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You may partake of anything we say:

We speak no treason, man—we say the king

Is wise and virtuous, and his noble queen

Well strook in years, fair, and not jealous.

We say that Shore's wife hath a pretty foot,

A cherry lip,

A bonny eye, a passing pleasing tongue;

That the queen's kindred are made gentlefolks.

How say you, sir? Can you deny all this?

Brakenbury. With this, my lord, myself have nought to do.

Gloucester. What, fellow, naught to do with mistress Shore?

I tell you, sir, he that doth naught with her,

Excepting one, were best to do it secretly alone.

Brakenbury. What one, my lord?

Gloucester. Her husband, knave—would'st thou betray me?

The feigned reconciliation of Gloucester with the queen's kinsmen is also a masterpiece. One of the finest strokes in the play, and which serves to show as much as anything the deep, plausible manners of Richard, is the unsuspecting security of Hastings, at the very time when the former is plotting his death, and when that very appearance of cordiality and good-humour on which Hastings builds his confidence arises from Richard's consciousness of having betrayed him to his ruin. This, with the whole character of Hastings, is omitted.

Perhaps the two most beautiful passages in the original play are the farewell apostrophe of the queen to the Tower, where the children are shut up from her, and Tyrrel's description of their death. We will finish our quotations with them.

Queen. Stay, yet look back with me unto the Tower;

Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes,

Whom envy hath immured within your walls;

Rough cradle for such little pretty ones,

Rude, rugged nurse, old sullen play-fellow,

For tender princes! The other passage is the account of their

death by Tyrrel:

Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn

To do this piece of ruthless butchery,

Albeit they were flesh'd villains, bloody dogs,—

Wept like to children in their death's sad story:

O thus! quoth Dighton, lay the gentle babes;

Thus, thus, quoth Forrest, girdling one another

Within their innocent alabaster arms;

Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,

And in that summer beauty kissed each other;

A book of prayers on their pillow lay,

Which once, quoth Forrest, almost changed my mind:

But oh the devil!—there the villain stopped;

When Dighton thus told on—we smothered

The most replenished sweet work of nature,

That from the prime creation ere she framed.

These are some of those wonderful bursts of feeling, done to the life, to the very height of fancy and nature, which our Shakespeare alone could give. We do not insist on the repetition of these last passages as proper for the stage: we should indeed be loath to trust them in the mouth of almost any actor: but we should wish them to be retained in preference at least to the fantoccini exhibition of the young princes, Edward and York, bandying childish wit with their uncle.

HENRY VIII

This play contains little action or violence of passion, yet it has considerable interest of a more mild and thoughtful cast, and some of the most striking passages in the author's works. The character of Queen Katherine is the most perfect delineation of matronly dignity, sweetness, and resignation, that can be conceived. Her appeals to the protection of the king, her remonstrances to the cardinals, her conversations with her women, show a noble and generous spirit accompanied with the utmost gentleness of nature. What can be more affecting than her answer to Campeius and Wolsey, who come to visit her as pretended friends.

—'Nay, forsooth, my friends,

They that must weigh out my afflictions,

They that my trust must grow to, live not here;

They are, as all my comforts are, far hence,

In mine own country, lords.'

Dr. Johnson observes of this play, that 'the meek sorrows and virtuous distress of Katherine have furnished some scenes, which may be justly numbered among the greatest efforts of tragedy. But the genius of Shakespeare comes in and goes out with Katherine. Every other part may be easily conceived and easily written.' This