The Life and Death of King Richard III by William Shakespeare (books for men to read .TXT) 📕

sun, till I have bought a glass,
That I may see my shadow as I pass.

[Exit.]


SCENE III. London. A Room in the Palace.

[Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, LORD RIVERS, and LORD GREY.]

RIVERS.
Have patience, madam: there's no doubt his majesty
Will soon recover his accustom'd health.

GREY.
In that you brook it ill, it makes him worse:
Therefore, for God's sake, entertain good comfort,
And cheer his grace with quick and merry eyes.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
If he were dead, what would betide on me?

GREY.
No other harm but loss of such a lord.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
The loss of such a lord includes all harms.

GREY.
The heavens have bless'd you with a goodly son
To be your comforter when he is gone.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Ah, he is young; and his minority
Is put unto the trust of Richard Gloster,
A man that loves not me, nor none of you.

RIVERS.
Is it concluded he shall be protector?

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
It is determin'd, not concluded yet:
But so it must be, if the king miscarry.

[Enter BUCKINGHAM and STANLEY.]

GREY.
Here come the Lords of Buckingham and Stanley.

BUCKINGHAM.
Good time of day unto your royal grace!

STANLEY.
God make your majesty joyful as you have been!

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
The Countess Richmond, good my Lord of Stanley,
To your good prayer will scarcely say amen.
Yet, Stanley, notwithstanding she's your wife,
And loves not me, be you, good lord, assur'd
I hate not you for her proud arrogance.

STANLEY.
I do beseech you, either not believe
The envious slanders of her false accusers;
Or, if she be accus'd on true report,
Bear with her weakness, which I think proceeds
From wayward sickness, and no grounded malice.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Saw you the king to-day, my Lord of Stanley?

STANLEY.
But now the Duke of Buckingham and I
Are come from visiting his majesty.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
What likelihood of his amendment, lords?

BUCKINGHAM.
Madam, good hope; his grace speaks cheerfully.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
God grant him health! Did you confer with him?

BUCKINGHAM.
Ay, madam; he desires to make atonement
Between the Duke of Gloster and your brothers,
And between them and my lord chamberlain;
And sent to warn them to his royal presence.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Would all were well! - but that will never be:
I fear our happiness is at the height.

[Enter GLOSTER, HASTINGS, and DORSET.]

GLOSTER.
They do me wrong, and I will not endure it: -
Who are they that complain unto the king
That I, forsooth, am stern and love them not?
By holy Paul, they love his grace but lightly
That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours.
Because I cannot flatter and look fair,
Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,
Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,
I must be held a rancorous enemy.
Cannot a plain man live, and think no harm,
But thus his simple truth must be abus'd
With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

GREY.
To who in all this presence speaks your grace?

GLOSTER.
To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace.
When have I injur'd thee? when done thee wrong? -
Or thee? - or thee? - or any of your faction?
A plague upon you all! His royal grace, -
Whom God preserve better than you would wish! -
Cannot be quiet scarce a breathing while,
But you must trouble him with lewd complaints.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Brother of Gloster, you mistake the matter.
The king, on his own royal disposition,
And not provok'd by any suitor else -
Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred
That in your outward action shows itself
Against my children, brothers, and myself -
Makes him to send; that thereby he may gather
The ground of your ill-will, and so remove it.

GLOSTER.
I cannot tell: the world is grown so bad
That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch:
Since every Jack became a gentleman,
There's many a gentle person made a Jack.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Come, come, we know your meaning, brother Gloster;
You envy my advancement, and my friends';
God grant we never may have need of you!

GLOSTER.
Meantime, God grants that we have need of you:
Our brother is imprison'd by your means,
Myself disgrac'd, and the nobility
Held in contempt; while great promotions
Are daily given to ennoble those
That scarce, some two days since, were worth a noble.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
By Him that rais'd me to this careful height
From that contented hap which I enjoy'd,
I never did incense his majesty
Against the Duke of Clarence, but have been
An earnest advocate to plead for him.
My lord, you do me shameful injury
Falsely to draw me in these vile suspects.

GLOSTER.
You may deny that you were not the mean
Of my Lord Hastings' late imprisonment.

RIVERS.
She may, my lord; for, -

GLOSTER.
She may, Lord Rivers? - why, who knows not so?
She may do more, sir, than denying that:
She may help you to many fair preferments;
And then deny her aiding hand therein,
And lay those honours on your high desert.
What may she not? She may, - ay, marry, may she, -

RIVERS.
What, marry, may she?

GLOSTER.
What, marry, may she! marry with a king,
A bachelor, and a handsome stripling too:
I wis your grandam had a worser match.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
My Lord of Gloster, I have too long borne
Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs:
By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty
Of those gross taunts that oft I have endur'd.
I had rather be a country servant-maid
Than a great queen with this condition, -
To be so baited, scorn'd, and stormed at.

[Enter old QUEEN MARGARET, behind.]

Small joy have I in being England's queen.

QUEEN MARGARET.
And lessen'd be that small, God, I beseech Him!
Thy honour, state, and seat, is due to me.

GLOSTER.
What! Threat you me with telling of the king?
Tell him, and spare not: look what I have said
I will avouch in presence of the king:
I dare adventure to be sent to the Tower.
'Tis time to speak, - my pains are quite forgot.

QUEEN MARGARET.
Out, devil! I do remember them too well:
Thou kill'dst my husband Henry in the Tower,
And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.

GLOSTER.
Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband king,
I was a pack-horse in his great affairs;
A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,
A liberal rewarder of his friends;
To royalize his blood I spilt mine own.

QUEEN MARGARET.
Ay, and much better blood than his or thine.

GLOSTER.
In all which time you and your husband Grey
Were factious for the house of Lancaster; -
And, Rivers, so were you: was not your husband
In Margaret's battle at Saint Albans slain?
Let me put in your minds, if you forget,
What you have been ere this, and what you are;
Withal, what I have been, and what I am.

QUEEN MARGARET.
A murderous villain, and so still thou art.

GLOSTER.
Poor Clarence did forsake his father, Warwick;
Ay, and forswore himself, - which Jesu pardon! -

QUEEN MARGARET.
Which God revenge!

GLOSTER.
To fight on Edward's party for the crown;
And for his meed, poor lord, he is mew'd up.
I would to God my heart were flint, like Edward's,
Or Edward's soft and pitiful, like mine:
I am too childish-foolish for this world.

QUEEN MARGARET.
Hie thee to hell for shame and leave this world,
Thou cacodemon! there thy kingdom is.

RIVERS.
My Lord of Gloster, in those busy days
Which here you urge to prove us enemies,
We follow'd then our lord, our sovereign king:
So should we you, if you should be our king.

GLOSTER.
If I should be! - I had rather be a pedler:
Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof!

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
As little joy, my lord, as you suppose
You should enjoy, were you this country's king, -
As little joy you may suppose in me,
That I enjoy, being the queen thereof.

QUEEN MARGARET.
As little joy enjoys the queen thereof;
For I am she, and altogether joyless.
I can no longer hold me patient. -

[Advancing.]

Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out
In sharing that which you have pill'd from me!
Which of you trembles not that looks on me?
If not that, I am queen, you bow like subjects,
Yet that, by you depos'd, you quake like rebels?
Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away!

GLOSTER.
Foul wrinkled witch, what mak'st thou in my sight?

QUEEN MARGARET.
But repetition of what thou hast marr'd,
That will I make before I let thee go.

GLOSTER.
Wert thou not banished on pain of death?

QUEEN MARGARET.
I was; but I do find more pain in banishment
Than death can yield me here by my abode.
A husband and a son thou ow'st to me, -
And thou a kingdom, - all of you allegiance:
This sorrow that I have, by right is yours;
And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.

GLOSTER.
The curse my noble father laid on thee,
When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper,
And with thy scorns drew'st rivers from his eyes;
And then to dry them gav'st the Duke a clout
Steep'd in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland; -
His curses, then from bitterness of soul
Denounc'd against thee, are all fallen upon thee;
And God, not we, hath plagu'd thy bloody deed.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
So just is God, to right the innocent.

HASTINGS.
O, 'twas the foulest deed to slay that babe,
And the most merciless that e'er was heard of.

RIVERS.
Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported.

DORSET.
No man but prophesied revenge for it.

BUCKINGHAM.
Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.

QUEEN MARGARET.
What, were you snarling all before I came,
Ready to catch each other by the throat,
And turn you all your hatred now on me?
Did York's dread curse prevail so much with heaven
That Henry's death, my lovely Edward's death,
Their kingdom's loss, my woeful banishment,
Should all but answer for that peevish brat?
Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven? -
Why, then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses! -
Though not by war, by surfeit die your king,
As ours by murder, to make him a king!
Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales,
For Edward our son, that was Prince of Wales,
Die in his youth by like untimely violence!
Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,
Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self!
Long mayest thou live to wail thy children's death;
And see another, as I see thee now,
Deck'd in thy rights, as thou art stall'd in mine!
Long die thy happy days before thy death;
And, after many lengthen'd hours of grief,
Die neither mother, wife, nor England's queen! -
Rivers and Dorset, you were standers by, -
And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, - when my son
Was stabb'd with bloody daggers: God, I pray Him,
That none of you may live his natural age,
But by some unlook'd accident cut off!

GLOSTER.
Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither'd hag.

QUEEN MARGARET.
And leave out thee? stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me.
If heaven have any grievous plague in store
Exceeding those that I can