That will I make, before I let thee go. GLO. Wert thou not banished, on pain of death*? Than death can yield me here by my abode. 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 plagu'd thy bloody deed 5. Q. ELIZ. So just is God, to right the innocent". HAST. O, 'twas the foulest deed to slay that babe, And the most merciless, that e'er was heard of. 4 Wert thou not banished, on pain of death ?] Margaret fled into France after the battle of Hexham in 1464, and Edward soon afterwards issued a proclamation, prohibiting any of his subjects from aiding her to return, or harbouring her, should she attempt to revisit England. She remained abroad till the 14th of April, 1471, when she landed at Weymouth. After the battle of Tewksbury, in May, 1471, she was confined in the Tower, where she continued a prisoner till 1475, when she was ransomed by her father Regnier, and removed to France, where she died in 1482. The present scene is in 1477-8. So that her introduction in the present scene is a mere poetical fiction. MALONE. hath PLAGU'D thy bloody deed.] So, in King John: To plague, in ancient language, is to punish. Hence the scriptural term-" the plagues of Egypt." STEEVENS. So just is God, to right the innocent.] So, in Thomas Lord Cromwell, 1602: "How just is God, to right the innocent!" RITSON. RIV. Tyrants themselves wept when it was re ported. DORS. No man but prophesied revenge for it. BUCK. Northumberland, then present, wept to see it 7. Q. MAR. What! were you snarling all, before I came, Ready to catch each other by the throat, Did York's dread curse prevail so much with heaven, Though not by war, by surfeit die your king, 7 Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.] Alluding to a scene in King Henry VI. Part III. vol. xviii. p. 401: "What, weeping ripe, my lord Northumberland ?" STEEVENS. **Could all BUT answer for that peevish brat?] This is the reading of all the editions, yet I have no doubt but we ought to read "Could all not answer for that peevish brat?" The sense seems to require this amendment; and there are no words so frequently mistaken for each other as not and but. M. MASON. But is only" Could nothing less answer for the death of that brat than the death of my Henry and Edward? MALONE. 9- by surfeit die your king,] Alluding to his luxurious life. JOHNSON. And see another, as I see thee now, Deck'd in thy rights, as thou art stall'd in mine! GLO. Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither'd hag. Q. MAR. And leave out thee? stay, dog, for thou If heaven have any grievous plague in store, On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace! I elvish-MARK'D,] The common people in Scotland (as I learn from Kelly's Proverbs,) have still an aversion to those who have any natural defect or redundancy, as thinking them mark'd out for mischief. STEEVENS. 2-rooting hog!] The expression is fine, alluding (in memory of her young son) to the ravage which hogs make, with the finest flowers, in gardens; and intimating that Elizabeth was to expect no other treatment for her sons. WARBURTON. She calls him hog, as an appellation more contemptuous than boar, as he is elsewhere termed from his ensigns armorial. JOHNSON. In The Mirror for Magistrates is the following Complaint of Collingbourne, who was cruelly executed for making a rime: Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity "For where I meant the king by name of hog, "As cat and rat, the half-names of the rest, "To hide the sense that they so wrongly wrest." That Lovel was once the common name of a dog may be likewise known from a passage in The Historie of Jacob and Esau, an interlude, 1568: "Then come on at once, take my quiver and my bowe; "Fette lovell my hounde, and my horne to blowe." The rhyme for which Collingbourne suffered was : "A cat, a rat, and Lovell the dog, "Rule all England under a hog." STEEVENS. The rhyme of Collingbourne is thus preserved in Heywood's History of Edward IV. Part II. : "The cat, the rat, and Lovell our dog "The crooke backt boore the way hath found "To root our roses from our ground. "Both flower and bud will he confound, "Till king of beasts the swine be crown'd: "And then the dog, the cat, and rat, "Shall in his trough feed and be fat." The propriety of Dr. Warburton's note, notwithstanding what Dr. Johnson hath subjoined, is fully confirmed by this satire. HENLEY. The persons levelled at by this rhyme were the King, Catesby, Ratcliff, and Lovel, as appears in The Complaint of Collingbourn : 66 MALONE. Catesbye was one whom I called a cat, "A craftie lawyer catching all he could; "The second Ratcliffe, whom I named a rat, "A cruel beast to gnaw on whom he should: "Lord Lovel barkt and byt whom Richard would, "Whom I therefore did rightly terme our dog, Wherewith to ryme I cald the king a hog." 3 The slave of nature,] The expression is strong and noble, and alludes to the ancient custom of masters branding their profligate slaves; by which it is insinuated that his mis-shapen person was the mark that nature had set upon him to stigmatize his ill conditions. Shakspeare expresses the same thought in The Comedy of Errors: Thou slander of thy mother's heavy womb! Thou rag Q. MAR. GLO. Q. MAR. Richard! Ha? I call thee not. GLO. I cry thee mercy then; for I did think, That thou had'st call'd me all these bitter names. Q. MAR. Why, so I did; but look'd for no reply. O, let me make the period to my curse. GLO. 'Tis done by me; and ends in-Margaret. Q. ELIZ. Thus have you breath'd your curse against yourself. Q. MAR. Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune'; "He is deformed, crooked, &c. But as the speaker rises in her resentment, she expresses this contemptuous thought much more openly, and condemns him to a still worse state of slavery: "Sin, death, and hell, have set their marks on him." Only, in the first line, her mention of his moral condition insinuates her reflections on his deformity: and, in the last, her mention of his deformity insinuates her reflections on his moral condition: And thus he has taught her to scold in all the elegance of figure. WARburton. Part of Dr. Warburton's note is confirm'd by a line in our author's Rape of Lucrece, from which it appears he was acquainted with the practice of marking slaves: "Worse than a slavish wipe, or birth-hour's blot." MALONE. + Thou RAG of honour! &c.] This word of contempt is used again in Timon: m "If thou wilt curse, thy father, that poor rag, "Must be the subject." Again, in this play : "These over-weening rags of France." STEEVENS. flourish of my fortune!] This expression is likewise used by Massinger in The Great Duke of Florence: 66 I allow these As flourishings of fortune." STEEVENS. |