SON. Why do you look on us, and shake your

head,

And call us-orphans, wretches, caft-aways,
If that our noble father be alive?

DUCH. My pretty cousins, you mistake me both; I do lament the fickness of the king,

As loath to lose him, not your father's death;
It were loft forrow, to wail one that's loft.

SON. Then, grandam, you conclude that he is dead.

The king my uncle is to blame for this:
God will revenge it; whom I will impórtune
With earnest prayers all to that effect.

DAUGH. And fo will I.

DUCH. Peace, children, peace! the king doth you well:

love

Incapable and fhallow innocents,'

You cannot guess who caus'd your father's death.

SON. Grandam, we can : for my good uncle Glof

ter

Told me, the king, provok'd to't by the queen,
Devis'd impeachments to imprison him :
And when my uncle told me fo, he wept,
And pitied me, and kindly kiss'd my cheek;

9

my pretty cousins,] The Duchefs is here addreffing her grand-children, but coufin was the term used in Shakspeare's time, by uncles to nephews and nieces, grandfathers to grandchildren, &c. It seems to have been used instead of our kinfman, and kinfwoman, and to have supplied the place of both. MALONE.

See note on Othello, A&t I. fc. i. STEEVENS.

I

Incapable and shallow innocents,] Incapable is unintelligent.
MALONE,

So, in Hamlet:

"As one incapable of her own diftrefs." STEEVENS,

Bade me rely on him, as on my father,

And he would love me dearly as his child.

DUCH. Ah, that deceit should steal fuch gentle fhapes,

And with a virtuous vifor hide deep vice!
He is my fon, ay, and therein my fhame,
Yet from my dugs he drew not this deceit.

SON. Think you, my uncle did diffemble, gran

dam?

DUCH, Ay, boy.

SON. I cannot think it. Hark! what noife is this?

Enter Queen ELIZABETH, diftractedly; RIVERS, and DORSET, following her.

Q. ELIZ. Ah! who fhall hinder me to wail and
weep?

To chide my fortune, and torment myself?
I'll join with black despair against my soul,
And to myself become an enemy.

DUCH. What means this scene of rude impa-
tience?

Q. ELIZ. To make an act of tragick violence:Edward, my lord, thy fon, our king, is dead.— Why grow the branches, when the root is gone? Why wither not the leaves, that want their fap ?If you will live, lament; if die, be brief; That our swift-winged fouls may catch the king's ;.

2

my uncle did diffemble,] Shakspeare ufes diffemble in the sense of acting fraudulently, feigning what we do not feel or think; though ftrictly it means to conceal our real thoughts or affections. So alfo Milton in the paffage quoted in p. 342, n. 9.

MALONE.

Or, like obedient fubjects, follow him
To his new kingdom of perpetual rest.3

DUCH. Ah, so much interest have I in thy for

row,

As I had title in thy noble husband!
I have bewept a worthy husband's death,
And liv'd by looking on his images :4

But now, two mirrors of his princely femblance
Are crack'd in pieces by malignant death;5
And I for comfort have but one false glass,
That grieves me when I see my shame in him.
Thou art a widow; yet thou art a mother,

And haft the comfort of thy children left thee:
But death hath fnatch'd my husband from my

arms,

And pluck'd two crutches from my feeble hands,
Clarence, and Edward. O, what cause have I,
(Thine being but a moiety of my grief,)
To over-go thy plaints, and drown thy cries?

SON. Ah, aunt! you wept not for our father's
death 1;

3 of perpetual reft.] So the quarto. The folio readsof ne'er changing night. MALOne,

4

← —his images :] The children by whom he was represented.

JOHNSON.

So, in The Rape of Lucrece, Lucretius fays to his daughter: "O, from thy cheeks my image thou haft torn."

MALONE.

s But now, two mirrors of his princely femblance Are crack'd in pieces by malignant death;] So, in our author's Rape of Lucrece :

"Poor broken glass, I often did behold
"In thy sweet semblance my old age
new born;

"But now, that fair fresh mirror, dim and old,
"Shows me a bare-bon'd death by time out-worn."

Again, in his 3d Sonnet :

"Thou art thy mother's glass," &c. MALONE.

How can we aid you with our kindred tears? DAUGH. Our fatherlefs diftrefs was left unmoan'd, Your widow-dolour likewife be unwept !

Q. ELIZ. Give me no help in lamentation, I am not barren to bring forth laments: All springs reduce their currents to mine eyes, That I, being govern'd by the watry moon," May fend forth plenteous tears to drown the world! Ah, for my hufband, for my dear lord Edward! CHIL. Ah, for our father, for our dear lord Cla

rence!

DUCH. Alas, for both, both mine, Edward and
Clarence!

Q. ELIZ. What stay had I, but Edward? and he's
gone.

CHIL. What stay had we, but Clarence? and he's gone.

DUCH. What ftays had I, but they? and they are gone.

Q. ELIZ. Was never widow, had fo dear a lofs. CHIL. Were never orphans, had fo dear a lofs, DUCH. Was never mother had fo dear a lofs. Alas! I am the mother of these griefs; Their woes are parcell'd, mine are general. She for an Edward weeps, and fo do I ; I for a Clarence weep, fo doth not she:

6

being govern'd by the watry moon,] That I may live hereafter under the influence of the moon, which governs the tides, and by the help of that influence drown the world. The introduction of the moon is not very natural. JOHNSON.

The fame thought has already occurred in K. Henry IV. P. I : being governed, as the fea is, by the moon."

STEEVENS.

These babes for Clarence weep, and fo do I:
I for an Edward weep, so do not they :—

7 and fo do I:] So the quarto. The variation of the folio is remarkable. It reads-fo do not they.

MALONE.

8 1 for an Edward weep, fo do not they] The text is here made out partly from the folio and partly from the quarto. In the quarto this and the preceding line ftand thus :

"These babes for Clarence weep, and so do I;

"I for an Edward weep, and fo do they."

The end of the fecond line is evidently corrupted. In the MS. from which the folio was printed, or in a corrected quarto copy, the two lines undoubtedly were right:

"These babes for Clarence weep, [and fo do I;

"I for an Edward weep,] fo do NOT they."

But the compofitor's eye paffing over two half lines, the paffage was printed thus in the folio, in one line:

"Thefe babes for Clarence weep, fo do not they.".

I have stated this matter thus particularly, because it confirms an obfervation that I have more than once had occafion to make in revifing these plays; that there is reason to suspect that many of the difficulties in our author's works have arifen from the omiffion of either fingle words, fingle lines, or the latter half of one line with the half of the next: a folution which readers are very flow to admit, and generally confider as chimerical. One week's acquaintance with the business of the press (without those proofs which a collation of the quartos with each other and with the first folio affords,) would foon convince them that my fuppofition is not a mere offspring of imagination. In the plays, of which there is no authentick copy but the firft folio, there is no means of proving fuch omiffions to have happened; but the prefent and other proofs of their having actually happened in the other plays, lay furely a reasonable ground for conjecturing that fimilar errors have happened in thofe pieces, of which there is only a fingle ancient copy extant, and entitle fuch conjectures to indulgence.

See Vol. VI. p. 188, n. 3; Vol. X. p. 102, n. 9; Vol. XI. p. 59, n. 2, and p. 376, n. 3: Vol. XIII. p. 313, n. 7; Coriolanus, Vol. XVI. A& II. fc. iii. and Antony and Cleopatra, A& IV. fc. x.

In this note, and throughout this play, where I have spoken of the quarto, without any fpecification of the year when printed, I meant the quarto 1598, the earliest which I had then seen. The quarto 1597, I find, correfponds with the text. MALONE.