For my part, I'll resign unto your Grace
The seal I keep and so betide to me
As well I tender you and all of yours!
Come, I'll conduct you to the sanctuary.

[Exeunt.

The trumpets sound. Enter the Prince of WALES, GLOSTER, BUCKINGHAM, Cardinal BOURCHIER, CATESBY, and others.

1

Buck. Welcome, sweet Prince, to London, to your chamber.2

Glos. Welcome, dear cousin, my thoughts' sovereign: The weary way hath made you melancholy.

Prince. No, uncle; but our crosses on the

Have made it tedious, wearisome, and heavy :

I want more uncles here to welcome me.

way

Glos. Sweet Prince, th' untainted virtue of your years Hath not yet dived into the world's deceit ;

Nor more can you distinguish of a man

Than of his outward show; which, God he knows,
Seldom or never jumpeth 3 with the heart.

1 Thomas Bourchier was made a Cardinal, and elected Archbishop of Canterbury in 1464. He died in 1486.

2 London was anciently called camera regis, that is, the king's chamber. Thus in Buckingham's speech to the citizens as given by More: "The prince, by this noble citie as his speciall chamber, and the speciall well renowned citie of this realme, much honourable fame receiveth among all other nations."

8 To jump with is to agree or correspond with. So in 1 King Henry IV., i. 2: "Well, Hal, well; and in some sort it jumps with my humour." See, also, vol. iii. page 160, note 5.

Those uncles which you want were dangerous;
Your Grace attended to their sugar'd words,

But look'd not on the poison of their hearts:

God keep you from them, and from such false friends! Prince. God keep me from false friends! but they were

none.

Glos. My lord, the Mayor of London comes to greet you.

Enter the Lord Mayor and his Train.

May. God bless your Grace with health and happy days! Prince. I thank you, good my lord;-and thank you [Mayor and his Train retire.

all.

I thought my mother, and my brother York,
Would long ere this have met us on the way:
Fie, what a slug is Hastings, that he comes not
To tell us whether
er they will
will come or no !

Buck. And, in good time, here comes the sweating lord.

Enter HASTINGS.

Prince. Welcome, my lord: what, will our mother come? Hast. On what occasion, God he knows, not I,

The Queen your mother, and your brother York,

Have taken sanctuary: the tender prince

Would fain have come with me to meet your Grace,
But by his mother was perforce withheld.

Buck. Fie, what an indirect and peevish course
Is this of hers! - -Lord Cardinal, will your Grace
Persuade the Queen to send the Duke of York
Unto his princely brother presently?

If she deny,Lord Hastings, go with him,
And from her jealous arms pluck him perforce.

Card. My Lord of Buckingham, if my weak oratory

Can from his mother win the Duke of York,

Anon expect him here; but, if she be obdúrate

To mild entreaties, God in Heaven forbid
We should infringe the holy privilege
Of blessed sanctuary! not for all this land
Would I be guilty of so great a sin.

Buck. You are too senseless-obstinate, my lord,
Too ceremonious and traditional; and judge
Weigh it but with the grossness of this age.5

grossness of this age. Supersilien

You break not sanctuary in seizing him :
The benefit thereof is always granted

To those whose dealings have deserved the place,
And those who have the wit to claim the place :
This Prince hath neither claim'd it nor deserved it ;
Therefore, in mine opinion, cannot have it:
Then, taking him from thence that is not there,

You break no privilege nor charter there.

Oft have I heard of sanctuary-men;

But sanctuary-children ne'er till now.

Card. My lord, you shall o'er-rule my mind for once. Come on, Lord Hastings, will you go with me?

Hast. I will, my lord.

Prince. Good lords, make all the speedy haste you may.

[Exeunt Cardinal and HASTINGS.

Say, uncle Gloster, if our brother come,

Where shall we sojourn till our coronation?

Glos. Where it seems best unto your royal self.

If I may counsel you, some day or two

4 Ceremonious for superstitious, or tenacious of formalities; traditional for adherent to received customs.

5 Weigh is in the same construction with are in the second line before, the copulative and being understood. And to weigh, as the word is here used, is to judge or to consider. So that the sense of the whole is, "You are too much swayed by popular forms and traditions, and you judge the matter only in accordance with the gross and undistinguishing superstition which now prevails." Such is, in substance, Heath's explanation of the passage. See Critical Notes.

Your Highness shall repose you at the Tower;

Then where you please, and shall be thought most fit
For your best health and recreation.

Prince. I do not like the Tower, of any place.
Did Julius Cæsar build that place, my lord?

Buck. He did, my gracious lord, begin that place; Which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified.

Prince. Is it upon recórd, or else reported
Successively from age to age, he built it?

Buck. Upon recórd, my gracious lord.
Prince. But say, my lord, it were not register'd,
Methinks the truth should live from age to age,
As 'twere retail'd to all posterity,

Even to the general all-ending day.

Glos. [Aside.] So wise so young, they say, do ne'er live long.

Prince. What say you, uncle?

Glos. I say, without charácters,' fame lives long.— [Aside.] Thus, like the formal Vice, Iniquity,

6 That is, recounted. Minsheu, in his Dictionary, 1617, besides the verb retail, in the mercantile sense, has the verb to retaile or retell. Richard uses the word again in the fourth Act, when speaking to the Queen of her daughter: "To whom I will retail my conquests won."

7 Without the help of letters or inscriptions. See vol. vii. page 256, note 5.

8 Of that distinguished personage, the Vice or Jester of the old Moralities, some account is given in vol. v. page 222, note 17. His part appears to have been on all occasions much the same, consisting in a given round or set form of action; for which cause, probably, the epithet formal is here applied to him. The following is Gifford's description of him: "He appears to have been a perfect counterpart of the harlequin of the modern stage, and had a twofold office, to instigate the hero of the piece to wickedness, and at the same time to protect him from the Devil, whom he was permitted to buffet and baffle with his wooden sword, till the process of the story required that both the protector and the protected should be carried off by the fiend; or the latter driven roaring from the stage, by some miraculous interposition in favour of the repentant offender."

I moralize two meanings in one word.9

Prince. That Julius Cæsar was a famous man ;
With what his valour did enrich his wit,
His wit set down to make his valour live:
Death makes no conquest of this conqueror;
For now he lives in fame, though not in life.-
I'll tell you what, my cousin Buckingham, –
Buck. What, my gracious lord?

Prince. An if I live until I be a man,

I'll win our ancient right in France again,

Or die a soldier, as I lived a king.

Glos. [Aside.] Short Summers lightly 10 have a forward Spring.

Buck. Now, in good time, here comes the Duke of York.

Enter YORK, with the Cardinal and HASTINGS.

Prince. Richard of York! how fares our loving brother? York. Well, my dread lord; so must I call you now. Prince. Ay, brother, -to our grief, as it is yours: Too late 11 he died that might have kept that title, Which by his death hath lost much majesty.

Glos. How fares our cousin, noble Lord of York?

9 Heath explains as follows: "Thus my moralities, or the sententious expressions I have just uttered, resemble those of the Vice, Iniquity, in the play; the indecencies which lie at the bottom are sheltered from exception and the indignation they would excite if nakedly delivered, under the ambiguity of a double meaning." The writer adds, "The term moralize is only introduced in allusion to the title of our old dramatic pieces, which were commonly called Moralities, in which the Vice was always one of the shining characters." It is to be noted further, that, as the Vice acted the part of a buffoon or jester, he was wont "to deal largely in double meanings, and by the help of them to aim at cracking a jest or raising a laugh." 10 Lightly, here, is commonly or usually. So in an old proverb preserved by Ray: "There's lightning lightly before thunder."

11 Too late for too lately; meaning, it is too short a time since his death, not to be "to our grief, as it is yours."