Ye
e see, I drink the water of mine eyes.
Therefore, no more but this:-Henry your sovereign
Is a prisoner to the foe; his state usurp❜d,
His realm a slaughter-house, his subjects slain,
His statutes cancell'd, and his treasure spent;
And yonder is the wolf that makes this spoil.
You fight in justice: then in God's name, lords,
Be valiant, and give signal to the fight.

Omens on the Birth of Richard III.

The owl shriek'd at thy birth, an evil sign; The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time; Dogs howl'd, and hideous tempests shook down trees. The raven rook'd* her on the chimney's top, And chattering pies in dismal discord sung.

-000

KING RICHARD III.

This historical tragedy describes the sanguinary career of King Richard, his murder of his brother (the Duke of Clarence), and the two young princes in the Tower, and his final overthrow and death, at the battle of Bosworth Field, by the Earl of Richmond, afterwards Henry the Seventh, who unites the rival houses of York and Lancaster, and ends the wars of the white and red roses. Dr. Johnson describes this play as one of the most celebrated of Shakspere's performances, but adds:"I know not whether it has not happened to him, as to others, to be praised most when praise is not most deserved. That this play has scenes, noble in themselves, and very well contrived to strike in the exhibition, cannot be denied; but some parts are trifling, others shocking, and some improbable."

* To rook signified to squat down or lodge on any thing.

Аст I.

The Duke of Gloster on his Deformity.

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lower'd upon our house,
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums, changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. *
Grim-visag'd war has smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed + steeds,
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He caper's nimbly in a lady's chamber,
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty,
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable,
That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them ;-
Why I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time;
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,
And descant on mine own deformity;
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well spoken days,-
I am determined to prove a villain,
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

* Dances.

† Armed.

Gloster's Love for Lady Anne.

Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears, Sham'd their aspects with store of childish drops: These eyes which never shed remorseful* tear,— Not, when my father York and Edward wept, To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made When black-faced Clifford shook his sword at him : Nor when thy warlike father, like a child, Told the sad story of my father's death ; And twenty times made pause, to sob and That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks, Like trees bedash'd with rain; in that sad time My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear;

weep,

And what these sorrows could not thence exhale
Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping.
I never sued to friend nor enemy;

My tongue could never learn sweet soothing word;
But now thy beauty is proposed my fee,

My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to speak.

Gloster's praises of his own Person after his successful
Wooing of Lady Anne.

My dukedom to a beggarly denier,†
I do mistake my person all this while;
Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot,
Myself to be a marvellous proper man.
I'll be at charges for a looking-glass :
And entertain a score or two of tailors,
To study fashions to adorn my body:
Since I am crept in favour with myself,
I will maintain it with some little cost.

* Pitiful.

† A small French coin.

Queen Margaret's Execrations on Gloster.
The worm of conscience still be-gnaw 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-mark'd abortive, rooting hog!
High Birth.

I was born so high,

Our aiery buildeth in the cedar's top,

And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.

Gloster's Hypocrisy.

But then I sigh, and, with a piece of Scripture,
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villany

With old odd ends stolen forth of Holy Writ;
And seem a saint when most I play the devil.

Clarence's Dream; Scene between Clarence and
Brakenbury.

BRAKENBURY. What was your dream, my lord? 1 pray you tell me.

CLARENCE. Methought that I had broken from the
Tower,

And was embark'd to cross to Burgundy :
And, in my company, my brother Gloster
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk

Upon the hatches; thence we look'd toward England,
And cited up a thousand heavy times,
During the wars of York and Lancaster,
That had befallen us. As we paced along

Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,

Methought that Gloster stumbled; and, in falling
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard,
Into the tumbling billows of the main.

O Lord! methought what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of water in mine ears!
What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks ;
A thousand men, that fishes gnaw'd upon :
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea.

Some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in those holes Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept (As 't were in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems, That woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep, And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd by. BRAKENBURY. Had you such leisure in the time of death

To gaze upon these secrets of the deep ?

CLARENCE. Methought I had; and often did I strive To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth To seek the empty, vast, and wand'ring air. But smother'd it within my panting bulk,* Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.

BRAKENBURY. Awak'd you not with this sore agony? CLARENCE. O, no, my dream was lengthen'd after life;

O, then began the tempest to my soul;

I pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood,

With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.

* Body.