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That cannot brook the accent of reproof.
Duch. O, let me speak.

K. Rich.

Do, then; but I'll not hear. Duch. I will be mild and gentle in my words.

K. Rich. And brief, good mother; for I am in haste. Duch. 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 ?

Duch. 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;

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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

s Tetchy-] Is touchy, peevish, fretful, ill-temper'd. Ritson. So, in Romeo and Juliet:

"To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug." 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:

1

"Please it your highness

"To grace us with your royal company." Steevens.

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.—
Strike up the drum.

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 seeke 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 interpre fation:

"'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:

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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.

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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,

And never look upon thy face again.

Therefore, take with thee my most heavy curse;
Which, in the day of battle, tire thee more,
Than all the complete armour that thou wear'st!
My prayers on the adverse party fight;
And there the little souls 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.
Q. Eliz. Though far more cause, yet much less spirit

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.

Throw over her the veil of infamy:

So she may live unscarr'd of bleeding slaughter,
I will confess she was not Edward's daughter.

K. Rich. Wrong not her birth, she is of royal blood.4
Q. Eliz. To save her life, I'll say she is not so.
K. Rich. Her life is safest only in her birth.

Q. Eliz. And only in that safety died her brothers.
K. Rich. Lo, at their births5 good stars were opposite.
Q. Eliz. No, to their lives bad friends were contrary.
K. Rich. All unavoided is the doom of destiny.
Q. Eliz. True, when avoided grace makes destiny:
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 slain my cousins.
Q. Eliz. Cousins, indeed; and by their uncle cozen'd
Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life.
Whose hands soever lanc'd their tender hearts,
Thy head, all indirectly, gave direction:7

No doubt the murderous knife was dull and blunt,
Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart,8
To revel in the entrails of my lambs.

But that still use of grief makes wild grief tame,

princess.

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

5 Lo, at their births-] Perhaps we should read-No, at their births 1.

Tyrwhitt.

6 All unavoided &c.] i. e. unavoidable. So, before :

“Whose unavoided eye is dangerous." Malone.

7 Thy head, all indirectly, gave direction:] This is a jingle in which Shakspeare perhaps found more delight than his readers. So, in Hamlet:

"By indirections find directions out."

The same opposition of words occurs also in K. John. Steevens. 8 Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart,] This conceit seems also to have been a great favourite of our author. We meet with it more than once. So, in King Henry IV, P. II:

"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:

9

"Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew,

"Thou mak❜st thy knife keen

Steevens.

still use i. e. constant use. So, in King Richard II : "A generation of still breeding thoughts." Steevens.

"

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 desperate bay of death,
Like a poor bark, of sails and tackling reft,
Rush all to pieces on thy rocky bosom.

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!

Q. Eliz. What good is cover'd with the face of heaven, To be discover'd, that can do me good?

K.Rich. The advancement of your children, gentle lady. Q. Eliz. Up to some scaffold, there to lose their heads? K. Rich. No, to the dignity and height of fortune, The high imperial type1 of this earth's glory.

Q. Eliz. Flatter my sorrows with report of it; Tell me, what state, what dignity, what honour, Canst thou demise to any child of mine?

K. Rich. Even all I have; ay, and myself and all, Will I withal endow a child of thine;

So in the Lethe of thy angry soul

Thou drown the sad remembrance of those wrongs,3 Which, thou supposest, I have done to thee.

1 The high imperial type-] Type is exhibition, show, display. Johnson.

I think it means emblem, one of its usual significations.-By the imperial type of glory, Richard means a crown. M. Mason. The canopy placed over a pulpit is still called by architects a type. It is, I apprehend, in a similar sense that the word is here used. Henley.

Bullokar, in his Expositor, 1616, defines Type-"A figure, form, or likeness of any thing." Cawdrey in his Alphabetical Table, &c. 1604, calls it-" figure, example, or shadowe of any thing." The word is used in King Henry VI, P. III, as here:

"Thy father bears the type of king of Naples." Malone. 2 Canst thou demise-] To demise is to grant, from demittere, to devolve a right from one to another. Steevens. The constant language of leases is, " demised, granted, and to farm let." But I believe the word is used by no poet but Shakspeare. For demise, the reading of the quarto, and first folio, the editor of the second folio arbitrarily substituted devise. Malone. 3 So in the Lethe of thy angry soul

Thou drown the sad remembrance of those wrongs,] So, in King Henry IV, P. II:

"May this be wash'd in Lethe and forgotten?" Steevens.

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