Redeem from broking pawn the blemish'd crown,
Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre's gilt33,
And make high majesty look like itself,
Away, with me, in post to Ravenspurg:
But if you faint, as fearing to do so,
Stay, and be secret, and myself will go.

Ross. To horse, to horse! urge doubts to them that fear.

Willo. Hold out my horse, and I will first be there. [Exeunt.

SCENE II. The same. A Room in the Palace.

Enter Queen, BUSHY, and Bagot.

Bushy. Madam, your majesty is too much sad: You promis'd, when you parted with the king, To lay aside life-harming heaviness,

And entertain a cheerful disposition.

Queen. To please the king, I did; to please myself,

I cannot do it; yet I know no cause

Why I should welcome such a guest as grief,
Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest
As my sweet Richard: Yet, again, methinks,
Some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune's womb,
Is coming towards me; and my inward soul
With nothing trembles: at some thing it grieves,
More than with parting from my lord the king.
Bushy. Each substance of a grief hath twenty
shadows,

Which show like grief itself, but are not so:
For sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire to many objects;
Like pérspectives', which, rightly gaz'd upon,

33 Gilding.

1 It has been shown in a former note that perspective meant optical glasses, to assist the sight in any way. Mr. Henley says that the perspectives here mentioned were round crystal glasses, the convex surface of which was cut into faces like those of the rose-diamond; the concave left uniformly smooth; which if placed

Show nothing but confusion; ey'd awry,
Distinguish form: so your sweet majesty,
Looking awry upon your lord's departure,
Finds shapes of grief, more than himself, to wail;
Which, look'd on as it is, is nought but shadows
Of what it is not. Then, thrice-gracious queen,
More than your lord's departure weep not; more's
not seen:

Or if it be, 'tis with false sorrow's eye,

Which, for things true, weeps things imaginary.
Queen. It may be so; but yet my inward soul
Persuades me, it is otherwise: Howe'er it be,
I cannot but be sad; so heavy sad,

As, though, in thinking, on no thought I think2,---
Makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink.
Bushy. 'Tis nothing but conceit3, my gracious
lady.

Queen. "Tis nothing less: conceit it still deriv'd
From some fore-father grief; mine is not so;
For nothing hath begot my something grief;
Or something hath the nothing that I grieve:
"Tis in reversion that I do possess;

But what it is, that is not yet known; what
I cannot name; 'tis nameless woe, I wot.

as here represented, would exhibit the different appearances described by the poet.' But it may have reference to that kind of optical delusion called anamorphosis; which is a perspective projection of a picture, so that at one point of view it shall appear a confused mass, or different to what it really is, in another, an exact and regular representation. Sometimes it is made to appear confused to the naked eye, and regular when viewed in a glass or mirror of a certain form. A picture of a chancellor of France, presented to the common beholder a multitude of little faces; but if one did look at it through a perspective, there appeared only the single pourtraiture of the chancellor.-Humane Industry, 1651. This is again alluded to in Twelfth Night, Act v. Sc. 1:~ 'A natural perspective, that is, and is not.' Thus also in Henry V :-'My lord, you see them perspectively, the cities turned into a maid. See vol. i. p. 361, note 13.

2 The old copies have 'on thinking, which is an evident error: we should read, 'As though in thinking' i. e. though musing, I have no idea of calamity. The involuntary and unaccountable depression of the mind, which every one has sometimes felt, is here very forcibly described.

3 Fanciful conception.

Enter GREEN.

Green. God save your majesty!-and well met, gentlemen:

I hope, the king is not yet shipp'd for Ireland.
Queen. Why hop'st thou so? 'tis better hope, he is;
For his designs crave haste, his haste good hope;
Then wherefore dost thou hope, he is not shipp'd?
Green. That he, our hope, might have retir❜d his
power4,

And driven into despair an enemy's hope,
Who strongly hath set footing in this land:
The banish'd Bolingbroke repeals himself,
And with uplifted arms is safe arriv'd
At Ravenspurg.

Queen.

Now God in heaven forbid! Green. O, madam, 'tis too true: and that is worse,The Lord Northumberland, his young son Henry Percy,

The lords of Ross, Beaumond, and Willoughby,
With all their powerful friends, are fled to him.
Bushy. Why have you not proclaim'd Northum-
berland,

And all the rest of the revolted faction, traitors5?
Green. We have: whereon the earl of Worcester
Hath broke his staff, resign'd his stewardship,
And all the household servants fled with him
To Bolingbroke.

Queen. So, Green, thon art the midwife to my

woe,

And Bolingbroke my sorrow's dismal heir6:

4 Retir'd, i. e. drawn it back; a French sense.

5 The first quarto, 1597, reads :—

'And all the rest of the revolted faction, traitors?'

The folio, and the quarto of 1598 and 1608:

'And the rest of the revolting faction, traitors?'

6 The queen had said before, that some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune's womb, was coming toward her.' She talks afterward of her unknown griefs being begotten; she calls Green 'the midwife of her woe;' and then means to say in the same

Now hath my soul brought forth her prodigy;
And I, a gasping new-deliver'd mother,
Have woe to woe, sorrow to sorrow join'd.
Bushy. Despair not, madam.

Queen.

Who shall hinder me?

I will despair, and be at enmity

With cozening hope; he is a flatterer,
A parasite, a keeper-back of death,

Who gently would dissolve the bands of life,
Which false hope lingers in extremity.

Enter YORK.

Green. Here comes the duke of York. Queen. With signs of war about his aged neck; O, full of careful business are his looks!Uncle,

For heaven's sake, speak comfortable words.

York. Should I do so, I should belie my thoughts: Comfort's in heaven; and we are on the earth, Where nothing lives but crosses, care, and grief. Your husband he is gone to save far off, Whilst others come to make him lose at home: Here am I left to underprop his land;

Who, weak with age, cannot support myself:— Now comes the sick hour that his surfeit made; Now shall he try his friends that flatter'd him.

Enter a Servant.

Serv. My lord, your son was gone before I came. York. He was?-Why, so!-go all which way it

will!

The nobles they are fled, the commons they are cold, And will, I fear, revolt on Hereford's side.Sirrah, get thee to Plashy, to my sister Gloster;

metaphorical style, that the arrival of Bolingbroke was the dismal offspring that her foreboding sorrow was big of; which she expresses by calling him her 'sorrow's dismal heir, and explains more fully in the following line:

'Now hath my soul brought forth her prodigy."

Bid her send me presently a thousand pound:Hold, take my ring.

Serv. My lord, I had forgot to tell your lordship: To-day, as I came by, I called there;

But I shall grieve you to report the rest.
York. What is it, knave?

Serv. An hour before I came, the duchess died.
York. God for his mercy! what a tide of woes
Comes rushing on this woeful land at once!
I know not what to do:-I would to God
(So my untruth had not provok'd him to it),
The king had cut off my head with my brother's8.
What, are there no posts despatch'd for Ireland?-
How shall we do for money for these wars?—
Come, sister,-cousin, I would say: pray, pardon

me.

Go, fellow, [To the Servant.] get thee home, provide some carts,

And bring away the armour that is there.

[Exit Servant. Gentlemen, will you go muster men? if I know How, or which way, to order these affairs, Thus disorderly thrust into my hands, Never believe me. Both are my kinsmen;The one's my sovereign, whom both my oath And duty bids defend; the other again,

Is my kinsman, whom the king hath wrong'd; Whom conscience and my kindred bids to right. Well, somewhat we must do.- Come, cousin, I'll Dispose of you:-Gentlemen, go, muster up your

men,

And meet me presently at Berkley-castle.
I should to Plashy too;--

Disloyalty, treachery.

8 Not one of York's brothers had his head cut off, either by the king or any one else. Gloster, to whose death he probably alludes, was smothered between two beds at Calais.

9 This is one of Shakspeare's touches of nature. York is talking to the queen, his cousin, but the recent death of his sister is uppermost in his mind.