COW are our brows bound with victorious wreaths
Our bruised
for monuments :
Our stern alarums chang’d to inerry meetings ;
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-vifag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mountain barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber,
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
(1) But I, that am not Thap'd for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an am'rous looking-glass,
I, that am rudely itampt, and want love's majesty,
To strut before a wanton, ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by diffembling nature,
Deform’d,
(1) But, &c.] See Longinus on the Sublime, fect. 38. the latter end.
Deformid, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionably,
That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them :
Why I, (in this meek piping time of peace)
Have no delight to pass away the time ;
Unless to spy my shadow in the fun,
And descant on my own deformity.
And therefore, fince I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair, well-spoken days (2)
I am determined to prove a villain,
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
SCENE JI. Richard's Love for Lady Anne.
Those
eyes
of thine from mine hath drawn salt tears Sham'd their aspects with store of childish drops : These eyes, which never shed remorseful tear, Not when my father York, and Edward wept, To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made; When black-fac'd Clifford shook his sword at him; Nor when thy warlike-father, like a child, Told the sad story of my
father's death, And twenty times made pause to sob and weep, That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks, Like trees bedash'd with rain : in that sad time, My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear : And what these sorrows could not thence exhale, Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping. I never sued to friend nor enemy: My tongue could never learn fweet smoothing words ; But now thy beauty is propos'd my fee, My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to speak.
On his own Person, after his successful Addreses.
My dukedom to a beggarly denier,
I do mistake my person all this while :
Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot,
Myself to be a marv'llous, proper mani
I'll be at charges for a looking-glass,
And entertain a score or two of taylors,
To study fashions to adorn my body:
Since I am crept in favour with myself,
I will maintain it with some little cost.
SCENE IV. Queen Margaret's Execration.
The worm of conscience still begnaw thy foul ;
Thy friends suspect for traitors, while thou liv'it,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends :
No sleep close'up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be when some tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
Thou elvish-markt, abortive, rooting hog !
Thou that was seald in thy nativity
(3) The slave of nature, and the son of hell!
Thou flander of thy heavy mother's womb!
Thou
(3) The slave of nature.] She afterwards says,
Sin, death, and hell have set their marks upon bim.
Mr. Warburton observes, “ that the expression in the text is strong and noble, and alludes to an ancient custom of masters branding of their faves : by which it is infinuated, that his mis-tapen person was a mark that nature had set upon him to Itigmatize his ill conditions.” It has been long since observed that
Distortum vultum fequitur distortio morum.
A face distorted generally proclaims
Distorted manners,
Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins !
(4) Thou rag of honour, thou detested.-
I was born fo high,
Our airy buildeth in the cedar's top,
And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun,
Richard's Hypocrisy.
(5) But then I figh, and with a piece of fcripture,
Tell them, that God bids us do good for evil;
And thus I cloath
my
naked villany
With old odd ends, stol'n forth of holy writ,
And seem a faint, when most I play the devil.
Clarence and Brakenbury.
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 Glofter;
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk
Upon the hatches. Thence we look'd tow'rd England,
And
(4) Rag, &c.] Richard speaking of Richmond and his followers in the last act of this play fays,
Lash hence these over-weaning rags of France,
These familh'd beggars weary of their lives, (5) See Merchant of Venice, p. 162. a. i1. and p. 141. preceding.
And cited up a thousand heavy times,
During the wars of rork and Lancaster,
That had befall’n us. As we pac'd along
Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,
Methought that Glofter stumbled ; and in falling
Struck me, (that sought to stay him) overboard
Into the tumbling billows of the main.
Lord, lord, methought, what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in my ears !
What fights of ugly death within mine eyes !
I thought, 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;
Some lay in dead mens' skulls; and in those holes,
did once inhabit, there were crept,
As 'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems;
That woo'd the flimy 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 the secrets of the deep?
Clar. Methought I had ; and often did I strive
To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood
Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth
To find the empty, vast, and wand'ring air?
But smother'd it within my panting bulk,
Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.
Brak. Awak'd you not with this fad agony?
Clar. No, no, my dream was lengthen'd'after life. O then began the tempest to my soul : I pait, methought, the melancholy flood, With that grim ferry-man which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night. The first that there did greet my stranger soul, Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick, Who cry'd aloud-What scourge for perjury Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence ? And so he vanish'd. Then came wand'ring by A shadow like an angel, with bright hair,
Dabbled
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