I will perform it, to enfranchise you.
Mean time, this deep disgrace in brotherhood,
Touches me deeper than

you can imagine. Clar. I know, it pleaseth neither of us well.

Glo. Well, your imprisonment shall not be long; I will deliver you, or else lye for you : Mean time, have patience. Clar. I must perforce'; farewel.

[Exeunt Clarence and Brakenbury.
Glo. Go, tread the path that thou shalt ne'er return,
Simple, plain Clarence !-I do love thee so,
That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven,
If heaven will take the present at our hands.
But who comes here ? the new-deliver'd Hastings ?

Enter Hastings.
Haft. Good time of day unto my gracious lord

Glo. As much-unto my good lord chamberlain !
Well are you welcome to this open air.
How hath your lordship brook'd imprisonment ?

Haft. With patience, noble lord, as prisoners must :
But I shall live, my lord, to give them thanks,
That were the cause of my imprisonment.

Glo. No doubt, no doubt ; and so shall Clarence

too ;

For they, that were your enemies, are his,
And have prevail'd as much on him, as you.
Haft. More pity, that the eagle should be mew'd',

While

casually, widow, into the place of wife, he tempts Clarence with an oblique proposal to kill the king. JOHNSON.

King Edward's widow is, I believe, only an expreffion of contempt, meaning the widow Grey, whom Edward had chosen for his queen. Glofter has already called her, the jealous o’erworn widow. STEEVENS.

' I must perforce.] Alluding to the proverb, “ Patience perforce is a medicine for a mad dog."

STEEVENS. should be mew'd, ] A mew was the place of confinement where a hawk was kept till he had moulted. So, in Albumazar

66 Stand

bar :

While kites and buzzards prey at liberty.

Glo. What news abroad?

Haft. No news so bad abroad, as this at home ;The king is fickly, weak, and melancholy, And his physicians fear him mightily.

Glo. Now, by saint Paul', that news is bad indeed.
O, he hath kept an evil diet long,
And over-much consum'd his royal person;
'Tis very grievous to be thought upon.
What, is he in his bed?

Haft. He is.
Glo. Go you before, and I will follow

you.

[Exit Hastings. He cannot live, I hope ; and must not die, 'Till George be pack'd with post-horse up to heaven. I'll in, to urge his hatred more to Clarence, With lies well steeld with weighty arguments; And, if I fail not in my deep intent, Clarence hath not another day to live : Which done, God take king Edward to his mercy, And leave the world for me to bustle in! For then I'll marry Warwick's youngest daughter : What though I kill'd her husband, and her father? The readiest way to make the wench amends, Is--to become her husband, and her father : The which will I; not all so much for love, As for another secret close intent, By marrying her, which I must reach unto. But yet I run before my horse to market : Clarence still breathes; Edward still lives, and reigns; When they are gone, then must I count my gains.

[Exit.

Stand forth, transform'd Antonio, fully mew'd
66 From brown foar feathers of dull yeomanry,
" To the glorious bloom of gentry:

STEEVENS,
3 Now, by faint Paul, -] The folio reads :
Now, by saint John,

STEEVENS.

SCENE

S CE N E II.

Another Street.

Enter the corse of Henry the fixth, with halberds to

guard it ; Lady Anne being the mourner.
Anne. Set down, set down your honourable load,
If honour may be shrouded in a hearse,
Whilst I a while obsequiously lament *
The untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster.
Poor key-cold figures of a holy king!
Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster !
Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood !
Be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost,
To hear the lamentations of poor Anne,
Wife to thy Edward, to thy Naughter's son,
Stabb'd by the self-fame hand that made these

wounds!
Lo, in these windows, that let forth thy life,
I pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes :-
O, cursed be the hand, that made these holes !
Cursed the heart, that had the heart to do it!
Cursed the blood, that let this blood from hence !
More direful hap betide that hated wretch,
That makes us wretched by the death of thee,
Than I can with to adders, spiders, toads,

S

4 -obfequiously lament] Obfequious, in this instance, means funereal. So, in Hamlet, act I. sc. ii :

" To do obsequious forrow." STEEVENS.

key-cold] A key, on account of the coldness of the metal of which it is composed, was anciently employed to stop any flight bleeding. The epithet is common to many old writers ; among the rest, it is used by Decker in his Satiromastix :

“ - It is best you hide your head, for fear your wise brains take key-cold." Again, in the Country Girl, by T. B. 1647: " The key-cold figure of a man.

STEEVENS.

Or

1

Or any creeping venom'd thing that lives!
If ever he have child, abortive be it,
Prodigious, and untimely brought to light,
Whose ugly and unnatural' aspect
May fright the hopeful mother at the view ;
And that be heir to his unhappiness !
If ever he have wife, let her be made
More miserable by the death of him,
Than I am made by my young lord, and thee!
Come, now, toward Chertsey with your holy load,
Taken from Paul's to be interred there ;
And, still as you are weary of the weight,
Rest you, whiles I lament king Henry's corse.

Enter Glofter.
Glo. Stay you, that bear the corse, and set it down.

Anne. What black magician conjures up this fiend, To stop devoted charitable deeds ?

Glo. Villains, set down the corse; or, by faint Paul, I'll make a corse of himn that disobeys s.

Gen. My lord, stand back, and let the coffin pass.
Glo. Unmanner'd dog! stand thou when I com-

mand :
Advance thy halberd higher than my breast,
Or, by faint Paul,' I'll strike thee to my foot,
And spurn upon thee, beggar, for thy boldness.

Anne. What, do you tremble ? are you all afraid?
Alas, I blame you not; for you are mortal,
And mortal eyes cannot endure the devil.-
Ayaunt, thou dreadful minister of hell!
Thou had'st but power over his mortal body,
His soul thou canst not have'; therefore, be gone.

Glo. Sweet saint, for charity, be not so curst.
Anne. Foul devil, for God's fake, hence, and

trouble us not ;

5 Il make a corse of him that disobeys.) So, in Hamlet :

“ I'll make a ghost of him that lets me." Johnson,

For

6

For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell,
Fill'd it with cursing cries, and deep exclaims.
If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds,
Behold this pattern of thy butcheries :-
Oh, gentlemen, see, see! dead Henry's wounds
Open their congeald mouths, and bleed afreih!
Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity ;
For 'tis thy presence that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells;
Thy deed, inhuman, and unnatural,
Provokes this deluge most unnatural.
— pattern of tly butcheries :] Pattern is infiance, or example.

JOHNSON. Holinshed says : “ The dead corps on the Ascension even was conveied with billes and glaives pompoullie (if you will call that

funerall pompe) from the Tower to the church of faint Paule, and there laid on a beire or coffen bare-faced ; the same in the presence of the beholders did bleed; where it rested the space of one whole daie. From thense he was carried to the Black-friers, and bled there likewise ; &c." STEEVENS.

fee, dead Henry's wounds, Open their congeaľd mouths, and bleed afresh!--] It is a tradition very generally received, that the murdered body bleeds on the touch of the murderer. This was so much believed by fir Kenelm Digby that he has endeavoured to explain the reason. JOHNSON. So, in Arden of Feversham, 1592 :

“ The more I found his name, the more he bleeds :
“ This blood condemns me, and in gushing forth

“ Speaks as it falls, and asks me why I did it.”Again, in the Widow's Tears, by Chapman, 1612 :

* The captain will affay an old conclufion often approved ; that at the murderer's fight the blood revives again and boils afresh; and every wound has a condemning voice to cry out guilty against the murderer.” Again, in the 46th Idea of Drayton :

" If the vile actors of the heinous deed,
“ Near the dead body happily be brought,

“ Oft t'hath been prov'd the breathless corps will bleed." Mr. Tollet observes that this opinion seems to be derived from the ancient Swedes, or Northern nations from whom we descend; for they practised this method of trial in dubious cases, as appears from Pitt's Atlas, in Sweden, p. 20. STEEVENS.

O God!

7