KING RICHARD III. William Shakespeare

SON

       Why do you look on us, and shake your head,

       And call us orphans, wretches, castaways,

       If that our noble father were alive?

       DUCHESS

       My pretty cousins, you mistake me both;

       I do lament the sickness of the king,

       As loath to lose him, not your father’s death;

       It were lost sorrow to wail one that’s lost.

       SON

       Then you conclude, my grandam, he is dead.

       The king mine uncle is to blame for this:

       God will revenge it; whom I will importune

       With earnest prayers all to that effect.

       DAUGHTER

       And so will I.

       DUCHESS

       Peace, children, peace! the king doth love you well:

       Incapable and shallow innocents,

       You cannot guess who caus’d your father’s death.

       SON

       Grandam, we can; for my good uncle Gloster

       Told me, the king, provok’d to it by the queen,

       Devis’d impeachments to imprison him:

       And when my uncle told me so, he wept,

       And pitied me, and kindly kiss’d my cheek;

       Bade me rely on him as on my father,

       And he would love me dearly as his child.

       DUCHESS

       Ah, that deceit should steal such gentle shape,

       And with a virtuous visard hide deep vice!

       He is my son; ay, and therein my shame;

       Yet from my dugs he drew not this deceit.

       SON

       Think you my uncle did dissemble, grandam?

       DUCHESS

       Ay, boy.

       SON

       I cannot think it.—Hark! what noise is this?

       [Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, distractedly; RIVERS and DORSET following her.]

       QUEEN ELIZABETH

       Ah, who shall hinder me to wail and weep,

       To chide my fortune, and torment myself?

       I’ll join with black despair against my soul,

       And to myself become an enemy.

       DUCHESS

       What means this scene of rude impatience?

       QUEEN ELIZABETH

       To make an act of tragic violence:—

       Edward, my lord, thy son, our king, is dead.—

       Why grow the branches when the root is gone?

       Why wither not the leaves that want their sap?—

       If you will live, lament; if die, be brief,

       That our swift-wingèd souls may catch the king’s;

       Or, like obedient subjects, follow him

       To his new kingdom of perpetual rest.

       DUCHESS

       Ah, so much interest have I in thy sorrow

       As I had title in thy noble husband!

       I have bewept a worthy husband’s death,

       And liv’d by looking on his images:

       But now two mirrors of his princely semblance

       Are crack’d in pieces by malignant death,

       And I for comfort have but one false glass,

       That grieves me when I see my shame in him.

       Thou art a widow, yet thou art a mother,

       And hast the comfort of thy children left;

       But death hath snatch’d my husband from mine arms,

       And pluck’d two crutches from my feeble hands,—

       Clarence and Edward. O, what cause have I,—

       Thine being but a moiety of my moan,—

       To overgo thy woes and drown thy cries?

       SON

       Ah, aunt, you wept not for our father’s death!

       How can we aid you with our kindred tears?

       DAUGHTER

       Our fatherless distress was left unmoan’d,

       Your widow-dolour likewise be unwept!

       QUEEN ELIZABETH

       Give me no help in lamentation;

       I am not barren to bring forth complaints:

       All springs reduce their currents to mine eyes,

       That I, being govern’d by the watery moon,

       May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world!

       Ah for my husband, for my dear Lord Edward!

       CHILDREN

       Ah for our father, for our dear Lord Clarence!

       DUCHESS

       Alas for both, both mine, Edward and Clarence!

       QUEEN ELIZABETH

       What stay had I but Edward? and he’s gone.

       CHILDREN

       What stay had we but Clarence? and he’s gone.

       DUCHESS

       What stays had I but they? and they are gone.

       QUEEN ELIZABETH

       Was never widow had so dear a loss!

       CHILDREN

       Were never orphans had so dear a loss!

       DUCHESS

       Was never mother had so dear a loss!

       Alas, I am the mother of these griefs!

       Their woes are parcell’d, mine is general.

       She for an Edward weeps, and so do I:

       I for a Clarence weep, so doth not she:

       These babes for Clarence weep, and so do I;

       I for an Edward weep, so do not they:—

       Alas, you three, on me, threefold distress’d,

       Pour all your tears! I am your sorrow’s nurse,

       And I will pamper it with lamentation.

       DORSET

       Comfort, dear mother: God is much displeas’d

       That you take with unthankfulness His doing:

       In common worldly things ‘tis called ungrateful,

       With dull unwillingness to repay a debt

       Which with a bounteous hand was kindly lent;

       Much more to be thus opposite with heaven,

       For it requires the royal debt it lent you.

       RIVERS

       Madam, bethink you, like a careful mother,

       Of the young prince your son: send straight for him;

       Let him be crown’d; in him your comfort lives.

       Drown desperate sorrow in dead Edward’s grave,

       And plant your joys in living Edward’s throne.