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I was a pack-horfe in his great affairs;
A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,
A liberal rewarder of his friends;

I

To royalize his blood, I fpilt mine own.

2. Mar. Ay, and much better blood than his, or thine.

Glo. In all which time, you, and your hufband

Grey,

Were factious for the house of Lancafter ;

And, Rivers, fo were you :- Was not your husband
In Margaret's battle at faint Alban's flain?
Let me put in your minds, if you forget,

What you have been ere now, and what you are;
Withal, what I have been, and what I am.

2. Mar. A murd'rous villain, and fo ftill thou art. Glo. Poor Clarence did forfake his father Warwick, Ay, and forfwore himfelf,-Which Jefu pardon!9. Mar. Which God revenge!

Glo. To fight on Edward's party, for the crown; And, for his meed, poor lord, he is mew'd up: I would to God, my heart were flint, like Edward's, Or Edward's foft and pitiful, like mine;

I am too childish-foolish for this world.

2. Mar. Hie thee to hell for fhame, and leave this world,

Thou cacodæmon! there thy kingdom is.

Riv. My lord of Glofter, in those busy days,
Which here you urge, to prove us enemies,
We follow'd then our lord, our fovereign king;
So fhould we you, if fhould be our king..

you

-royalize,] i. e. to make royal. So, in Claudius Tiberius Nero, 1607:

"Who means to-morrow for to royalize

"The triumphs &c." STEEVENS.

2

Was not your husband,

In Margaret's battle,

1

It is faid in Henry VI. that he died in quarrel of the house of York.

JOHNSON.

Glo.

Gle. If I fhould be ?-I had rather be a pedlar: Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof!

Queen. As little joy, my lord, as you fuppofe You should enjoy, were you this country's king; As little joy you may fuppofe in me,

That I enjoy, being the queen thereof.

2. Mar. A little joy enjoys the queen thereof; For I am fhe, and altogether joylefs.

I can no longer hold me patient.

[She advances. Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out In fharing that which you have pill'd from me 4: Which of you trembles not, that looks on me? If not, that, I being queen, you bow like fubjects; Yet that, by you depos'd, you quake like rebels? Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away!

5

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

2. Mar. But repetition of what thou hast marr'd; That will I make, before I let thee go.

Glo. Wert thou not banished, on pain of death? 2. Mar. I was; but I do find more pain in ba nishment,

Than death can yield me here by my abode.
A hufband, and a fon, thou ow'ft to me,-

Hear me, you wrangling pirates, &c.] This fcene of Marga ret's imprecations is fine and artful. She prepares the audience, like another Caffandra, for the following tragic revolutions.

WARBURTON.

which you have pill'd from me :] To pill is to pillage. So, in the Martyr'd Soldier, by Shirley, 1638: "He has not pill'd the rich, nor flay'd the poor."

Ah, gentle villain,

STEEVENS.

] We fhould read:

WARBURTON.

ungentle villain,-

The meaning of gentle is not, as the commentator imagines, tender or courteous, but high-born. An oppofition is meant between that and villain, which means at once a wicked and a lowborn wretch.

So before:

Since ev'ry Jack is made a gentleman,

There's many a gentle perfon made a Jack. Jonsson.

And

And thou, a kingdom;-all of you, allegiance:
This forrow that I have, by right is yours;
And all the pleasures you ufurp, are mine.

Glo. The curfe my noble father laid on thee,-
When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper,
And with thy fcorns drew'ft rivers from his eyes;
And then, to dry them, gav'ft the duke a clout,
Steep'd in the faultlefs blood of pretty Rutland ;-
His curfes, then from bitterness of foul
Denounc'd against thee, are all fallen upon thee;
And God, not we, hath plagu'd thy bloody deed.
6 Queen. So juft is God, to right the innocent.
Haft. O, 'twas the fouleft deed, to flay that babe,
And the most merciless, that e'er was heard of.
Riv. Tyrants themselves wept when it was re-
ported.

Dorf. No man but prophefy'd revenge for it.
Buck. Northumberland, then prefent, wept to fee it.
2. Mar. What! were you fnarling 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 curfe prevail fo much with heaven,
That Henry's death, my lovely Edward's death,
Their kingdom's lofs, my woeful banishment,
Could all but anfwer for that peevish brat?

Can curfes pierce the clouds, and enter heaven ?————
Why, then give way, dull clouds, to my quick

curfes!

Though not by war, 7 by furfeit die your king,
As ours by murder, to make him a king!
Edward, thy fon, that now is prince of Wales,
For Edward my fon, that was prince of Wales,
Die in his youth, by like untimely violence!

6 Q.Mar. So juft is God, &c.] This line fhould be given to Edward IVth's queen. WARBURTON.

-by furfeit die your king!] Alluding to his luxurious life.

JOHNSON.

Thy

Thyfelf a queen, for me that was a queen,
Out-live thy glory, like my wretched felf!
Long may'st thou live, to wail thy children's lofs;
And fee another, as I fee thee now,

Deck'd in thy rights, as thou art ftall'd in mine!
Long die thy happy days before thy death;
And, after many lengthen'd hours of grief,
Die neither mother, wife, nor England's queen!-
Rivers, and Dorfet,-you were ftanders by,-
And fo waft thou, lord Haftings,-when my fon
Was ftabb'd with bloody daggers; God, I pray him,
That none of you may live your natural age,
But by fome unlook'd accident cut off!

Glo. Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither'd hag.

2. Mar. And leave out thee? ftay, dog, for thou fhalt hear me.

If heaven have any grievous plague in ftore,
Exceeding those that I can with upon thee,
O, let them keep it, 'till thy fins be ripe,
And then hurl down their indignation

On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace!
The worm of confcience ftill be-gnaw thy foul!
Thy friends fufpect for traitors while thou liv'ft,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
No fleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be while fome tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
Thou elvish-mark'd abortive, 7 rooting hog!

Thou

8 -elvish-mark'd] The common people in Scotland (as I learn from Kelly's Proverbs) have still an averfion to those who have any natural defect or redundancy, as thinking them mark'd out for mischief. STEEVENS.

rooting bog!] The expreffion is fine, alluding (in memory of her young fon) to the ravage which hogs make, with the finest flowers, in gardens; and intimating that Elizabeth was to expect no other treatment for her fons. WARBURTON.

She calls him bog, as an appellation more contemptuous than

bear,

Thou that waft feal'd in thy nativity
'The flave of nature, and the son of hell!
Thou flander of thy mother's heavy womb!
Thou loathed iffue of thy father's loins!
2 Thou rag of honour! thou detested—

Glo.

boar, as he is elfewhere termed from his enfigns armorial. There is no fuch heap of allufion as the commentator imagines.

JOHNSON.

In the Mirror for Magifirates (a book already quoted) is the following Complaint of Collingbourne, who was cruelly executed for making a rime.

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For where I meant the king by name of hog,

I only alluded to his badge the bore:

To Lovel's name I added more,-
-our dog;
Becaufe moft dogs have borne that name of yore.
Thefe metaphors I us'd with other more,

As cat and rat, the half-names of the reft,
To hide the fenfe that they fo wrongly wreft.

That Lovel was once the common name of a dog, may be likewife known from a paffage in The Hiflorie of Jacob and Efau, an interlude, 1568:

"Then come on at once, take my quiver and my
"Fette lovell my hounde, and my horne to blowe."

The rhime for which Collingbourne fuffered, was:
"A cat, a rat, and Lovel the dog,

:

"Rule all England under a hog." STEEVENS.

bowe;

The flave of nature,] The expreffion is ftrong and noble, and alludes to the ancient cuftom of masters branding their profligate flaves: by which it is infinuated that his misshapen perfon was the mark that nature had fet upon him to ftigmatize his ill conditions. Shakespeare expreffes the fame thought in The Comedy of Errors:

He is deformed, crooked, &c. "Stigmatical in making,

But as the fpeaker rifes in her refentment, the expreffes this contemptuous thought much more openly, and condemns him to a ftill worfe ftate of flavery:

"Sin, death, and hell, have fet their marks on him." Only, in the first line, her mention of his moral condition infi. nuates her reflections on his deformity: and, in the laft, her mention of his deformity infinuates her reflections on his moral condition: And thus he has taught her to fcold in all the elegance of figure. WARBURTON.

2 Thou rag of honour; &c.] We should certainly read:

Thou wrack of honour

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