e abominable.

* * * *

O tiger's heart, wrapped in a woman's hide!
How could'st thou drain the life-blood of the child
To bid the father wipe his face withal,
And yet be seen to bear a woman's face?
Women are soft, mild, pitiful and flexible,
Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless!

By such a woman as Margaret is here depicted such a speech could be
answered only in one way--with her dagger's point--and thus she answers
it.

It is some comfort to reflect that this trait of ferocity is not
historical: the body of the Duke of York was found, after the battle,
among the heaps of slain, and his head struck off: but even this was not
done by the command of Margaret.

In another passage, the truth and consistency of the character of
Margaret are sacrificed to the march of the dramatic action, with a very
ill effect. When her fortunes were at the very lowest ebb, and she had
sought refuge in the court of the French king, Warwick, her most
formidable enemy, upon some disgust he had taken against Edward the
Fourth, offered to espouse her cause; and proposed a match between the
prince her son and his daughter Anne of Warwick--the "gentle Lady Anne,"
who figures in Richard the Third. In the play, Margaret embraces the
offer without a moment's hesitation:[95] we are disgusted by her
versatile policy, and a meanness of spirit in no way allied to the
magnanimous forgiveness of her terrible adversary. The Margaret of
history sternly resisted this degrading expedient. She could not, she
said, pardon from her heart the man who had been the primary cause of
all her misfortunes. She mistrusted Warwick, despised him for the
motives of his revolt from Edward, and considered that to match her son
into the family of her enemy from mere policy was a species of
degradation. It took Louis the Eleventh, with all his art and
eloquence, fifteen days to wring a reluctant consent, accompanied with
tears, from this high-hearted woman.

The speech of Margaret to her council of generals before the battle of
Tewksbury, (Act v. scene 5,) is as remarkable a specimen of false
rhetoric, as her address to the soldiers, on the eve of the fight, is of
true and passionate eloquence.

She witnesses the final defeat of her army, the massacre of her
adherents, and the murder of her son; and though the savage Richard
would willingly have put an end to her misery, and exclaims very
pertinently--

Why sh