"
Besides, the reviser adds a great deal to the part of the weak King with
the evident object of making his helplessness pathetic. He gives Henry,
too, his sweetest phrases, and when he makes him talk of bewailing
Gloster's case "with sad unhelpful tears" we catch the very cadence of
Shakespeare's voice. But he does not confine his emendations to
the speeches of one personage: the sorrows of the lovers interest him as
their affection interested him in the "First Part of Henry VI.," and the
farewell words of Queen Margaret to Suffolk are especially
characteristic of our gentle poet:
"Oh, go not yet; even thus two friends condemned
Embrace and kiss and take ten thousand leaves,
Leather a hundred times to part than die.
Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee."
This reminds me almost irresistibly of Juliet's words when parting with
Romeo, and of Imogen's words when Posthumus leaves her. Throughout the
play Henry is the poet's favourite, and in the gentle King's lament for
Gloster's death we find a peculiarity of Shakespeare's art.
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