* When he to madding Dido would unfold

* His father's acts, commenc'd in burning Troy?

* Am I not witch'd like her? or thou not false like him 11?

* Ah me, I can no more! Die, Margaret!

* For Henry weeps, that thou dost live so long.

Noise within. Enter WARWICK and SALISBURY. The Commons press to the door.

War. It is reported, mighty sovereign,

"That good Duke Humphrey traitorously is murder'd By Suffolk and the Cardinal Beaufort's means. The commons, like an angry hive of bees,

That want their leader, scatter up and down,

And care not who they sting in his revenge.
Myself have calm'd their spleenful mutiny,
Until they hear the order of his death.

K. Hen. That he is dead, good Warwick, 'tis too

true;

But how he died, God knows, not Henry:
• Enter his chamber, view his breathless corpse,
And comment then upon his sudden death.
War. That I shall do, my liege: --Stay, Salisbury,
With the rude multitude, till I return.

*

[WARWICK goes into an inner Room, and SALISBURY retires.

*K. Hen. O thou that judgest all things, stay my thoughts:

My thoughts, that labour to persuade my soul, * Some violent hands were laid on Humphrey's life!

would naturally speak to him about his father, and would be witched by what she learned from him, as well as by the more regular narrative she had heard from Æneas himself.

11 Steevens thinks the word or should be omitted in this line, which would improve both the sense and metre. Mason proposes to read art instead of or.

* If my suspect be false, forgive me, God;
* For judgment only doth belong to thee!
*Fain would I go to chafe his paly lips

* With twenty thousand kisses, and to drain 12
Upon his face an ocean of salt tears;

*

* To tell my love unto his dumb deaf trunk,
* And with my fingers feel his hand unfeeling:
* But all in vain are these mean obsequies;
* And, to survey his dead and earthly image,
* What were it but to make my sorrow greater?

The folding Doors of an inner Chamber are thrown open, and GLOSTER is discovered dead in his Bed: WARWICK and others standing by it 13.

* War. Come hither, gracious sovereign, view this body.

* K. Hen. That is to see how deep my grave is made:

* For, with his soul, fled all my worldly solace; * For seeing him, I see my life in death 14.

12 Steevens proposed to read rain instead of drain. His emendation is countenanced by two passages, one in The Taming of the Shrew

To rain a shower of commanding tears.' And another in King Henry IV. Part II. :

'To rain upon remembrance with mine eyes.'

13 This stage direction was inserted by Malone as best suited to the exhibition. The stage direction in the quarto is Warwick draws the curtaines, and shows Duke Humphrey in his bed.' In the folio, ' A bed with Gloster's body put forth.' By these and other circumstances it seems that the theatres were then unfurnished with scenes. In those days, it appears that curtains were occasionally hung across the middle of the stage on an iron rod, which being drawn open formed a second apartment, when a change of scene was required. See Malone's Account of the ancient Theatres, prefixed to the variorum editions of Shakspeare.

14 How much discussion there has been about this simple passage, which evidently means:-'I see my own life threatened

War. As surely as my soul intends to live . With that dread King that took our state upon him To free us from his Father's wrathful curse,

. I do believe that violent hands were laid

Upon the life of this thrice-famed duke.

Suf. A dreadful oath, sworn with a solemn tongue! • What instance gives Lord Warwick for his vow? War. See, how the blood is settled in his face! Oft have I seen a timely parted ghost 15,

6

Of ashy semblance, meager, pale, and bloodless, Being all descended to the labouring heart;

Who, in the conflict that it holds with death,

Attracts the same for aidance 'gainst the enemy: Which with the heart there cools and ne'er re

turneth

To blush and beautify the cheek again.

with extermination, or surrounded by death.' Thus in a passage of the Burial Service, to which I am surprised none of the commentators have adverted, 'In the midst of life we are in death,' 15 Shakspeare has confounded the terms which signify body and soul together. So in A Midsummer Night's Dream:

damned spirits all,

That in cross-ways and floods have burial.'

The word is frequently thus licentiously used by ancient writers; instances are to be found in Spenser and others. A timely parted ghost,' says Malone, means a body that has become inanimate in the common course of nature; to which violence has not brought a timeless end.' But Mr. Douce has justly observed that timely may mean early, recently, newly. Thus in Macbeth, Act ii. Sc. 3:'He did command me to call timely on him.'

And in the Unfaithful Lover's Garland:

Says he, I'll rise; says she, I scorn
To be so timely parted.'

Mr. Douce's explanation is strengthened by Baret, who interprets ‹ Bruma præmatura, a very hasty or timely winter. In a subsequent passage of the original play the word ghost is again used as in the present instance. Young Clifford, addressing himself to his father's dead body, says:—

A dismal sight! see where he breathless lies,
All smear'd and welter'd in his lukewarm blood!
Sweet father, to thy murder'd ghost I swear,' &c.

But, see, his face is black, and full of blood;

His eyeballs further out than when he liv'd,

⚫ Staring full ghastly like a strangled man:

His hair uprear'd, his nostrils stretch'd with struggling;

• His hands abroad display'd16, as one that grasp'd And tugg'd for life, and was by strength subdu’d. Look on the sheets, his hair, you see, is sticking; His well proportioned beard made rough and rugged,

• Like to the summer's corn by tempest lodg'd. It cannot be, but he was murder'd here;

• The least of all these signs were probable.

Suf. Why, Warwick, who should do the duke
to death?

Myself, and Beaufort, had him in protection;
And we, I hope, sir, are no murderers.

War. But both of you were vow'd Duke Hum-
phrey's foes;

And you, forsooth, had the good duke to keep: "Tis like, you would not feast him like a friend; ' And 'tis well seen he found an enemy.

Q. Mar. Then you, belike, suspect these noble

men

'As guilty of Duke Humphrey's timeless death. War. Who finds the heifer dead, and bleeding fresh, And sees fast by a butcher with an axe,

But will suspect, 'twas he that made the slaughter?
Who finds the partridge in the puttock's nest,
But may imagine how the bird was dead,
Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?
Even so suspicious is this tragedy.

16 i. e. the fingers being widely distended. 'Herein was the Emperor Domitian so cunning, that let a boy a good distance off hold up his hand, and stretch his fingers abroad, he would shoote through the spaces without touching the boy's hand, or any finger.' Peacham's Complete Gentleman, 1622, p. 181.

'Q. Mar. Are you the butcher, Suffolk; where's

your knife?

Is Beaufort term'd a kite? where are his talons?
Suf. I wear no knife, to slaughter sleeping men;
But here's a vengeful sword, rusted with ease,
That shall be scoured in his rancorous heart,
That slanders me with murder's crimson badge :-
Say, if thou dar'st, proud lord of Warwickshire,
That I am faulty in Duke Humphrey's death.

[Exeunt Cardinal, Soм. and Others. War. What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him?

Q. Mar. He dares not calm his contumelious spirit, Nor cease to be an arrogant controller,

Though Suffolk dare him twenty thousand times. War. Madam, be still; with reverence may I say; For every word, you speak in his behalf,

Is slander to you royal dignity.

Suf. Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanour If ever lady wrong'd her lord so much,

Thy mother took into her blameful bed
Some stern untutor'd churl, and noble stock
Was graft with crab-tree slip; whose fruit thou art,
And never of the Nevils' noble race.

War. But that the guilt of murder bucklers thee,
And I should rob the deathsman of his fee,
Quitting thee thereby of ten thousand shames,
And that my sovereign's presence makes me mild,
I would, false murderous coward, on thy knee
Make thee beg pardon for thy passed speech,
And say it was thy mother that thou meant'st,
That thou thyself wast born in bastardy:
And, after all this fearful homage done,
Give thee thy hire, and send thy soul to hell,
Pernicious bloodsucker of sleeping men
!

Suf. Thou shalt be waking, while I shed thy blood, If from this presence thou dar'st go with me.