York. Against them both, my true joints bended

be.

[Kneels. Ill may'st thou thrive, if thou grant any grace?!

Duch. Pleads he in earnest? look upon his face; His eyes do drop no tears, his prayers are in jest ; His words come from his mouth, ours from our breast; He prays but faintly, and would be denied; We pray with heart, and soul, and all beside: His weary joints would gladly rise, I know; Our knees shall kneel till to the ground they grow: His prayers are full of false hypocrisy ; Ours, of true zeal and deep integrity.

Our prayers do out-pray his; then let them have That mercy, which true prayers ought to have. Boling. Good aunt, stand up.

Duch.

Nay, do not say-stand up; But, pardon, first; and afterwards, stand up. An if I were thy nurse, thy tongue to teach, Pardon-should be the first word of thy speech. I never long'd to hear a word till now; Say-pardon, king; let pity teach thee how: The word is short, but not so short as sweet; No word like, pardon, for kings' mouths so meet. York. Speak it in French, king; say, pardonnez moy 10

Duch. Dost thou teach pardon pardon to destroy? Ah, my sour husband, my hard-hearted lord, That sett'st the word itself against the word!— Speak, pardon, as 'tis current in our land: The chopping 11 French we do not understand.

9 This line is not in the folio.

10 The French moy being made to rhime with destroy, would seem to imply that the poet was not well acquainted with the true pronunciation of that language, perhaps it was imperfectly understood in his time by those who had not visited France.

11 The chopping French, i. e. the changing or changeable French. Thus chopping churches' is changing one church for another; and chopping logic is discoursing or interchanging logic with another. To chop and change is still a common idiom.

Thine eye begins to speak, set thy tongue there;
Or, in thy piteous heart plant thou thine ear;
That, hearing how our plaints and prayers do pierce,
Pity may move thee, pardon to rehearse.

Boling. Good aunt, stand up.

Duch.

I do not sue to stand,

Pardon is all the suit I have in hand.

Boling. I pardon him, as God shall pardon me. Duch. O happy vantage of a kneeling knee! Yet am I sick for fear: speak it again;

Twice saying pardon, doth not pardon twain,
But makes one pardon strong.

Boling.

I pardon him 12.

Duch.

With all my

heart

A god on earth thou art.

Boling. But for our trusty brother-in-law 13,—and

the abbot 14,

1

With all the rest of that consorted crew,-
Destruction straight shall dog them at the heels 15.
Good uncle, help to order several powers
To Oxford, or where'er these traitors are:
They shall not live within this world, I swear,
But I will have them, if I once know where.
Uncle, farewell,-and cousin too 16, adieu:
Your mother well hath pray'd, and prove you true.
Duch. Come, my old son;-I pray God make
[Exeunt.

thee new.

12 The old copies read ' I pardon him with all my heart.' The transposition was made by Pope.

13 The brother-in-law meant was John duke of Exeter and earl of Huntingdon (own brother to Edward II.), who had married the Lady Elizabeth, Bolingbroke's sister.

14 i. e. the abbot of Westminster.

15 Death and destruction dog thee at the heels.'

King Richard III.

16 Too, which is not in the old copies, was added by Theobald for the sake of the metre.

SCENE IV.

Enter EXTON, and a Servant.

Exton. Didst thou not mark the king, what words he spake?

Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?
Was it not so?

Serv.

Those were his very words. Exton. Have I no friend? quoth he; he spake it twice,

And urg'd it twice together; did he not?

Serv. He did.

Exton. And, speaking it, he wistfully look'd on me; As who should say,—I would, thou wert the man That would divorce this terror from my heart; Meaning, the king at Pomfret. Come, let's go; I am the king's friend, and will rid1 his foe. [Exeunt.

Pomfret.

SCENE V.

The Dungeon of the Castle.

Enter KING RICHARD.

K. Rich. I have been studying how I may compare This prison, where I live, unto the world: And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it;-Yet I'll hammer it out. My brain I'll prove the female to my soul; My soul, the father: and these two beget

1 To rid and to dispatch were formerly synonymous, as may be seen in the old Dictionaries, To ridde or dispatche himself of any man.'-' To dispatche or ridde one quickly.' Vide Baret's Alvearie, 1576, in Ridde and Dispatche. So in King Henry VI. Part II.

'As deathsmen you have rid this sweet young prince.'

A generation of still-breeding thoughts,

And these same thoughts people this little world1;
In humours, like the people of this world,

For no thought is contented. The better sort,-
As thoughts of things divine,

are intermix'd With scruples, and do set the word itself Against the word 2:

As thus,-Come, little ones; and then again,—
It is as hard to come, as for a camel
To thread the postern of a needle's eye.
Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls;
And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.
Thoughts tending to content, flatter themselves,-
That they are not the first of fortune's slaves,
Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars,
Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame,-
That many have, and others must sit there:
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortune on the back
Of such as have before endur'd the like:
Thus play I, in one person, many people3,
And none contented: Sometimes am I king:
Then treason makes me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: Then crushing penury

1 i. e. his own body. So in King Lear :

'Strives in this little world of man outscorn

The to and fro conflicting wind and rain.'

2 By the word is meant the Holy Scriptures. The folio reads the faith itself against the faith.

3 This is the reading of the quarto, 1597; alluding, perhaps, to the custom of our early theatres. The title pages of some of our Moralities show that three or four characters were frequently represented by one person. The folio, and other copies, read 'in one prison.'

Persuades me, I was better when a king;
Then am I king'd again: and, by-and-by,
Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing :-But, whate'er I am,
Nor I, nor any man, that but man is,

With nothing shall be pleas'd, till he be eas'd
With being nothing.-Musick do I hear? [Musick.
Ha, ha! keep time:-How sour sweet musick is,
When time is broke, and no proportion kept!
So is it in the musick of men's lives.

And here have I the daintiness of ear

4

To check time broke in a disorder'd string;
But for the concord of my state and time,
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
For now hath time made me his numb'ring clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and, with sighs, they jar 5
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,

Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now, sir, the sound, that tells what hour it is 7,

4 The folio reads 'to hear.'

5 Tick.

6 It should be recollected that there are three ways in which a clock notices the progress of time, viz. by the libration of the pendulum, the index on the dial, and the striking of the hour. To these the king, in his comparison, severally alludes; his sighs corresponding to the jarring or ticking of the pendulum, which at the same time that it watches or numbers the seconds, marks also their progress in minutes on the dial-plate, or outward watch, to which the king compares his eyes; and their want of figures is supplied by a succession of tears (or minute drops, to use an expression of Milton), his finger, by as regularly wiping these away, performs the office of the dial's point: his clamorous groans are the sounds that tell the hour. In King Henry IV. Part II. tears are used in a similar manner :

'But Harry lives that shall convert those tears
By number into hours of happiness.'

7 Should we not read :

'Now, sir, the sounds that tell what hour it is
Are clamorous groans?' &c.