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SCENE IV.

London. The Temple Garden.

Enter the Earls of SOMERSET, SUFFOLK, and WARWICK; RICHARD PLANTAGENET, VERNON, and another Lawyer *.

PLAN. Great lords, and gentlemen, what means this silence?

Dare no man answer in a case of truth?

SUF. Within the Temple hall we were too loud; The garden here is more convenient.

PLAN. Then say at once, if I maintain'd the truth;

Or, else, was wrangling Somerset in the error?
SUF. '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 best

4 - and ANOTHER Lawyer.] Read-a lawyer. This lawyer was probably Roger Nevyle, who was afterward hanged. See W. Wyrcester, p. 478. RITSON.

5 Or, else, was wrangling Somerset in the ERROR ?] So all the editions. There is apparently a want of opposition between the two questions. I once read:

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Or else was wrangling Somerset i' th' right?"

Sir T. Hanmer would read:

6

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JOHNSON.

- BEAR HIM best,] i. e. regulate his motions most adroitly. So, in Romeo and Juliet :

"He bears him like a portly gentleman." STEEVENS.

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,

7

In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts:
Let him, that is a true-born gentleman,

And stands upon the honour of his birth,

If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,

From off this brier pluck a white rose with me .

7 In dumb SIGNIFICANTS] I suspect, we should read—significance. MALONE.

I believe the old reading is the true one. So, in Love's Labour's Lost: "Bear this significant [i. e. a letter] to the country maid, Jaquenetta." STEEVENS.

From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.] This is given as the original of the two badges of the houses of York and Lancaster, whether truly or not, is no great matter. But the proverbial expression of saying a thing under the rose, I am persuaded came from thence. When the nation had ranged itself into two great factions, under the white and red rose, and were perpetually plotting and counterplotting against one another, then, when a matter of faction was communicated by either party to his friend in the same quarrel, it was natural for him to add, that he said it under the rose; meaning that, as it concerned the faction, it was religiously to be kept secret. WARBURTON.

This is ingenious! What pity, that it is not learned too!The rose (as the fables say) was the symbol of silence, and consecrated by Cupid to Harpocrates, to conceal the lewd pranks of his mother. So common a book as Lloyd's Dictionary might have instructed Dr. Warburton in this: "Huic Harpocrati Cupido Veneris filius parentis suæ rosam dedit in munus, ut scilicet si quid licentius dictum, vel actum sit in convivio, sciant tacenda esse omnia. Atque idcirco veteres ad finem convivii sub rosa, Anglice under the rose, transacta esse omnia ante digressum con

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 colours; and, without all colour Of base insinuating flattery,

I pluck this white rose, with Plantagenet.

Sur. I pluck this red rose, with young Somerset; And say withal, I think he held the right.

VER. Stay, lords, and gentlemen; and pluck no more,

Till 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 objected'; If I have fewest, I subscribe in silence.

PLAN. And I.

VER. Then, for the truth and plainness of the case,

testabantur; cujus formæ vis eadem esset, atque ista, Miowμvá-
μονα συμποταν.
Probant hanc rem versus qui reperiuntur in mar-
more :

Est rosa flos Veneris, cujus quo furta laterent
Harpocrati matris dona dicavit Amor.

Inde rosam mensis hospes suspendit amicis,

Convivæ ut sub ea dicta tacenda sciant. UPTON.

9 I love no COLOURS ;] Colours is here used ambiguously for tints and deceits. JOHNSON.

So, in Love's Labour's Lost: " I do fear colourable colours." STEEVENS.

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well objected;] Properly thrown in our way, justly proposed. JOHNSON.

So, in Goulart's Admirable Histories, 4to. 1607: “ And because Sathan transfigures himselfe into an angell of light, I objected many and sundry questions unto him." Again, in Chapman's version of the 21st book of Homer's Odyssey:

"Excites Penelope t' object the prize,

"(The bow and bright steeles) to the woers' strength."

Again, in his version of the seventeenth Iliad :

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Objecting his all-dazeling shield," &c.

Again, in the twentieth Iliad :

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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, 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? SOм. Here, in my scabbard; meditating that,

Shall die 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.

SOM.
No, Plantagenet,
'Tis not for fear; but anger,-that thy cheeks 2
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.

2

PLAN. Now, by this maiden blossom in my hand,

but anger, that thy cheeks, &c.] i. e. it is not for fear that my cheeks look pale, but for anger; anger produced by this circumstance, namely, that thy cheeks blush, &c. MALONE.

I scorn thee and thy faction, peevish boy.

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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 throat. 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 1,
Third son to the third Edward king of England;

3 I scorn thee and thy FASHION,] So the old copies read, and rightly. Mr. Theobald altered it to faction, not considering that by fashion is meant the badge of the red rose, which Somerset said he and his friends would be distinguished by. But Mr. Theobald asks, "If faction was not the true reading, why should Suffolk immediately reply

"Turn not thy scorns this way, Plantagenet."

Why? because Plantagenet had called Somerset, with whom Suffolk sided, peevish boy. WARBURTON.

Mr. Theobald, with great probability, reads-faction. Plantagenet afterward uses the same word:

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this pale and angry rose

"Will I for ever, and my faction, wear."

In King Henry V. we have pation for paction. We should undoubtedly read-and thy faction. The old spelling of this word was faccion, and hence fashion easily crept into the text.

So, in Hall's Chronicle, Edward IV. fol. xxii.: "whom we ought to beleve to be sent from God, and of hym onely to bee provided a kynge, for to extinguish both the faccions and partes [i. e. parties] of Kyng Henry the VI. and of Kyng Edward the fourth." MALONE.

As fashion might have been meant to convey the meaning assigned to it by Dr. Warburton, I have left the text as I found it, allowing at the same time the merit of the emendation offered by Mr. Theobald, and countenanced by Mr. Malone. STEEVENS.

4 His grandfather was Lionel, duke of Clarence,] The author 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. See vol. xvi. p. 220, n. 5.

MALONE.

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