For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd,
To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown,
God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay
A glorious angel: then, if angels fight,

Weak men must fall; for heaven still guards the right.

Enter SALISBURY.

Welcome, my lord; How far off lies your power?
SAL. Nor near, nor further off, my gracious lord,
Than this weak arm: Discomfort guides my tongue,
And bids me speak of nothing but despair.
One day too late, I fear, my noble lord,
Hath clouded all thy happy days on earth:
O, call back yesterday, bid time return,

And thou shalt have twelve thousand fighting men!
To-day, to-day, unhappy day, too late,

O'erthrows thy joys, friends, fortune, and thy state;

shion or interest, to impute the original of every tenet which they have been taught to think false or foolish. JOHNSON.

Far be it from me to palliate the conduct of the wretched James; but the truth is, that the inherent rights of the people had been ill understood, or rather were not acknowledged by his predecessors. The doctrine of the divine right of kings, and of the passive obedience of subjects, have never been carried further in any country than in this island, while the house of Tudor sate on the throne. Of this fact, the Homilies, composed during the reign of young Edward, and appointed in the Thirty-nine Articles to be read in churches, furnish striking and abundant proof. Take, as an instance, the following extract from the Homily against Disobedience and wilful Rebellion: "As the name of the king is very often attributed and given unto God in holy scriptures, so doth God himself in the same scriptures sometime vouchsafe to communicate his name with earthly princes, terming them Gods." 1st part. And in the 4th part, we are directed to call to remembrance the heavy wrath and dreadful indignation of Almighty God against subjects as do only but inwardly grudge, mutter, and murmur against their governors, though their inward treason, so privily hatched in their breasts, come not to an open declaration of their doings." HOLT WHITE.

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For all the Welshmen, hearing thou wert dead,
Are gone to Bolingbroke, dispers'd, and fled.

AUм. Comfort, my liege: why looks your grace so pale ?

K. RICH. But now the blood of twenty thousand men

Did triumph in my face, and they are fled; And, till so much blood thither come again, Have I not reason to look pale and dead' ? All souls that will be safe, fly from my side; For time hath set a blot upon my pride.

AUM. Comfort, my liege; remember who you

are.

K. RICH. I had forgot myself: Am I not

king? 8

Awake, thou sluggard majesty! thou sleep'st.
Is not the king's name forty thousand names??
Arm, arm, my name ! a puny subject strikes
At thy great glory.-Look not to the ground,
Ye favourites of a king; Are we not high?
High be our thoughts: I know, my uncle York
Hath power enough to serve our turn.

comes here!

But who

7 Have I not reason to LOOK pale and DEAD?] Henry IV. Part II. :

So, in King

"Even such a man

"So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
"Drew Priam's curtains in the dead of night."

Again, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream:

"So should a murderer look, so dead, so grim."

MALONE.

8 coward-] Thus the quarto. The folio has-sluggard. MALONE.

9 Is not the king's name forty thousand names?] Thus, in King Richard III. :

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Besides, the king's name is a tower of strength." See a speech of Antigonus, in Plutarch, of this kind, vol. ii. p. 199, 4to. Gr. S. W.

Enter SCROOP.

SCROOP. More health and happiness betide my liege,

Than can my care-tun'd tongue deliver him.

K. RICH. Mine ear is open', and my heart prepar'd ;

The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold.
Say, is my kingdom lost? why, 'twas my care;
And what loss is it, to be rid of care?
Strives Bolingbroke to be as great as we ?
Greater he shall not be; if he serve God,
We'll serve him too, and be his fellow so:
Revolt our subjects? that we cannot mend;
They break their faith to God, as well as us:
Cry, woe, destruction, ruin, loss, decay;

The worst is-death, and death will have his day. SCROOP. Glad am I, that your highness is so arm'd

To bear the tidings of calamity.
Like an unseasonable stormy day,

Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores,
As if the world were all dissolv'd to tears;

So high above his limits swells the rage

Of Bolingbroke, covering your fearful land

With hard bright steel, and hearts harder than

steel.

White-beards2 have arm'd their thin and hairless

scalps

1 Mine ear is open, &c.] It seems to be the design of the poet to raise Richard to esteem in his fall, and consequently to interest the reader in his favour. He gives him only passive fortitude, the virtue of a confessor, rather than of a king. In his prosperity we saw him imperious and oppressive; but in his distress he is wise, patient, and pious. JOHNSON.

2 White-BEARDS -] Thus the quartos. The first folio, with a ridiculous blunder,-White bears. STEEVENS.

Mr. Steevens has omitted to mention that the same ridiculous blunder is continued in the second folio. MALONE.

3

Against thy majesty; and boys*, with women's voices,
Strive to speak big, and clap their female joints
In stiff unwieldy arms against thy crown:
Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows
Of double-fatal yew against thy state;
Yea, distaff-women manage rusty bills
Against thy seat: both young and old rebel,
And all goes worse than I have power to tell.

3

5

* So quarto 1597: all the other copies, and boys.
† Quartos 1608 and 1615, browes.

Quartos 1608 and 1615, woe.

and CLAP their female joints-] Mr. Pope more elegantly reads-" and clasp-;" which has been adopted by the subsequent editors. But the emendation does not seem absolutely necessary. MALONE.

Clip would be still nearer than clasp.

RITSON.

Lee, in his Mithridates, has imitated this passage, Act IV. :

"The very boys, like Cupids dress'd in arms,

Clap their young harness'd thighs, and trust to battle."

STEEVENS.

4 Thy very BEADS MEN learn to bend their bows-] Such is the reading of all the copies; yet I doubt whether beadsmen be right, for the bow seems to be mentioned here as the proper weapon of a beadsman. The King's beadsmen were his chaplains. Trevisa calls himself the beadsman of his patron. Beadsman might likewise be any man maintained by charity to pray for his benefactor. Hanmer reads- "the very beadsmen," but thy is better. JOHNSON. The reading of the text is right enough : As boys strive to speak big, and clasp their effeminate joints in stiff unwieldy arms," &c. 66 so his very beadsmen learn to bend their bows against him." Their does not absolutely denote that the bow was their usual or proper weapon; but only taken up and appropriated by them on this occasion. PERCY.

66

5 Of double-fatal yew-] Called so, because the leaves of the yew are poison, and the wood is employed for instruments of death. WARBURTON.

From some of the ancient statutes it appears that every Englishman, while archery was practised, was obliged to keep in his house either a bow of yew or some other wood. It should seem therefore that yews were not only planted in church-yards to defend the churches from the wind, but on account of their use in making bows; while by the benefit of being secured in enclosed places, their poisonous quality was kept from doing mischief to cattle. STEEVENS.

K.RICH. TOO well, too well, thou tell'st a tale so ill. Where is the earl of Wiltshire? where is Bagot? What is become of Bushy? where is Green? That they have let the dangerous enemy Measure our confines with such peaceful steps? If we prevail, their heads shall pay for it.

I warrant they have made peace with Bolingbroke. SCROOP. Peace have they made with him, indeed, my lord.

K. RICH. O villains, vipers, damn'd without redemption !

Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man!

6 Where is the earl of Wiltshire? where is Bagot?

What is become of Bushy? where is Green?] Here are four of them named; and, within a very few lines, the King hearing they had made their peace with Bolingbroke, calls them three Judasses. But how was their peace made? Why, with the loss of their heads. This being explained, Aumerle says:

66

Is Bushy, Green, and the earl of Wiltshire dead ?" So that Bagot ought to be left out of the question: and, indeed, he had made the best of his way for Chester, and from thence had escaped into Ireland.

The poet could not be guilty of so much forgetfulness and absurdity. The transcribers must have blundered. It seems probable to me that he wrote, as I have conjecturally altered the text: "Where is the earl of Wiltshire? where is he got? i. e. into what corner of my dominions is he slunk and absconded. THEOBALD.

This emendation Dr. Warburton adopts. Hanmer leaves a blank after Wiltshire. I believe the author, rather than transcriber, made a mistake. "Where is he got," does not sound in my ear like an expression of Shakspeare. JOHNSON.

I agree with Johnson in thinking that this was a mistake of the author's, because we find a mistake of the same nature in the second Act, where Bolingbroke says, that Bristol Castle was held by Bushy and Bagot; yet it is certain that Bagot was not taken at Bristol, for we find him afterwards accusing Aumerle of treason; and in the parting scene between him, Green, and Bushy, he declares his intention of flying to the King in Ireland. M. MASON.

Perhaps Shakspeare intended to mark more strongly the perturbation of the King by making him inquire at first for Bagot, whose loyalty, on further recollection, might show him the impropriety of his question. MALONE.