SCENE II. The same.

Enter the DUCHESS of YORK, with a Son and Daughter of CLARENCE.

Son. Good grandam, tell us, is our father dead? Duch. No, boy.

Daugh. Why do you weep so oft? and beat your breast;

And cry-O Clarence, my unhappy son!

Son. Why do you look on us, and shake your head, And call us-orphans, wretches, cast-aways, If that our noble father be alive?

Duch. My pretty cousins, you mistake me both; I do lament the sickness of the king,

As loath to lose him, not your father's death:
It were lost sorrow, to wail one that's lost.

Son. Then, grandam, you conclude that he is dead. The king my uncle is to blame for this:

God will revenge it; whom I will impórtune
With earnest prayers all to that effect.

Daugh. And so will I.

Duch. Peace, children, peace! the king doth love you well:

3

Incapable and shallow innocents,

You cannot guess who caus'd your father's death. Son. Grandam, we can: for my good uncle Gloster Told me, the king, provok'd to't by the queen,

1 Cecily, daughter of Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmoreland, and widow of Richard duke of York, who was killed at the battle of Wakefield, 1460. She survived her husband thirtyfive years, living till the year 1495.

2 The duchess is here addressing her grand-children; but cousin seems to have been used instead of our kinsman and kinswoman, and to have supplied the place of both.

3 Unsusceptible. Thus in Hamlet:

'As one incapable of her own distress.'

Devis'd impeachments to imprison him:
And when my uncle told me so, he wept,
And pitied me, and kindly kiss'd my cheek;
Bade me rely on him, as on my father,

And he would love me dearly as his child.
Duch. Ah, that deceit should steal such gentle
shapes,

And with a virtuous visor hide deep vice!
He is my son, ay, and therein my shame,
Yet from my dugs he drew not this deceit.
Son. Think you, my uncle did dissemble3, gran-
dam?

Duch. Ay, boy.

Son. I cannot think it. Hark! what noise is this?

Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, distractedly; RIVERS, and DORSET, following her.

Q. Eliz. Ah! who shall hinder me to wail and weep? To chide my fortune, and torment myself? I'll join with black despair against my soul, And to myself become an enemy.

Duch. What means this scene of rude impatience? Q. Eliz. To make an act of tragick violence:Edward, my lord, thy son, our king, is dead. Why grow the branches, when the root is gone? Why wither not the leaves, that want their sap?— If you will live, lament; if die, be brief;

That our swift-winged souls may catch the king's;

4 This word gave no offence to our ancestors; one instance will show that it was used even in the most refined poetry:And on thy dugs the queen of love doth tell Her godhead's power in scrowles of my desire.' Constable's Sonnets, 1594. Dec. vi. Son. 4.

5 In the language of our elder writers, to dissemble signified to feign or simulate, as well as to cloak or conceal feelings or dispositions. Milton uses dissembler in this sense in the extract in a note on a former page.

Or, like obedient subjects, follow him

To his new kingdom of perpetual rest.

Duch. Ah, so much interest have I in thy sorrow, As I had title in thy noble husband!

I have bewept a worthy husband's death,
And liv'd by looking on his images:

But now two mirrors of his princely semblance
Are crack'd in pieces by malignant death;
And I for comfort have but one false glass,
That grieves me when I see my shame in him.
Thou art a widow; yet thou art a mother,
And hast the comfort of thy children left thee:
But death hath snatch'd my husband from my arms,
And pluck'd two crutches from my feeble hands,
Clarence, and Edward. O, what cause have I
(Thine being but a moiety of my grief),
To overgo thy plaints, and drown thy cries!

Son. Ah, aunt! you wept not for our father's death; How can we aid you with our kindred tears? Daugh. Our fatherless distress was left unmoan'd, Your widow-dolour likewise be unwept!

Q. Eliz. Give me no help in lamentation, I am not barren to bring forth laments: All springs reduce their currents to mine eyes, That I, being govern'd by the wat❜ry moon, May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world! Ah, for my husband, for my dear Lord Edward! Chil. Ah, for our father, for our dear Lord Clarence!

6 The children by whom he was represented. Thus, in The Rape of Lucrece, Lucretius says to his daughter:

'O, from thy cheeks my image thou hast torn.' In the same poem the succeeding image is also found :'Poor broken glass, I often did behold

In thy sweet semblance my old age new born;
But now, that fresh fair mirror, dim and old,
Shows me a bare-bon'd death by time outworn.'

We have something like it in Shakspeare's third Sonnet.

Duch. Alas, for both, both mine, Edward and Clarence!

Q. Eliz. What stay had I, but Edward? and he's gone.

Chil. What stay had we, but Clarence? and he's

gone.

Duch. What stays had I, but they? and they

are gone.

Q. Eliz. Was never widow, had so dear a loss. Chil. Were never orphans, had so dear a loss. Duch. Was never mother, had so dear a loss. Alas! I am the mother of these griefs; Their woes are parcell'd', mine are general. She for an Edward weeps, and so do I; I for a Clarence weep, so doth not she: These babes for Clarence weep, and so do I: I for an Edward weep, so do not they :— Alas! you three, on me, threefold distress'd, Pour all your tears, I am your sorrow's nurse, And I will pamper it with lamentations.

Dor. Comfort, dear mother; God is much displeas'd,

That you take with unthankfulness his doing;
In common worldly things, 'tis call'd—ungrateful,
With dull unwillingness to repay a debt,

Which with a bounteous hand was kindly lent;
Much more to be thus opposite with heaven,
For it requires the royal debt it lent you.

Riv. Madam, bethink you, like a careful mother, Of the young prince your son: send straight for him, Let him be crown'd: in him your comfort lives: Drown desperate sorrow in dead Edward's grave, And plant your joys in living Edward's throne.

7 Divided.

Enter GLOSTER, BUCKINGHAM, STANLEY,
HASTINGS, RATCLIFF, and Others.

Glo. Sister, have comfort: all of us have cause To wail the dimming of our shining star; But none can cure their harms by wailing them.Madam, my mother, I do cry you mercy,

I did not see your grace:-Humbly on my knee I crave your blessing.

Duch. God bless thee; and put meekness in thy breast,

Love, charity, obedience, and true duty!

Glo. Amen; and make me die a good old man!That is the butt-end of a mother's blessing; [Aside. I marvel, that her grace did leave it out.

Buck. You cloudy princes, and heart sorrowing

peers,

That bear this mutual heavy load of moan,
Now cheer each other in each other's love:
Though we have spent our harvest of this king,
We are to reap the harvest of his son.
The broken rancour of your high-swoln hearts,
But lately splinted, knit, and join'd together,
Must gently be preserv'd, cherish'd, and kept:
Me seemeth good, that, with some little train,
Forthwith from Ludlow the young prince be fetch'd
Hither to London, to be crown'd our king.

Riv. Why with some little train, my lord of Buckingham?

• Edward, the young prince, in his father's lifetime, and at his demise, kept his household at Ludlow, as prince of Wales; under the governance of Anthony Woodville, earl of Rivers, his uncle by the mother's side. The intention of his being sent thither was to see justice done in the Marches; and, by the authority of his presence, to restrain the Welshmen, who were wild, dissolute, and ill disposed, from their accustomed murders and outrages.-Vide Holinshed.