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Q. Eliz. Hid'st thou that forehead with a golden crown, Where should be branded, if that right were right, The slaughter of the prince that ow'd that crown.

ACT. iv. SC. 4.

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OW is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun1 of

York;

And all the clouds, that lower'd upon our house,

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths; Our bruised arms hung up for monuments2;

It may be proper to observe that this is the running title adopted from the head line. The general title in the folio styles it "The Tragedy of King Richard the Third: with the Landing of Earle Richmond, and the Battle of Bosworth."

1 By this sun of York. In the old copies it is son or sonne, as if an equivoque was intended. The cognizance of Edward IV. was a sun, in memory of the three suns which are said to have appeared at the battle which he gained over the Lancastrians at Mortimer's Cross. Vide the Third Part of King Henry VI. Act ii. Sc. 1.

2 "Made glorious by his manly chivalry,

With bruised arms and wreaths of victory."
Rape of Lucrece.

Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed 3 steeds,
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber,
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute*.

But I, that am not shap'd for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty,
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature",
Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable,
That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them;
Why I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time;
Unless to see my shadow in the sun,
And descant on mine own deformity;
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

3 i. e. steeds caparisoned or clothed in the trappings of war The word is properly barded, from equus bardatus, Latin of the middle ages.

The old copies have love. "Is the warlike sound of drum and trump turned to the soft noise of lyre and lute? The neighing of barbed steeds, whose loudness filled the air with terror, and whose breaths dimmed the sun with smoke, converted to delicate tunes and amorous glances."- Lyly's Alexander and Campaspe, 1584. There is a passage in the Legend of the Death of King Richard III. in the Mirror for Magistrates evidently imitated from Shakespeare.

• Feature is proportion, or beauty, in general. Vide Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act ii. Sc. 4, note 5. By dissembling is not meant hypocritical nature, that pretends one thing and does another; but disfiguring nature. So we have "dissembling glass" for a distorting one in The Midsummer Night's Dream.

• The quartos have spy

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