1

Long die thy happy days before thy death;
And, after many lengthen'd hours of grief,
Die neither mother, wife, nor England's queen!-
Rivers, and Dorset, you were standers by,
And fo wast thou, lord Hastings, when my fon
Was stabb'd with bloody daggers; God, I pray him,
That none of you may live your natural age,
But by fome unlook'd accident cut off!

Glo. Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither'd

hag.

2. Mar. And leave out thee? stay, dog, for thou

shalt hear me.

If heaven have any grievous plague in store,
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,
O, let them keep it, 'till thy fins be ripe,
And then hurl down their indignation

On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace!
The worm of confcience still be-gnaw thy foul!
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv'st,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
No fleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be while some tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
Thou elvish-mark'd abortive, rooting hog!

Thou

5 elvish-mark'd] The common people in Scotland (as I learn from Kelly's Proverbs) have still an averfion to those who have any natural defect or redundancy, as thinking them mark'd out for mischief. STEEVENS.

6

rooting bog!] The expression is fine, alluding (in memory of her young fon) to the ravage which hogs make, with the finest flowers, in gardens; and intimating that Elizabeth was to expect no other treatment for her fons. WARBURTON.

She calls him hog, as an appellation more contemptuous than boar, as he is elsewhere termed from his ensigns armorial. There

is no fuch heap of allusion as the commentator imagines.

JOHNSON.

In the Mirror for Magistrates (a book already quoted) is the following Complaint of Collingbourne, who was cruelly executed for making a rime.

For

Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity

The flave of nature, and the fon of hell! Thou flander of thy mother's heavy womb! Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins I Thou rag of honour! thou deteftedGlo. Margaret.

2. Mar. Richard!

For where I meant the king by name of bog,
I only alluded to his badge the bore :

To Lovel's name I added more, our dog;
Because most dogs have borne that name of yore.
These metaphors I us'd with other more,

As cat and rat, the half-names of the reft,
To hide the sense that they so wrongly wrest.

That Lovel was once the common name of a dog, may be likewise known from a passage in The Historie of Jacob and Efau, an interlude, 1568:

" Then come on at once, take my quiver and my bowe; "Fette lovell my hounde, and my horne to blowe."

The rhime for which Collingbourne suffered, was:

A cat, a rat, and Lovel the dog,

"Rule all England under a hog." STEEVENS.

1 The flave of nature, The expression is strong and noble, and alludes to the ancient custom of masters branding their profligate flaves: by which it is infinuated that his mishapen perfon was the mark that nature had fet upon him to stigmatize his ill conditions. Shakspeare expresses the fame thought in The Comedy of Errors:

"He is deformed, crooked, &c.

"

Stigmatical in making,"

But as the speaker rises in her resentment, she expresses this contemptuous thought much more openly, and condemns him to a still worse state of flavery :

Sin, death, and hell, have set their marks on him." Only, in the first line, her mention of his moral condition infinuates her reflections on his deformity: and, in the last, her mention of his deformity infinuates her reflections on his moral condition: And thus he has taught her to fcold in all the ele gance of figure. WARBURTON.

* Thou rag of honour, &c.] This word of contempt is used again in Timon:

"If thou wilt curse, thy father, that poor rag,
"Must be the subject."

Again, in this play :

"These over-weening rags of France." STEEVENS.

VOL. VII.

D

Glo. Glo. Ha?

2. Mar. I call thee not.

Glo. I cry thee mercy then; for I did think, That thou had'st call'd me all these bitter names.

2. Mar. Why, so I did; but look'd for no reply. O, let me make the period to my curse.

Glo. 'Tis done by me; and ends in- Margaret. Queen. Thus have you breath'd your curse against yourself.

2. Mar. Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune?!

Why strew'st thou sugar on that' bottled spider,
Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about?
Fool, fool! thou whet'st a knife to kill thyself.
The day will come, that thou shalt wish for me
To help thee curse this pois'nous bunch-back'd toad.
Haft. Falfe-boding woman, end thy frantick curse;
Left, to thy harm, thou move our patience.

2. Mar. Foul shame upon you! you have all mov'd

mine.

Riv. Were you well ferv'd, you would be taught your duty.

2. Mar. To ferve me well, you all should do me duty,

Teach me to be your queen, and you my subjects:
O, serve me well, and teach yourselves that duty.
Dorf. Difpute not with her, she is lunatic.
2. Mar. Peace, master marquis, you are malapert;
Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current:
O, that your young nobility could judge,
What 'twere to lose it, and be miferable!

They that stand high, have many blasts to shake

them; And, if they fall, they dash tremselves to pieces. Glo. Good counsel, marry; - learn it, learn it,

marquis.

Dors. It touches you, my lord, as much as me. Glo. Ay, and much more: But I was born fo high, Our aiery buildeth in the cedar's top, And dallies with the wind, and scorns the fun.

2. Mar. And turns the fun to shade; - alas! alas! * Witness my fun, now in the shade of death; Whose bright out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath Hath in eternal darkness folded up. Your aiery buildeth in our aiery's nest': O God, that fee'st it, do not fuffer it, As it was won with blood, loft be it fo!

1

Buck. Peace, peace, for shame, if not for charity. 2. Mar. Urge neither charity nor shame to me;

Uncharitably with me have you dealt,
And shamefully by you my hopes are butcher'd.
My charity is outrage, life my shame, -
And in my shame still live my forrow's rage!
Buck. Have done, have done.

2. Mar. Oprincely Buckingham, I'll kiss thy hand, In fign of league and amity with thee :

Witness my Sonne

Her distress cannot prevent her quibbling. It may be here remarked, that the introduction of Margaret in this place, is against all historical evidence. She was ranfomed and sent to France foon after Tewkesbury fight, and there passed the remainder of her wretched life. REMARKS.

3 Your aiery buildeth in our aiery's nest :-) An aiery is a hawk's or an eagle's nest. So, in Green's Card of Fancy, 1608: "It is a fubtle bird that breeds among the aiery of hawks."

Again, in Heywood's Rape of Lucrece, 1630:

"His high-built aiery shall be drown'd in blood."

Again, in Massinger's Maid of Honour :

"One aiery, with propertion, ne'er difcloses

"The eagle and the wren." STEEVENS.

Now fair befal thee, and thy noble house!
Thy garments are not spotted with our blood,
Nor thou within the compass of my curse..
Buck. Nor no one here; for curses never pafs
The lips of those that breathe them in the air.

2. Mar. I'll not believe but they ascend the sky,
And there awake God's gentle-fleeping peace.
O Buckingham, beware of yonder dog;
Look, when he fawns, he bites; and, when he bites,
His venom tooth will rankle to the death:
Have not to do with him, beware of him;
4 Sin, death, and hell, have set their marks upon him;
And all their ministers attend on him.

Glo. What doth she say, my lord of Buckingham? Buck. Nothing that I respect, my gracious lord. 2. Mar. What, dost thou scorn me for my gentle

counsel?

:

And footh the devil that I warn thee from?
O, but remember this another day,
When he shall split thy very heart with forrow;
And fay, poor Margaret was a prophetefs.-
Live each of you the fubjects to his hate,

And he to yours, and all of you to God's! [Exit.
Buck. My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses.
Riv. And fo doth mine; I wonder, she's at liberty.
Glo. I cannot blame her, by God's holy mother;

* Sin, death, and hell] Pofsibly Milton took from hence the hint of his famous Allegory. BLACKSTONE. 5 Live each of you the subjects to his hate,

And he to yours, and all of you to God's!]

It is evident from the conduct of Shakspeare, that the house of Tudor retained all their Lancaftrian prejudices, even in the reign of queen Elizabeth. In this play of Richard the Third, he seems to reduce the woes of the house of York from the curses which queen Margaret had vented against them; and he could not give that weight to her curses, without supposing a right in her to utter them. WALPOLE.

reads:

-I wonder she's at liberty.] Thus the quarto. The folio
I mufe, why she's at liberty.. STEEVENS.

She