atonement

Between the duke of Gloster and your brothers,
And between them and my lord chamberlain;
And sent to warn a them to his royal presence.
Q. ELIZ. 'Would all were well!-but that will never be.
I fear our happiness is at the height.

Enter GLOSTER, HASTINGS, and DORSET.

GLO. They do me wrong, and I will not endure it :

b

Who are they that complain unto the king,
That I, forsooth, am stern and love them not?
By holy Paul, they love his grace but lightly
That fill his ears with such dissensious rumours.
Because I cannot flatter, and look fair,
Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,
Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,

I must be held a rancorous enemy.

Cannot a plain man live, and think no harm,
But thus his simple truth must be abus'd
By silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

GREY. To whom in all this presence speaks your grace?
GLO. To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace.

When have I injur'd thee? when done thee wrong?-
Or thee?—or thee?—or any of your faction?

A plague upon you all! His royal grace,-
Whom God preserve better than you would wish !—
Cannot be quiet scarce a breathing-while,

But you must trouble him with lewd complaints.
Q. ELIZ. Brother of Gloster, you mistake the matter:
The king, of his own royal disposition,
And not provok'd by any suitor else;
Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred,
That in your outward action shows itself

Against my children, brothers, and myself,
Makes him to send; that thereby he may gather
The ground of your ill-will, and so remove it a.
GLO. I cannot tell :-The world is grown so bad
That wrens make prey
b where eagles dare not perch:
Since every Jack became a gentleman,

There 's many a gentle person made a Jack.

Q. ELIZ. Come, come, we know your meaning, brother Gloster;
You envy my advancement, and my friends';

God grant we never may have need of you!

GLO. Meantime, God grants that we have need of you;
Our brother is imprison'd by your means,
Myself disgrac'd, and the nobility

Held in contempt; while great promotions
Are daily given, to ennoble those

That scarce, some two days since, were worth a noble.
Q. ELIZ. 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 mean
Of my lord Hastings' late imprisonment.

RIV. She may, my lord; for

с

GLO. She may, lord Rivers ?—why, who knows not so?
She may do more, sir, 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 desert.

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 bachelor, and a handsome stripling too:
I wis your grandam had a worser match.

Q. ELIZ. My lord of Gloster, I have too long borne
Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs:
By Heaven, I will acquaint his majesty

Of those gross taunts that oft I have endur'd.

a We print the passage as in the quartos. The folio has only one line, instead of the amplified reading of the quartos;—it is,

"Makes him to send, that he may learn the ground."

Make prey. So in the folio and the first two quartos; the ordinary reading is may prey.
Mean, in the folio; the quartos, cause.

I had rather be a country servant-maid
Than a great queen, with this condition,
To be so baited, scorn'd, and stormed at:
Small joy have I in being England's queen.

Enter QUEEN MARGARET, behind.

Q. MAR. And lessen'd be that small, God, I beseech him a !
Thy honour, state, and seat, is due to me.

GLO. What? threat you me with telling of the king?
Tell him, and spare not: look, what I have said b
I will avouch, in presence of the king:

I dare adventure to be sent to the Tower.

"T is time to speak, my pains are quite forgot.
Q. MAR. Out, devil! I do remember them too well:
Thou kill'dst my husband Henry in the Tower,
And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.
GLO. Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband king,
I was a packhorse in his great affairs;
A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,
A liberal rewarder of his friends;

To royalise his blood I spilt mine own.

Q. 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 St. Albans slain?

Let me put in your minds, if you forget,

What you have been ere this e, and what you are;
Withal, what I have been, and what I am.

Q. MAR. A murtherous villain, and so still thou art.
GLO. Poor Clarence did forsake his father Warwick,
Ay, and forswore himself,-which Jesu pardon!-
Q. 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.

Q. MAR. Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave this world,

Thou cacodæmon! there thy kingdom is.

Rrv. My lord of Gloster, in those busy days,

a Him, in the folio; the quartos, thee.

This line is not found in the folio. The omission is evidently a typographical error.
This, in the folio; the quartos, now.

Which here you urge to prove us enemies,
We follow'd then our lord, our sovereign a 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.
Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out
In sharing that which you have pill'd from me:
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?
Q. MAR. But repetition of what thou hast marr'd ;
That will I make b, before I let thee go.

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 plagued thy bloody deed.
Q. Eliz. So just is God, to right the innocent.
HAST. O, 't was the foulest deed, to slay that babe,
And the most merciless, that e'er was heard of.

[Advancing.

Sovereign, in the folio; the quartos, lawful. The correction of the folio, which has not been adopted by the modern editors, was certainly necessary; for Rivers would scarcely have ventured to use the epithet lawful (legitimate) in the presence of Gloster.

* The double acceptation of the verb make is also exemplified in 'As You Like It:'

"Now, sir, what make you here?

Nothing: I am not taught to make anything."