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SCENE III.

Pomfret. Before the Castle.

Enter RATCLIFF, with a Guard, conducting RIVERS, GREY, and VAUGHAN, to Execution.

RAT. Come, bring forth the prisoners9.

RIV. Sir Richard Ratcliff, let me tell thee this,— To-day, shalt thou behold a subject die, For truth, for duty, and for loyalty.

GREY. God keep the prince from all the pack of you!

A knot you are of damned blood-suckers.

VAUGH. You live, that shall cry woe for this hereafter.

RAT. Despatch; the limit of your lives is out. RIV. O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison, Fatal and ominous to noble peers!

Within the guilty closure of thy walls,

Richard the second here was hack'd to death:
And, for more slander to thy dismal seat,
We give thee up our guiltless blood to drink.

Grey,] Queen Elizabeth Grey is deservedly pitied for losing her two sons; but the royalty of their birth has so engrossed the attention of historians, that they never reckon into the number of her misfortunes the murder of this her second son, Sir Richard Grey. It is as remarkable how slightly the death of our Earl Rivers is always mentioned, though a man invested with such high offices of trust and dignity; and how much we dwell on the execution of the Lord Chamberlain Hastings, a man in every light his inferior. In truth, the generality draw their ideas of English story, from the tragick rather than the historick authors. WALPOLE.

9 Come, bring forth the prisoners.] This speech is wanting in the folio, and might (as it has neither use, nor pretensions to metre,) be as well omitted as retained. STEEVENS.

I

the LIMIT] For the limited time. See vol. xvi. p. 184, n. 9. MALOne.

GREY. Now Margaret's curse is fallen upon our

heads,

When she exclaim'd on Hastings, you, and I,
For standing by when Richard stabb'd her son.
RIV. Then curs'd she Hastings, then curs'd she
Buckingham,

Then curs'd she Richard :-O, remember, God,
To hear her prayers for them, as now for us!
And for my sister, and her princely sons,
Be satisfied, dear God, with our true bloods,
Which, as thou know'st, unjustly must be spilt !
RAT. Make haste, the hour of death is expiate 2.

Make haste, the hour of death is EXPIATE.] Thus the folio. The quarto furnishes a line that has occurred already :

"Come, come, despatch; the limit of your lives is out." Expiate is used for expiated; so confiscate, contaminate, consummate, &c. &c. It seems to mean, fully completed, and ended. Shakspeare has again used the word in the same sense in his 22d Sonnet :

"Then look I death my days should expiate."

So, in Locrine, 1595:

"Lives Sabren yet, to expiate my wrath."

The editor of the second folio, who altered whatever he did not understand, reads arbitrarily

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"Despatch; the hour of death is now expir'd."

and he has been followed by all the modern editors. MALONE. "- the hour of death is expiate." As I cannot make sense of this, I should certainly read, with the second folio:

the hour of death is now expired."

meaning the hour appointed for his death. The passage quoted by Mr. Malone from Locrine, is nothing to the purpose, for there, to expiate means to atone for, or satisfy. M. MASON.

I do not well understand the reading which Mr. Malone prefers, though I have left it in the text. Perhaps we should read:

"the hour of death is expirate,"

which accords with Shakspeare's phraseology, and needs no explanation. Thus, in Romeo and Juliet:

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and expire the term

"Of a despised life-." STEEVens.

Mr. Mason, who, I believe, was not possessed of any of the ancient copies, seems always to set them at defiance. Even if the passage quoted from Locrine did not apply, that from our author's

RIV. Come, Grey,-come, Vaughan,-let us here embrace :

Farewell, until we meet again in heaven. [Exeunt.

SCENE IV.

London. A Room in the Tower.

BUCKINGHAM, STANLEY, HASTINGS, the Bishop of
ELY3, CATESBY, LOVEL, and Others, sitting at a
Table: Officers of the Council attending.
HAST. Now, noble peers, the cause why we are

met

Is-to determine of the coronation:

In God's name, speak, when is this royal day? BUCK. Are all things ready for that royal time? STAN. They are; and wants but nomination*. ELY. To-morrow then I judge a happy day. BUCK. Who knows the lord protector's mind herein ?

Who is most inward with the noble duke?

own Sonnets appears to me decisive of the meaning with which he used the word. MALONE.

3-Bishop of Ely,] Dr. John Morton; who was elected to that see in 1478. He was advanced to the see of Canterbury in 1486, and appointed Lord Chancellor in 1487. He died in the year 1500. This prelate, Sir Thomas More tells us, first devised the scheme of putting an end to the long contest between the houses of York and Lancaster, by a marriage between Henry Earl of Richmond, and Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Edward IV. and was a principal agent in procuring Henry when abroad to enter into a covenant for that purpose. MALONE.

+ - and wants but nomination.] i. e. the only thing wanting, is appointment of a particular day for the ceremony. STEEVENS. sinward-] i. e. intimate, confidential. So, in Measure for Measure:

"Sir, I was an inward of his." STEEVENS.

ELY. Your grace, we think, should soonest know

his mind.

BUCK. We know each other's faces: for our hearts,

He knows no more of mine, than I of yours;
Nor I, of his, my lord, than you of mine :-
Lord Hastings, you and he are near in love.
HAST. I thank his grace, I know he loves me
well;

But, for his purpose in the coronation,

I have not sounded him, nor he deliver'd
His gracious pleasure any way therein :
But you, my noble lord, may name the time;
And in the duke's behalf I'll give my voice,
Which, I presume, he'll take in gentle part.

Enter GLOSter.

ELY. In happy time, here comes the duke himself.

GLO. My noble lords and cousins, all, good.

morrow:

I have been long a sleeper; but, I trust,
My absence doth neglect no great design,
Which by my presence might have been concluded.
BUCK. Had you not come upon your cue, my
lord,

William lord Hastings had pronounc'd your part,—
I mean, your voice,-for crowning of the king.

GLO. Than my lord Hastings, no man might be

bolder;

6 Had you not come upon your CUE,] This expression is borrowed from the theatre. The cue, queue, or tail of a speech, consists of the last words, which are the token for an entrance or answer. To come on the cue, therefore, is to come at the proper time. JOHNSON. So, in a Midsummer-Night's Dream, Quince says to Flute"You speak all your part at once, cues and all." STEEVENS.

His lordship knows me well, and loves me well.
HAST. I thank your grace".

GLO. My lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn,
I saw good strawberries' in your garden there;
I do beseech you, send for some of them.

ELY. Marry, and will, my lord, with all my heart.

[Exit ELY.

GLO. Cousin of Buckingham, a word with

you.

[Takes him aside. Catesby hath sounded Hastings in our business; And finds the testy gentleman so hot,

That he will lose his head, ere give consent, His master's child, as worshipfully he terms it, Shall lose the royalty of England's throne. BUCK. Withdraw yourself awhile, I'll go with you. [Exeunt GLOSTER and BUCKINGHAM. STAN. We have not yet set down this day of triumph.

6 Hast. I thank your grace.] This little speech I have restored from the original quarto 1597. MALONE.

7 I saw good strawberries-] The reason why the bishop was despatched on this errand, is not clearer in Holinshed, from whom Shakspeare adopted the circumstances, than in this scene, where it is introduced. Nothing seems to have happened which might not have been transacted with equal security in the presence of the reverend cultivator of these strawberries, whose complaisance is likewise recorded by the author of the Latin play on the same subject, in the British Museum :

Eliensis antistes venis? senem quies,

Juvenem labor decet: ferunt hortum tuum

Decora fraga plurimum producere.
Episcopus Eliensis.

Nil tibi claudetur hortus quod meus
Producit; esset lautius vellem mihi,

Quo sim tibi gratus.

This circumstance of asking for the strawberries, however, may have been mentioned by the historians merely to show the unusual affability and good humour which the dissembling Gloster affected at the very time when he had determined on the death of Hastings. STEEVENS.

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