And not provoked 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.

Glo. I cannot tell ;-the world is grown so bad, That wrens may prey where eagles dare not perch: Since every Jack became a gentleman,

1

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 imprisoned by your means,

Myself disgraced, 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 raised me to this careful height,

From that contented hap which I enjoyed,

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 cause

Of my lord Hastings' late imprisonment.

Riv. She may, my lord; for

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,

1 This proverbial expression at once demonstrates the origin of the term Jack, so often used by Shakspeare. It means one of the very lowest class of people, among whom this name is most common and familiar.

And lay those honors 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, 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 I often have endured. I had rather be a country servant-maid, Than a great queen, with this conditionTo be so baited, scorned, and stormed at; Small joy have I in being England's queen.

Enter QUEEN MARGARET, behind.

Q. Mar. And lessened be that small, God, I beseech thee!

Thy honor, 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 I will avouch, in presence of the king:

2

I dare adventure to be sent to the Tower.
"Tis time to speak, my pains are quite forgot.
Q. Mar. Out, devil! I 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 royalize 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 Saint Albans slain ?1
Let me put in your minds, if you forgot,
What you have been ere now, and what you are;
Withal, what I have been, and what I am.

Q. Mar. A murderous 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 mewed 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.

Riv. My lord of Gloster, in those busy days,
Which here you urge, to prove us enemies,
We followed then our lord, our lawful king;
So should we you, if you should be our king.
Glo. If I should be?-I had rather be a pedler.
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.- [Advancing.
Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out
In sharing that which you have pilled 2 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 deposed, you quake like rebels ?-
Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away!

Glo. Foul, wrinkled witch, what mak'st thou in my
sight?

1 See note on King Henry VI., Part III., Act iii. Sc. 2. Margaret's battle

is Margaret's army.

2 To pill is to pillage.

VOL. V.

4

3 Gentle is here used ironically.

Q. Mar. But repetition of what thou hast marred; That will I make, before I let thee go.

Glo. Wert thou not banished on pain of death?1
Q. Mar. I was; but I do find more pain in banish-

ment,

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,
Steeped in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland ;-
His curses, then from bitterness of soul
Denounced 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, 'twas the foulest deed to slay that babe,
And the most merciless that e'er was heard of.

Riv. Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported. Dors. No man but prophesied revenge for it. Buck. Northumberland, then present, wept to see it. Q. Mar. What! were you snarling all, before I came, Ready to catch each other by the throat,

And turn you all your hatred now on me!

Did York's dread curse prevail so much with Heaven, That Henry's death, my lovely Edward's death, Their kingdom's loss, my woful banishment,

3

Could all but answer for that peevish brat?

1 Margaret fled into France after the battle of Hexham, in 1464, and Edward issued a proclamation prohibiting any of his subjects from aiding her return, or harboring her, should she attempt to revisit England. She remained abroad till 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. So that her introduction in the present scene is a mere poetical fiction.

2 To plague in ancient language is to punish. Hence the scriptural term of the plagues of Egypt.

3 But is here used in its exceptive sense; could all this only, or nothing but (i. e. be out or except) this answer for the death of that brat?

Can curses pierce the clouds, and enter heaven?—
Why, then give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses!-
Though not by war, by surfeit die your king,'
As ours by murder, to make him a king!
Edward, thy son, that now is prince of Wales,
For Edward, my son, that was prince of Wales,
Die in his youth, by like untimely violence!
Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,
Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self!
Long mayst thou live, to wail thy children's loss;
And see another, as I see thee now,

Decked in thy rights, as thou art stalled in mine!
Long die thy happy days before thy death;
And, after many lengthened hours of grief,
Die, neither mother, wife, nor England's queen!-
Rivers, and Dorset,-you were standers by,-
And so wast thou, lord Hastings,-when my son
Was stabbed with bloody daggers; God, I pray him,
That none of you may live your natural age,
But by some unlooked accident cut off!

Glo. Have done thy charm, thou hateful, withered

hag.

Q. Mar. And leave out thee? Stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me.

If Heaven have any grievous plague in store,
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,
O, let them keep it, till thy sins be ripe,
And then hurl down their indignation

On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace!
The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul!
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv'st,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be while some tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog! 2

1 Alluding to his luxurious life.

2 "Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog." It was an old prejudice, which is not yet quite extinct, that those who are defective or deformed, are marked by nature as prone to mischief. She calls him hog, in allusion to