SCENE III.

Pomfret. Before the Cafile.

Enter RATCLIFF, with a Guard, conducting RIVERS, GREY, and VAUGHAN, to Execution.

RAT. Come, bring forth the prisoners.9

RIV. Sir Richard Ratcliff, let me tell thee this,To-day, fhalt thou behold a subject die, For truth, for duty, and for loyalty.

GREY. God keep the prince from all the pack of you!

A knot you are of damned blood-fuckers.

VAUGH. You live, that fhall cry woe for this hereafter.

RAT. Defpatch; the limit of your lives is out. RIV. O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prifon,

Fatal and ominous to noble peers!

8-Grey.] Queen Elizabeth Grey is defervedly pitied for lofing her two fons; but the royalty of their birth has fo engroffed the attention of hiftorians, that they never reckon into the number of her misfortunes the murder of this her fecond fon, Sir Richard Grey. It is as remarkable how flightly the death of our Earl Rivers is always mentioned, though a man invested with fuch high offices of truft and dignity; and how much we dwell on the execution of the Lord Chamberlain Haftings, a man in every light his inferior. In truth, the generality draw their ideas of English story, from the tragick rather than the historick authors. WALPOLE,

9 Come, bring forth the prifoners.] This fpeech is wanting in the folio, and might (as it has neither use, nor pretenfions to metre, be as well omitted as retained. STEEVENS.

I

the limit-] For the limited time. See Vol. XI. p. 184, n. 9. MALONE.

Within the guilty clofure of thy walls,
Richard the fecond here was hack'd to death:
And, for more flander to thy dismal feat,
We give thee up our guiltless blood to drink.

GREY. Now Margaret's curfe is fallen upon our
heads,

When the exclaim'd on Haftings, you, and I,
For ftanding by when Richard ftabb'd her fon.

RIV. Then curs'd fhe Haftings, .then curs'd fhe
Buckingham,

Then curs'd the Richard:-O, remember, God,
To hear her prayers for them, as now for us!
And for my fifter, and her princely fons,-
Be fatisfied, dear God, with our true bloods,
Which, as thou know'st, unjustly must be spilt!

RAT. Make hafte, the hour of death is expiate.*

2 Make hafte, the hour of death is expiate.] Thus the folio. The quarto furnishes a line that has occurred already :

Defpatch; the limit of your lives is out.' Expiate is ufed for expiated; fo confifcate, contaminate, confummate, &c. &c. It feems to mean, fully completed, and ended. Shakspeare has again ufed the word in the fame fenfe in his 22d Sonnet :

"Then look I death my days should expiate."

So, in Locrine, 1595:

"Lives Sabren yet, to expiate my wrath."

The editor of the second folio, who altered whatever he did not understand, reads arbitrarily

66

Despatch; the hour of death is now expir'd.”

and he has been followed by all the modern editors. MALONE. the hour of death is expiate.] As I cannot make sense of this, I should certainly read, with the fecond folio :

the hour of death is now expired,

meaning the hour appointed for his death. The paffage quoted by Mr. Malone from Locrine, is nothing to the purpose, for there, to expiate means to atone for, or fatisfy. M. MASON.

I do not well understand the reading which Mr. Malone pre

RIV. Come, Grey,-come, Vaughan,-let us here embrace:

Farewell, until we meet again in heaven. [Exeunt.

SCENE IV.

London. A Room in the Tower.

BUCKINGHAM, STANLEY, HASTINGS, the Bishop of Ely, CATESBY, LOVEL, and Others, fitting at a Table: Officers of the Council attending.

HAST. Now, noble peers, the cause why we are

met

Is to determine of the coronation :
In God's name, fpeak, when is the royal day?
BUCK. Are all things ready for that royal time?
STAN. They are; and wants but nomination.4

fers, though I have left it in the text. read:

66

Perhaps we fhould

the hour of death is expirate."

which accords with Shakspeare's phrafeology, and needs no explanation. Thus, in Romeo and Juliet:

66

· and expire the term

"Of a defpifed life." STEEVENS.

3 ·Bishop of Ely,] Dr. John Morton; who was elected to that fee in 1478. He was advanced to the fee of Canterbury in 1486, and appointed Lord Chancellor in 1487. He died in the year 1500. This prelate, Sir Thomas More tells us, firft devised the fcheme of putting an end to the long conteft between the houses of York and Lancaster, by a marriage between Henry Earl of Richmond, and Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Edward IV. and was a principal agent in procuring Henry when abroad to enter into a covenant for that purpose. MALONE.

4

– and wants but nomination.] i. e. the only thing wanting, is appointment of a particular day for the ceremony. STERVENS,

ELF. To-morrow then I judge a happy day.

BUCK. Who knows the lord protector's mind herein ?

Who is moft inward 5 with the noble duke?

ELY. Your grace, we think, fhould fooneft know his mind.

BUCK. We know each other's faces: for our
hearts,-

He knows no more of mine, than I of yours;
Nor I, of his, my lord, than you of mine :-
Lord Haftings, you and he are near in love.

HAST. I thank his grace, I know he loves me
well;

But, for his purpose in the coronation,
I have not founded him, nor he deliver'd
His gracious pleasure any way therein :
But you, my noble lord, may name the time;
And in the duke's behalf I'll give my voice,
Which, I prefume, he'll take in gentle part.

Enter GLOSTER.

ELT. In happy time, here comes the duke himfelf.

GLO. My noble lords and coufins, all, good mor

row:

I have been long a fleeper; but, I trust,
My absence doth neglect no great defign,
Which by my prefence might have been concluded.

inward-] i. e. intimate, confidential. So, in Meafure for Meafure:

"Sir, I was an inward of his." STEEVENS.

BUCK. Had you not come upon your cue, my lord,

William lord Haftings had pronounc'd pronounc'd your part,I mean, your voice,-for crowning of the king.

GLO. Than my lord Haftings, no man might be bolder;

His lordship knows me well, and loves me well.—
My lord of Ely, when I was laft in Holborn,
I faw good strawberries in your garden there ;
I do befeech you, fend for fome of them.

ELY. Marry, and will, my lord, with all my heart.

[Exit ELY.

6 Had you not come upon your cue,] This expreffion is borrowed from the theatre. The cue, queue, or tail of a speech, confifts of the laft words, which are the token for an entrance or anfwer. To come on the cue, therefore, is to come at the proper time. Joнnson.

So, in A Midfummer-Night's Dream, Quince fays to Flute"You speak all your part at once, cues and all." STEEVENS.

7 Ifaw good firawberries-] The reason why the Bishop was defpatched on this errand, is not clearer in Holinfhed, from whom Shakspeare adopted the circumstances, than in this scene, where it is introduced. Nothing feems to have happened which might not have been tranfacted with equal fecurity in the presence of the reverend cultivator of thefe ftrawberries, whose complaifance is likewife recorded by the author of the Latin play on the fame fubject, in the British Museum :

Elienfis antiftes venis ? fenem quies,

Juvenem labor decet: ferunt hortum tuum
Decora fraga plurimum producere.

EPISCOPUS ELIENSIS,

Nil tibi claudetur hortus quod meus
Producit; effet lautius vellem mihi,

Quo fim tibi gratus.

This circumftance of afking for the ftrawberries, however, may have been mentioned by the hiftorians merely to show the unufual affability and good humour which the diffembling Glofter affected at the very time when he had determined on the death of Haftings. STEEVENS.