Say, uncle Gloster, if our brother come,
Where shall we sojourn till our coronation?

Glo. Where it seems best unto your royal self. If I may counsel you, some day, or two, 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?

Glo. He did, my gracious lord, begin that place; Which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified. Prince. Is it upon record? or else reported Successively from age to age he built it? Buck. Upon record, 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'd7 to all posterity,

Even to the general all-ending day.

Glo. So wise so young, they say, do ne'er live long8.

Prince. What say you, uncle?

[Aside.

Glo. I say, without charácters, fame lives long. Thus, like the formal9 vice, Iniquity,

I moralize two meanings in one word.

Aside.

7 i. e. recounted. Minsheu, in his Dictionary, 1617, besides the verb retail, in the mercantile sense, has the verb to retaile or retell. G. renombrer, à LAT. renumerare: and in that sense it appears to be employed here. Richard uses the word again in the fourth act, where, speaking to the queen of her daughter, he says:

To whom I will retail my conquests won.'

I have knowne children languishing of the splene, obstructed and altered in temper, talke with gravity and wisdome surpassing those tender years, and their judgments carrying a marvellous imitation of the wisdome of the ancient, having after a sorte attained that by disease which other have by course of yeares; whereon I take it the proverbe ariseth, that they be of shorte life who are of wit so pregnant.'-Bright's Treatise of Melancholy, 1586, p. 52.

For an account of the vice in old plays, see note on Twelfth

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 liv'd a king.

Glo. Short summers lightly 10 have a forward spring.

[Aside.

Enter YORK, HASTINGS, and the Cardinal. Buck. Now, in good time, here comes the duke of York.

Prince. Richard of York! how fares our loving brother?

Night, Act iv. Sc. 2. 'He appears (says Mr. Gifford) to have been a perfect counterpart of the harlequin of the modern stage, and had a two-fold 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.' Iniquity the Vice is one of the characters in Ben Jonson's Devil is an Ass. Shakspeare has again used moralize as a verb active in his Rape of Lucrece :

Nor could she moralize his wanton sight,

More than his eyes were open to the light.'

In which passage it means to interpret or investigate the latent meaning of his wanton looks,' as in the present passage it signifies to extract the double and latent meaning of one word or sentence. Moral, for secret meaning, will be found in Much Ado about Nothing, Act iii. Sc. 4. The word which Richard uses in a double sense is live, which in his former speech he had used literally, and in the present metaphorically. The formal vice means the regular or accustomed vice.

10 Short summers commonly have a forward spring.' So in an old proverb preserved by Ray:

'There's lightning lightly before thunder.'

York. Well, my dread lord; so I must call you now. Prince. Ay, brother; to our grief, as it is yours: Too late11 he died, that might have kept that title, Which by his death hath lost much majesty.

Glo. How fares our cousin, noble lord of York?
York. I thank you, gentle uncle. O, my lord,
You said that idle weeds are fast in growth:
The prince my brother hath outgrown me far.
Glo. He hath, my lord.

York.
And therefore is he idle?
Glo. O, my fair cousin, I must not say so.
York. Then is he more beholden to you,
than I.
Glo. He may command me, as my sovereign;
you have power in me, as in a kinsman.
York. I pray you, uncle, give me this dagger.
Glo. My dagger, little cousin? with all my heart.
Prince. A beggar, brother?

But

York. Of my kind uncle, that I know will give; And, being but a toy, which is no grief to give. Glo. A greater gift than that I'll give my cousin. York. A greater gift! O, that's the sword to it? Glo. Ay, gentle cousin, were it light enough. York. O then, I see, you'll part but with light gifts: In weightier things you'll say a beggar, nay.

Glo. It is too weighty for your grace to wear.
York. I weigh it lightly, were it heavier12.
Glo. What, would you have my weapon, little lord?
York. I would, that I might thank you as you
call me.

Glo. How?

York. Little.

11 Lately.

12 This taunting answer of the prince has been misinterpreted: he means to say, 'I hold it cheap, or care but little for it, even were it heavier than it is.' Thus in Love's Labour's Lost, Act v. Sc. 2:

'You weigh me not,-O, that's you care not for me.' VOL. VII.

H

Prince. My lord of York will still be cross in

talk;

Uncle, your grace knows how to bear with him.

York. You mean, to bear me, not to bear with me:Uncle, brother mocks both

you

and me; my Because that I am little, like an ape,

He thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders 13

Buck. With what a sharp-provided wit he reasons! To mitigate the scorn he gives his uncle, He prettily and aptly taunts himself:

So cunning, and so young, is wonderful.

Glo. My gracious lord, will't please you pass along? Myself, and my good cousin Buckingham, Will to your mother; to entreat of her, To meet you at the Tower, and welcome you. York. What, will you go unto the Tower, my lord? Prince. My lord protector needs will have it so. York. I shall not sleep in quiet at the Tower. Glo. Why, sir, what should you fear?

York. Marry, my uncle Clarence' angry ghost; My grandam told me, he was murder'd there. Prince. I fear no uncles dead.

Glo. Nor none that live, I hope.

Prince. An if they live, I hope, I need not fear. But come, my lord, and, with a heavy heart, Thinking on them, go I unto the Tower.

[Exeunt Prince, YORK, HASTINGS, Cardinal, and Attendants.

Buck. Think you, my lord, this little prating York

13 York alludes to the protuberance on Gloster's back, which was commodious for carrying burdens. Thus in Ulpian Fulwell's Ars Adulandi, 1576:- Thou hast an excellent back to carry my lord's ape.' The same thought occurs to Richard himself in King Henry VI. Part III. Act iii. :—

To make an envious mountain on my back,
Where sits deformity to mock my body.'

Was not incensed 14 by his subtle mother,
To taunt and scorn you thus opprobriously?

Glo. No doubt, no doubt: O, 'tis a parlous boy;
Bold, quick, ingenious, forward, capable 15;
He's all the mother's, from the top to toe.
Buck. Well, let them rest.—

Come hither, gentle Catesby; thou art sworn
As deeply to effect what we intend,

As closely to conceal what we impart :
Thou know'st our reason's urg'd upon the way;-
What think'st thou? is it not an easy matter
To make William Lord Hastings of our mind,
For the instalment of this noble duke

In the seat royal of this famous isle?

Cate. He for his father's sake so loves the prince,
That he will not be won to aught against him.
Buck. What think'st thou then of Stanley? will
not he?

Cate. He will do all in all as Hastings doth.
Buck. Well then, no more but this: Go, gentle
Catesby,

And, as it were far off, sound thou Lord Hastings,
How he doth stand affected to our purpose;
And summon him to-morrow to the Tower,
To sit about the coronation.

If thou dost find him tractable to us,
Encourage him, and tell him all our reasons:
If he be leaden, icy, cold, unwilling,
Be thou so too; and so break off the talk,
And give us notice of his inclination:

14 i.e. incited, instigated. So in Much Ado about Nothing, Borachio says to Don Pedro, 'How Don John your brother incensed me to slander the lady Hero.' 'Stimulatrix, she that mooveth or incenseth.'-Hutton's Dict. 1583.

15 Capable is quick of apprehension, susceptible, intelligent. Thus in Troilus and Cressida:'Let me carry another to his horse, for that's the more capable creature.'