My charity is outrage, life my shame,

And in that shame still live my sorrow's rage!
Buck. Have done, have done.

Mar. O, princely Buckingham! I'll kiss thy hand, In sign of league and amity with thee: Now, fair befall thee, and thy noble house! Thy garments are not spotted with our blood, Nor thou within the compass of my curse.

Buck. Nor no one here; for curses never pass
The lips of those that breathe them in the air.
Mar. I will not think 21 but they ascend the sky,
And there awake God's gentle-sleeping peace.
O Buckingham! take heed of yonder dog:
Look, when he fawns, he bites; and, when he bites.
His venom tooth will rankle to the death:

Have not to do with him, beware of him;
Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him,
And all their ministers attend on him.

Rich. What doth she say, my lord of Bucking ham?

Buck. Nothing that I respect, my gracious lord. Mar. What! dost thou scorn me for my gentle counsel,

And sooth the devil that I warn thee from?

O! but remember this another day,

When he shall split thy very heart with sorrow;
And say, poor Margaret was a prophetess.
Live each of you the subjects to his hate,

And he to yours, and all of you to God's! [Exit.
Hast. My hair doth stand on end, to hear her

curses.

Riv. And so doth mine. I muse, why she's at liberty.

21 Thus in the folio; in the quartos, I'll not believe." B

Rich. I cannot blame her: by God's holy mother, She hath had too much wrong, and I repent My part thereof, that I have done to her.

Eliz. I never did her any, to my knowledge.
Rich. Yet you have all the vantage of her wrong
I was too hot to do somebody good,
That is too cold in thinking of it now.

Marry, as for Clarence, he is well repaid:
He is frank'd 22 up to fatting for his pains ;-

God pardon them that are the cause thereof!

Riv. A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion,

To pray for them that have done scath to us. Rich. So do I ever, being well advis'd; [Aside.] For had I curs'd now, I had curs'd myself.

Enter CATESBY.

Cates. Madam, his majesty doth call for you, And for your grace,—and you, my noble lords. Eliz. Catesby, I come :-Lords, will you go with me?

Riv. We wait upon your grace. 23

[Exeunt all but RICHARD.

Rich. I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl. The secret mischiefs that I set abroach,

I lay unto the grievous charge of others.
Clarence, whom I, indeed, have cast in darkness,
I do beweep to many simple gulls;

Namely, to Stanley, Hastings, Buckingham;
And tell them 'tis the queen and her allies,
That stir the king against the duke my brother.

22 A frank is a pen or coop in which hogs and other animals were confined while fatting. To be franked up was to be closely confined. To franch, or frank, was to stuff, to cram, to fatten. 23 So in the folio; in the quartos,-" Madam, we will attend your grace."

H.

Now they believe it, and, withal, whet me
To be reveng'd on Rivers, Vaughan, Grey:
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 villainy

With odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ,
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

Enter two Murderers.

But soft! here come my executioners.
How now, my hardy, stout-resolved mates!
Are you now going to despatch this thing?

1 Murd. We are, my lord; and come to have the warrant,

That we may be admitted where he is.

Rich. Well thought upon; I have it here about

me.

[Gives the Warrant. When you have done, repair to Crosby-place.

But, sirs, be sudden in the execution,
Withal, obdurate; do not hear him plead;
For Clarence is well spoken, and, perhaps,
May move your hearts to pity, if you mark him.
1 Murd. Tut, tut, my lord! we will not stand to

prate;

Talkers are no good doers: be assur'd,

We go to use our hands, and not our tongues. Rich. Your eyes drop mill-stones, when fools' eyes fall tears:

I like you, lads ;

Go, go, despatch. 1 Murd.

24

about your business straight;

We will, my noble lord. [Exeunt.

24 This appears to have been a proverbial saying. It occurs again in the tragedy of Cæsar and Pompey, 1607: «Men's eyes must mill-stones drop, when fools shed tears." The quartos have " drop tears; "the folio changed drop to fall.

SCENE IV. London. A Room in the Tower.

Enter CLARENCE and BRAKENBURY.

Brak. Why looks your grace so heavily to-day? Clar. O! I have pass'd a miserable night, So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights, That, as I am a Christian faithful man, I would not spend another such a night, Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days; So full of dismal terror was the time.

Brak. What was your dream, my lord? I pray
you, tell me.

Clar. 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 Eng-
land,

And cited up a thousand heavy times,

During the wars of York and Lancaster
That had befall'n us. As we pac'd along
Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,

Methought that Gloster stumbled; and, in falling,

1 Clarence was desirous to aid his sister Margaret against the French king, who invaded her jointure lands after the death of her husband, Charles duke of Burgundy, who was killed at Nanci, in January, 1477. Isabel, the wife of Clarence, being then dead, (poisoned by the duke of Gloster, as it has been conjectured,) he wished to marry Mary, the daughter and heir of the duke of Burgundy; but the match was opposed by Edward, who hoped to obtain her for his brother-in-law, Lord Rivers; and this circumstance has been suggested as the principal cause of the breach between Edward and Clarence. Mary of Burgundy, however, chose a husband for herself, having married, in 1477, Maximilian, son of the Emperor Frederic.

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,

2

All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea:

Some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in the holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept
(As 'twere 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.
Brak. Had you such leisure in the time of death
To gaze upon these secrets of the deep?

3

Clar. Methought I had, and often did I strive To yield the ghost; but still the envious flood Stopt in my soul, and would not let it forth To find the empty, vast, and wandering air; But smother'd it within my panting bulk, Which almost burst to belch it in the sea. Brak. Awak'd you not in this sore agony? Clar. No, no, my dream was lengthen❜d after life O! then began the tempest to my soul!

5

I pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that sour ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.

Unvalued for invaluable, not to be valued, inestimable.

3 So the folio; the quartos,-"Kept in my soul." And in the next line the first two quartos have seek instead of find; other quartos, keep.

H.

H

And in the

H

The folio thus; the quartos "with this sore agony." Here the quartos have grim instead of sour. fifth line below, the folio has, -"Who spake aloud."