KING RICHARD III. William Shakespeare

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 banishèd 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 wish upon thee,

       O, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,

       And then hurl down their indignation

       On thee, the troubler of the poor world’s peace!

       The worm of conscience still be-gnaw thy soul!

       Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv’st,