KING RICHARD III. William Shakespeare

       RIVERS

       A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion,

       To pray for them that have done scathe to us!

       GLOSTER

       So do I ever being well advis’d;

       [Aside]

       For had I curs’d now, I had curs’d myself.

       [Enter CATESBY.]

       CATESBY

       Madam, his majesty doth can for you,—

       And for your grace,—and you, my noble lords.

       QUEEN ELIZABETH

       Catesby, I come.—Lords, will you go with me?

       RIVERS

       We wait upon your grace.

       [Exeunt all but GLOSTER.]

       GLOSTER

       I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.

       The secret mischiefs that I set abroach

       I lay unto the grievous charge of others.

       Clarence,—whom I indeed have cast in darkness,—

       I do beweep to many simple gulls;

       Namely, to Stanley, Hastings, Buckingham;

       And tell them ‘tis the queen and her allies

       That stir the king against the duke my brother.

       Now they believe it; and withal whet me

       To be reveng’d on Rivers, Vaughn, Grey:

       But then I sigh; and, with a piece of Scripture,

       Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:

       And thus I clothe my naked villany

       With odd old ends stol’n forth of holy writ;

       And seem a saint when most I play the devil.—

       But, soft, here come my executioners.

       [Enter two MURDERERS.]

       How now, my hardy stout resolvèd mates!

       Are you now going to dispatch this thing?

       FIRST MURDERER

       We are, my lord, and come to have the warrant,

       That we may be admitted where he is.

       GLOSTER

       Well thought upon;—I have it here about me:

       [Gives the warrant.]

       When you have done, repair to Crosby Place.

       But, sirs, be sudden in the execution,

       Withal obdúrate, do not hear him plead;

       For Clarence is well-spoken, and perhaps

       May move your hearts to pity, if you mark him.

       FIRST MURDERER

       Tut, tut, my lord, we will not stand to prate;

       Talkers are no good doers: be assur’d

       We go to use our hands, and not our tongues.

       GLOSTER

       Your eyes drop millstones when fools’ eyes fall tears:

       I like you, lads;—about your business straight;

       Go, go, despatch.

       FIRST MURDERER

       We will, my noble lord.

       [Exeunt.]

      SCENE IV. London. A Room in the Tower

       [Enter CLARENCE and BRAKENBURY.]

       BRAKENBURY

       Why looks your grace so heavily to-day?

       CLARENCE

       O, I have pass’d a miserable night,

       So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,

       That, as I am a Christian faithful man,

       I would not spend another such a night

       Though ‘twere to buy a world of happy days,—

       So full of dismal terror was the time!

       BRAKENBURY

       What was your dream, my lord? I pray you tell me.

       CLARENCE

       Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower,

       And was embark’d to cross to Burgundy;

       And, in my company, my brother Gloster;

       Who from my cabin tempted me to walk

       Upon the hatches: thence we look’d toward England,

       And cited up a thousand heavy times,

       During the wars of York and Lancaster,

       That had befall’n us. As we pac’d along

       Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,

       Methought that Gloster stumbled; and, in falling,

       Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard

       Into the tumbling billows of the main.

       O Lord, methought what pain it was to drown!

       What dreadful noise of waters in my ears!

       What sights of ugly death within my eyes!

       Methoughts I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;

       A thousand men that fishes gnaw’d upon;

       Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,

       Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

       All scatt’red in the bottom of the sea:

       Some lay in dead men’s skulls; and in the holes

       Where eyes did once inhabit there were crept,—

       As ‘twere in scorn of eyes,—reflecting gems,

       That woo’d the slimy bottom of the deep,

       And mock’d the dead bones that lay scatter’d by.

       BRAKENBURY

       Had you such leisure in the time of death

       To gaze upon these secrets of the deep?

       CLARENCE

       Methought I had; and often did I strive

       To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood

       Stopp’d in my soul, and would not let it forth

       To find the empty, vast, and wandering air;

       But smother’d it within my panting bulk,

       Who almost burst to belch it in the sea.

       BRAKENBURY

       Awak’d you not in this sore agony?

       CLARENCE

       No, no, my dream was lengthen’d after life;

       O, then began the tempest to my soul!

       I pass’d, methought, the melancholy flood

       With that grim ferryman which poets write of,

       Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.

       The first that there did greet my stranger soul

       Was my great fatherin-law, renownèd Warwick;

       Who spake aloud, “What scourge for perjury

       Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?”

       And so he vanish’d: then came wandering by

       A shadow like an Angel, with bright hair

       Dabbled in blood; and he shriek’d out aloud