Plan. Then say at once, if I maintain'd the truth; Or, else, was wrangling Somerset in the error?? Suff. 'Faith, I have been a truant in the law; And never yet could frame my will to it; And, therefore, frame the law unto my will. Som. Judge you, my lord of Warwick, then be

tween us.

War. Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch,

Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth,
Between two blades, which bears the better temper,
Between two horses, which doth bear him best3,
Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye,
I have, perhaps, some shallow spirit of judgment :
But in these nice sharp quillets of the law,
Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.

Plan. Tut, tut, here is a mannerly forbearance The truth appears so naked on my side,

That

any purblind eye may find it out.

Som. And on my side it is so well apparell'd So clear, so shining, and so evident,

That it will glimmer through a blind man's eye. Plan. Since you are tongue-ty'd, and so loath to speak,

In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts:
Let him that is a true-born gentleman,
And stands upon the honour of his birth,

• Johnson observes that "there is apparently a want of opposition between the two questions here," but there is no reason to suspect that the text is corrupt. Or else must be understood as, Or, in other words.

3 i. e. regulate his motions most adroitly. We still say that a horse carries himself well. In Romeo and Juliet we have:"He bears him like a portly gentleman."

Dumb significants, which Malone would have changed to significance, is nothing more than signs or tokens. Armado calls the letter he sends to Jaquenetta "this significant." Love's Labour's Lost, Act iii. Sc. 1.

If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,

From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.
Som. Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.

War. I love no colours5; and, without all colour Of base insinuating flattery,

Somerset ;

I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.
Suf. I pluck this red rose with young
And say withal, I think he held the right.

Till

Ver. Stay, lords and gentlemen: and pluck no more, you conclude that he, upon whose side The fewest roses are cropp'd from the tree, Shall yield the other in the right opinion.

Som. Good master Vernon, it is well objected6; If I have fewest, I subscribe in silence.

Plan. And I.

Ver. Then, for the truth and plainness of the case, I pluck this pale, and maiden blossom here, Giving my verdict on the white rose side.

Som. Prick not your finger as you pluck it off;
Lest, bleeding, you do paint the white rose red,
And fall on my side so against your will.

Ver. If I, my lord, for my opinion bleed,
Opinion shall be surgeon to my hurt,
And keep me on the side where still I am.
Som. Well, well, come on: Who else?
Law. Unless my study and my books be false,

5 Colours is here used ambiguously for tints and deceits. Thus in Love's Labour's Lost.-"I do fear colourable colours.”

6

Well objected is properly proposed, properly thrown in our way. Thus in Goulart's Admirable Histories, 4to. 1607 :-"Because Sathan transfigures himself into an angell of light, I objected many and sundry questions to him." Again, in Chapman's version of the twenty-first book of the Odyssey:

"Excites Penelope t' object the prize

(The bow and bright steeles) to the wooer's strength"

The argument you

held was wrong
in

you;

[TO SOMERSET

In sign whereof, I pluck a white rose too.

Plan. Now, Somerset, where is your argument? Som. Here, in my scabbard; meditating that, Shall dye your white rose in a bloody red.

Plan. Mean time, your cheeks do counterfeit our

roses;

For pale they look with fear, as witnessing
The truth on our side.

No, Plantagenet,

Som.
"Tis not for fear; but anger, that thy cheeks
Blush for pure shame, to counterfeit our roses" ;
And yet thy tongue will not confess thy error.

Plan. Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset ?
Som. Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?
Plan. Ay, sharp and piercing, to maintain his truth
Whiles thy consuming canker eats his falsehood.
Som. Well, I'll find friends to wear my bleeding roses,
That shall maintain what I have said is true,
Where false Plantagenet dare not be seen.

Plan. Now, by this maiden blossom in my hand, I scorn thee and thy faction, peevish boy.

Suf. Turn not thy scorns this way, Plantagenet. Plan. Proud Poole, I will; and scorn both him and thee.

Suf. I'll turn my part thereof into thy threat.

7 It is not for fear that my cheeks look pale, but for anger; anger produced by this circumstance-namely, that thy cheeks blush, &c.

8 Theobald altered fashion, which is the reading of the old copy, to faction. Warburton contends that "by fashion is meant the badge of the red rose, which Somerset said that he and his friends would be distinguished by." Theobald's emendation is confirmed by what Plantagenet afterwards says:

"This pale and angry rose
Will I for ever, and my faction wear."
young Somerset.

He has already in this scene been called

Som. Away, away, good William De-la-Poole !
We grace the yeoman, by conversing with him.
War. Now, by God's will, thou wrong'st him,
Somerset ;

His grandfather was Lionel, duke of Clarence,
Third son to the third Edward, king of England;
Spring crestless yeomen 10 from so deep a root?
Plan. He bears him on the place's privilege11,
Or durst not, for his craven heart, say thus.

Som. By him that made me, I'll maintain my words
On any plot of ground in Christendom:
Was not thy father, Richard, earl of Cambridge,
For treasons executed in our late king's days?
And, by his treason, stand'st not thou attainted,
Corrupted, and exempt 12 from ancient gentry?
His trespass yet lives guilty in thy blood;
And, till thou be restor❜d, thou art a yeoman.
Plan. My father was attached, not attainted;
Condemn'd to die for treason, but no traitor;
And that I'll prove on better men than Somerset,
Were growing time once ripen'd to my will.
For your partaker 13 Poole, and you yourself,

The poet mistakes. Plantagenet's paternal grandfather was Edmund of Langley, Duke of York. His maternal grandfather was Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, who was the son of Philippa, the daughter of Lionel, Duke of Clarence. The duke, therefore, was his maternal great great grandfather.

10 Crestless

yeomen,

i. e. those who have no right to arms. "It does not appear that the Temple had any privilege of sanctuary at this time, being then, as now, the residence of law students. The author might imagine it to have derived some such privilege from the knights templars, or knights hospitallers, both religious orders, its former inhabitants. It is true, blows may have been prohibited by the regulations of the society: the author perhaps did not much consider the matter, but represents it as suited his purpose.

12

Exempt for excluded. See Comedy of Errors, Act ii. Sc. 2,

note 14.

13 Partaker, in ancient language, signifies one who takes part with another; an accomplice, or confederate. "A partaker, or co

book of memory 14,

To scourge you for this apprehension 15:
Look to it well; and say you are well warn'd.
Som. Ay, thou shalt find us ready for thee still:
And know us, by these colours, for thy foes;
For these my friends, in spite of thee, shall wear.
Plan. And, by my soul, this pale and angry rose,
As cognizance 16 of my blood-drinking hate,
Will I for ever, and my faction, wear;

Until it wither with me to my grave,
Or flourish to the height of my degree.

Suf. Go forward, and be chok'd with thy ambition! And so farewell, until I meet thee next. [Exit. Som. Have with thee, Poole.-Farewell, ambitious

Richard.

[Exit. Plan. How I am brav'd, and must perforce endure it!

War. This blot, that they object against your house, Shall be wip'd out in the next parliament,

Call'd for the truce of Winchester and Gloster:
And, if thou be not then created York,
I will not live to be accounted Warwick.
Mean time, in signal of my love to thee,

parcioner; particeps, consors, consocius."-Buret. So in the fiftieth Psalm:-" When thou sawest a thief thou didst consent unto him, and hast been partaker with the adulterers.'

"Each side had great partakers; Cæsar's cause
The gods abetted."

Marlowe's Translation of the First Book of Lucan.

14 So in Hamlet:—

"The table of my memory.”

"Shall live

Within the book and volume of my brain.”

15 Apprehension here means conception, or a conceit taken that matters are different from what the truth warrants. So in Much Ado about Nothing: :-"How long have you professed apprehen sion ?" i. e. the taking of conceits into your head.

A cognizance is a badge.