KING RICHARD III. William Shakespeare

No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,

       Unless it be while some tormenting dream

       Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!

       Thou elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog!

       Thou that wast seal’d in thy nativity

       The slave of nature and the son of hell!

       Thou slander of thy heavy mother’s womb!

       Thou loathèd issue of thy father’s loins!

       Thou rag of honour! thou detested— GLOSTER

       Margaret.

       QUEEN MARGARET

       Richard!

       GLOSTER

       Ha!

       QUEEN MARGARET

       I call thee not.

       GLOSTER

       I cry thee mercy then; for I did think

       That thou hadst call’d me all these bitter names.

       QUEEN MARGARET

       Why, so I did; but look’d for no reply.

       O, let me make the period to my curse!

       GLOSTER

       ‘Tis done by me, and ends in—Margaret.

       QUEEN ELIZABETH

       Thus have you breath’d your curse against yourself.

       QUEEN MARGARET

       Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune!

       Why strew’st thou sugar on that bottled spider,

       Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about?

       Fool, fool! thou whett’st a knife to kill thyself.

       The day will come that thou shalt wish for me

       To help thee curse this poisonous bunch-back’d toad.

       HASTINGS

       False-boding woman, end thy frantic curse,

       Lest to thy harm thou move our patience.

       QUEEN MARGARET

       Foul shame upon you! you have all mov’d mine.

       RIVERS

       Were you well serv’d, you would be taught your duty.

       QUEEN MARGARET

       To serve me well, you all should do me duty,

       Teach me to be your queen, and you my subjects:

       O, serve me well, and teach yourselves that duty!

       DORSET

       Dispute not with her,—she is lunatic.

       QUEEN MARGARET

       Peace, master marquis, you are malapert:

       Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current:

       O, that your young nobility could judge

       What ‘twere to lose it, and be miserable!

       They that stand high have many blasts to shake them;

       And if they fall they dash themselves to pieces.

       GLOSTER

       Good counsel, marry:—learn it, learn it, marquis.

       DORSET

       It touches you, my lord, as much as me.

       GLOSTER

       Ay, and much more: but I was born so high,

       Our aery buildeth in the cedar’s top,

       And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.

       QUEEN MARGARET

       And turns the sun to shade;—alas! alas!—

       Witness my son, now in the shade of death;

       Whose bright outshining beams thy cloudy wrath,

       Hath in eternal darkness folded up.

       Your aery buildeth in our aery’s nest:—

       O God that seest it, do not suffer it;

       As it is won with blood, lost be it so!

       BUCKINGHAM

       Peace, peace, for shame, if not for charity.

       QUEEN MARGARET

       Urge neither charity nor shame to me:

       Uncharitably with me have you dealt,

       And shamefully my hopes by you are butcher’d.

       My charity is outrage, life my shame,—

       And in that shame still live my sorrow’s rage!

       BUCKINGHAM

       Have done, have done.

       QUEEN MARGARET

       O princely Buckingham, I’ll kiss thy hand,

       In sign of league and amity with thee:

       Now fair befall thee and thy noble house!

       Thy garments are not spotted with our blood,

       Nor thou within the compass of my curse.

       BUCKINGHAM

       Nor no one here; for curses never pass

       The lips of those that breathe them in the air.

       QUEEN MARGARET

       I will not think but they ascend the sky,

       And there awake God’s gentle-sleeping peace.

       O Buckingham, take heed of yonder dog!

       Look, when he fawns he bites; and when he bites,

       His venom tooth will rankle to the death:

       Have not to do with him, beware of him;

       Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him,

       And all their ministers attend on him.

       GLOSTER

       What doth she say, my Lord of Buckingham?

       BUCKINGHAM

       Nothing that I respect, my gracious lord.

       QUEEN MARGARET

       What, dost thou scorn me for my gentle counsel?

       And soothe the devil that I warn thee from?

       O, but remember this another day,

       When he shall split thy very heart with sorrow,

       And say, poor Margaret was a prophetess!—

       Live each of you the subjects to his hate,

       And he to yours, and all of you to God’s!

       [Exit.]

       BUCKINGHAM

       My hair doth stand an end to hear her curses.

       RIVERS

       And so doth mine: I muse why she’s at liberty.

       GLOSTER

       I cannot blame her: by God’s holy mother,

       She hath had too much wrong; and I repent

       My part thereof that I have done to her.

       QUEEN ELIZABETH

       I never did her any, to my knowledge.

       GLOSTER

       Yet you have all the vantage of her wrong.

       I was too hot to do somebody good,

       That is too cold in thinking of it now.

       Marry, as for Clarence, he is well repaid;

       He is frank’d up to fatting for his pains;