Richard III by William Shakespeare (good novels to read txt) 📕

will never be:
I fear our happiness is at the highest. Enter Gloucester, Hastings, and Dorset. Gloucester

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 speak 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 abused
By silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

Rivers To whom in all this presence speaks your grace? Gloucester

To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace.
When have I injured thee? when done thee wrong?
Or thee? or thee? or any of your faction?
A plague upon you all! His royal person⁠—
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 Gloucester, you mistake the matter.
The king, of his own royal disposition,
And not provoked by any suitor else;
Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred,
Which in your outward actions shows itself
Against my kindred, brothers, and myself,
Makes him to send; that thereby he may gather
The ground of your ill-will, and so remove it.

Gloucester

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 Gloucester;
You envy my advancement and my friends’:
God grant we never may have need of you!

Gloucester

Meantime, God grants that we have need of you:
Your brother is imprison’d by your means,
Myself disgraced, and the nobility
Held in contempt; whilst many fair promotions
Are daily given to ennoble those
That scarce, some two days since, were worth a noble.

Queen Elizabeth

By Him that raised 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.

Gloucester

You may deny that you were not the cause
Of my Lord Hastings’ late imprisonment.

Rivers She may, my lord, for⁠— Gloucester

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 deserts.
What may she not? She may, yea, marry, may she⁠—

Rivers What, marry, may she? Gloucester

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

Queen Elizabeth

My Lord of Gloucester, I have too long borne
Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs:
By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty
With those gross taunts I often have endured.
I had rather be a country servant-maid
Than a great queen, with this condition,
To be thus taunted, scorn’d, and baited at:

Enter Queen Margaret, behind. Small joy have I in being England’s queen. Queen Margaret

And lessen’d be that small, God, I beseech thee!
Thy honour, state and seat is due to me.

Gloucester

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 remember them too well:
Thou slewest my husband Henry in the Tower,
And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.

Gloucester

Ere you were queen, yea, 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 royalise his blood I spilt mine own.

Queen Margaret Yea, and much better blood than his or thine. Gloucester

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 Alban’s slain?
Let me put in your minds, if you forget,
What you have been ere now, and what you are;
Withal, what I have been, and what I am.

Queen Margaret A murderous villain, and so still thou art. Gloucester

Poor Clarence did forsake his father, Warwick;
Yea, and forswore himself⁠—which Jesu pardon!⁠—

Queen Margaret Which God revenge! Gloucester

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 the world,
Thou cacodemon! there thy kingdom is.

Rivers

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

Gloucester

If I should be! I had rather be a pedlar:
Far be it from my heart, the thought of it!

Queen Elizabeth

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

Queen Margaret

A 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 being queen, you bow like subjects,
Yet that, by you deposed, you quake like rebels?
O gentle villain, do not turn away!

Gloucester Foul wrinkled witch, what makest thou in my sight? Queen Margaret

But repetition of what thou hast marr’d;
That will I make before I let thee go.

Gloucester 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 owest to me;
And thou a kingdom; all of you allegiance:
The sorrow that I have, by right