Redeem from broking pawn the blemish'd crown,
Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre's gilt,
And make high majesty look like itself,
Away with me in post 40 to Ravenspurg;
But if you faint,41 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. - London. A Room in the Palace.

Enter the QUEEN, BUSHY, and Bagot.

Bushy. Madam, your Majesty is too much sad :
You promised, 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.'

40 In post, is the same as in haste. See page 40, note 14.

41 That is, "if you are faint-hearted." So in Bacon's essay Of Atheism : "Atheists will ever be talking of that their opinion, as if they fainted in it within themselves."

1 This presentimental depression of spirits, which who has not sometimes felt? is thus commented on by Coleridge: "Mark in this scene Shakespeare's gentleness in touching the tender superstitions, the terræ incognitæ of presentiments, in the human mind; and how sharp a line of distinction

Bushy. Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows, Which show like grief itself, but are not so: For sorrow's eye, glazèd with blinding tears, Divides one thing entire to many objects; Like perspectives, which, rightly gazed upon, Show nothing but confusion, — eyed awry, Distinguish form:2 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,

he commonly draws between these obscure forecastings of general experience in each individual and the vulgar errors of mere tradition. Indeed, it may be taken once for all as the truth, that Shakespeare, in the absolute universality of his genius, always reverences whatever arises out of our moral nature; he never profanes his Muse with a contemptuous reasoning away of the genuine and general, however unaccountable, feelings of mankind." The theme is worked out with consummate felicity in Wordsworth's poem entitled Presentiments, the first stanza of which I subjoin:

Presentiments! they judge not right
Who deem that ye from open light

Retire in fear of shame:

All Heaven-born Instincts shun the touch

Of vulgar sense; and, being such,
Such privilege ye claim.

2 Of these perspectives there were various kinds, and the Poet has several references to them. Hobbes, in his Answer to Davenant's Preface to Gondibert, thus describes one kind: "You have seen a curious kind of perspective, where he that looks through a short hollow pipe upon a picture containing divers figures sees none of those that are painted, but some one person made up of their parts, conveyed to the eye by the artificial cutting of a glass." I have seen sign-boards so arranged that, if you stood to the right, you would see one name distinctly; if to the left, another; if directly in front a confusion of the two. Something of like sort seems referred to in the text: 'eyed awry," that is, seen obliquely, the form was truly distin

guished; "rightly gazed upon," that is, seen directly, it "showed nothing but confusion."

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,

As3-though, in thinking, on no thing I think-
Makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink.

Bushy. 'Tis nothing but conceit,4 my gracious lady.
Queen. 'Tis nothing less: 5 conceit is still derived
From some forefather 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 ;6

3 Present usage would require that instead of as. The two were often used indiscriminately. Bacon has many instances.

4 The Poet always uses conceit in a good sense. Here it is imagination or fancy.

5" "Tis nothing less than that" is an old equivalent for the phrase, “'Tis any thing but that." Here, again, still is always or constantly.

6 This passage is made dark by elaborate verbal play. The meaning seems to be, that either nothing has caused her grief, or else there really is somewhat in the nothing that she grieves about. And she possesses her grief in reversion, as something which, though really hers, she has no right to claim till the coming of the event that is to cause it.- - This oppressive foreboding of evil is transferred by Daniel to the King, just before Exton comes to murder him :

Whether the soul receives intelligence,

By her near genius, of the body's end,
And so imparts a sadness to the sense,
Foregoing ruin, whereto it doth tend;
Or whether Nature else hath conference

With profound sleep, and so doth warning send
By prophetising dreams, what hurt is near,
And gives the heavy careful heart to fear:
However, so it is; the now sad King

Feels a strange weight of sorrow gathering

But what it is that is not yet known what

I cannot name; 'tis nameless woe, I wot.

Enter GREEN.

Green. God save your Majesty ! — and well met, gentle

men:

I hope the King is not yet shipp'd for Ireland.

Queen. Why hopest 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 retired' his

power,

And driven into despair an enemy's hope,

Who strongly hath set footing in this land:
The banish'd Bolingbroke repeals himself,8
And with uplifted arms is safe arrived

At Ravenspurg.

Queen.

Now God in Heaven forbid !

Green. O madam, 'tis too true: and, what is worse,
The Lord Northumberland, his son, young 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 Northumberland,

And all the rest of the revolted faction, traitors?
Green. We have: whereupon the Earl of Worcester

Upon his trembling heart, and sees no ground;
Feels sudden terror bring cold shivering;

Lists not to eat; still muses; sleeps unsound;
His senses droop, his steady eyes unquick;
And much he ails, and yet he is not sick.

7 To draw back or withdraw is among the old senses of retire.

8 That is, repeals the sentence of exile against himself. We should say, "recalls himself." The Poet often uses repeals so.

Hath broke his staff, resign'd his stewardship,9

And all the household servants fled with him
To Bolingbroke.

Queen. So, Green, thou art the midwife to my woe,
And Bolingbroke my sorrow's dismal heir:

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.

I will despair, and be at enmity

Who shall hinder me?

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.10

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 God's sake, speak comfortable 12 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:

9 The Earl of Worcester was Thomas Percy, brother to Northumberland. The staff he broke was his official badge as Lord High Steward. 10 Which false hope causes to linger in extreme distress.

11 Careful for anxious, or full of care. - The " signs of war" are the upper parts of his armour: his gorget or throat-covering.

12 Comfortable for comforting; the passive form with the active sense Such was the common usage of the time.