Bucking?

SCENE III, The Same. A Room in the Palace.
Sancastruan Relations Brother
Enter Queen ELIZABETH, RIVERS, and GREY.

Son

Riv. Have patience, madam: there's no doubt his Maj

esty

Will soon recover his accustom'd health.

endure te

it ill, it makes him worse:

Grey. In that you
Therefore, for God's sake, entertain good comfort,
And cheer his Grace with quick and merry words.
Q. Eliz. If he were dead, what would betide of me?
Riv. No other harm but loss of such a lord.

Q. Eliz. The loss of such a lord includes all harms.
Grey. The Heavens have bless'd you with a goodly son,
To be
your comforter when he is gone.

Q. Eliz. Ah, he is young; and his minority

Is put into the trust of Richard Gloster,

A man that loves not

Riv. Is it

nor none of you.

be protector? passe

Q. Eliz. It is determined, not concluded 2 yet:
But so it must be, if the King miscarry.
-nobly desecided

dam

ther's sidethson Enter BUCKINGHAM and STANLEY.3 2nd use and

2nd Husi and Mary
Beaufort
her son

Grey. Here come the Lords of Buckingham and Stanley.
Buck. Good time of day unto your royal Grace!

Stan. God make your Majesty joyful as you have been !

1 Quick, here, is lively, sprightly. So in Love's Labours Lost, i. 1: “But is there no quick recreation granted?"

2 A thing was said to be determined, when it was resolved upon; concluded, when it was formally passed, so as to be a ground of action.

3 Henry Stafford, the present Duke of Buckingham, was descended, on his father's side, from Thomas of Woodstock, the fifth son of Edward III. On his mother's side he was descended from John of Ghent, third son of the same great Edward. He was as accomplished and as unprincipled as he was nobly descended. - Thomas Lord Stanley was Lord Steward of the King's household to Edward IV.

Q. Eliz. The Countess Richmond,4 good my Lord_of

Stanley,

To your good prayer will scarcely say amen.
Yet, Stanley, notwithstanding she's your wife,
And loves not me, be you, good lord, assured
I hate not you for her proud arrogance.

Stan. I do beseech you, either not believe
maricious
The envious slanders of her false accusers;
Or, if she be accused on true report,

Bear with her weakness, which, I think, proceeds
freakish Unacesimalil

From wayward sickness, and no grounded malice.

Riv. Saw you the King to-day, my Lord of Stanley?
Stan. But now the Duke of Buckingham and I
Are come from visiting his Majesty.

Q. Eliz. What likelihood of his amendment, lords?
Buck. Madam, good hope; his Grace speaks cheerfully.
Q. Eliz. God grant him health! Did you confer with
him?

reconciliation
Buck. Ay, madam : he desires to make atonement 5
Between the Duke of Gloster and your brothers,
And between them and my Lord Chamberlain ;
And sent to warn 6 them to his royal presence.

Q. Eliz. Would all were well! but that will never be : I fear our happiness is at the height

ment

4 The Countess of Richmond was Margaret, the only child of John Beaufort, the first Duke of Somerset, and so was descended from John of Ghent through the Beaufort branch of his family. See page 91, note 2. Margaret's first husband was Edmund, Earl of Richmond, son of Owen Tudor, by whom she became the mother of Henry VII. Afterwards she was married successively to Sir Henry Stafford, uncle of Buckingham, and to the Lord Stanley of this play, but had no more children. She lived to a great age, and was so highly reputed for prudence and virtue, that her grandson, Henry VIII., was mainly guided by her advice in forming his first council. 5 Atonement is reconciliation, at-one-ment. See vol. v. page 110, note 20. 6 To warn was used for to summon.

Thee

farmitear

Enter GLOSTER, HASTINGS, and DORSET.

Glos. They do me wrong, and I will not endure it:
Who are they that complain unto the King

That I, forsooth, am stern, and love them not?

By holy Paul, they love his Grace but lightly

editions.

That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours.

Because I cannot flatter

atter and

speak fair,

beefiant
Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog.7
Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,
I must be held a

rancorous

enemy.

Cannot a plain man live and think no harm,
But thus his simple truth must be abused
ferminate
By silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

Riv. To whom in all this presence speaks your Grace?
Glos. To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace.
When have I injured thee? when done thee wrong?-
Or thee?-
or thee?- — or any of your faction?
A plague upon you all! His royal Grace —
Whom God preserve better than you would wish!
Cannot be quiet scarce a breathing-while,

But you must trouble him with lewd complaints.

Q. Eliz Brother of Gloster, you mistake the matter.
The King, of his own royal disposition,

And not provoked by any suitor else;

Aiming, belike, at your hatred,

That in your outward action shows itself
Against my children, brothers, and myself,
Makes him to send, that thereby he may gather
The ground of your ill-will, and so remove it.

7 To smooth, or to soothe, is, in old language, to insinuate and beguile with flattery; to cog, is to cajole and cheat. Repeatedly so. See vol. iv. page 237, note 8.

8 Lewd in its old sense of knavish, wicked, or base. See vol. iv, page 245, note 25.

Glos. I cannot tell the world is grown so bad, That wrens may prey where eagles dare not perch: Since every Jack became a gentleman,

There's many a gentle person made a Jack.9

Q. Eliz. Come, come, we know your meaning, brother Gloster ;

You envy my advancement and my friends':

God grant we never may have need of you!

Glos. Meantime, God grants that we have need of you : Our brother is imprison'd by your means,

Myself disgraced, and the nobility

Held in contempt; while great promotions
Are daily given to ennoble those

That scarce, some two days since, were worth a noble.

mivel no pare Q. Eliz. By Him that raised me to this careful height From that contented hap which I enjoy'd,

I never did incense his Majesty

Against the Duke of Clarence, but have been
An earnest advocate to plead for him.
My lord, you do me shameful injury,

Falsely to draw me in these vile suspects.

suspicions

Glos. You may deny that you were not the cause

Of my Lord Hastings' late imprisonment.

Riv. She may, my lord; for

Glos. She may, Lord Rivers! why, who knows not so?

She may do more, sir, than denying that:

She may help you to many fair preferments;

And then deny her aiding hand therein,

And lay those honours on your high desert.

What may she not? She may,-ay, marry, may she,

9 Jack was a common term of contempt or reproach. Richard is referring to the Queen's kindred, her sons, the Greys, and her brothers, the Woodvilles, who, by her marriage with the King, were suddenly raised from a far inferior rank to all but the highest.

Riv. What, marry, may she?

Glos. What, marry, may she! marry with a king,

A bachelor, a handsome stripling too :

I wis 10

your grandam had a worser match.

Q. Eliz. My Lord of Gloster, I have too long borne
Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs:

By Heaven, I will acquaint his Majesty
With those gross taunts I often have endured.
I had rather be a country servant-maid
Than a great queen, with this condition,
To be so baited, scorn'd, and stormèd at:

Enter Queen MARGARET, behind.

Small joy have I in being England's Queen.

Q. Mar. [Aside.] And lessen'd be that small, God, I beseech Him!

Thy honour, state, and seat is due to me.

Glos. What! threat you me with telling of the King? Tell him, and spare not: look, what I have said

offerm.

I will avouch in presence of the King:

I dare adventure to be sent to th' Tower.

Salts are quite forgot.

'Tis time to speak; my pains are quite forgot.

Q. Mar. [Aside.] Out, devil! I remember them too

well:

Thou kill'dst my husband Henry in the Tower,

And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.

Glos. Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband king,
I was a pack-horse in his great affairs;

A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,
A liberal rewarder of his friends:

To royalize his blood I spilt mine own.

10 Dyce thinks that the writers of Shakespeare's time used I wis“: as equivalent to I ween." Here it seems to have about the sense of I think, I guess, or, as they say at the South, I reckon. See vol. iii, page 162, note 9.