William Shakespeare - KING RICHARD III

And not provok’d by any suitor else—

Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred

That in your outward action shows itself

Against my children, brothers, and myself—

Makes him to send; that thereby he may gather

The ground of your ill-will, and so remove it.

GLOSTER

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 Gloster;

You envy my advancement, and my friends’;

God grant we never may have need of you!

GLOSTER

Meantime, God grants that we have need of you:

Our brother is imprison’d by your means,

Myself disgrac’d, and the nobility

Held in contempt; while great promotions

Are daily given to ennoble those

That scarce, some two days since, were worth a noble.

QUEEN ELIZABETH

By Him that rais’d 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.

GLOSTER

You may deny that you were not the mean

Of my Lord Hastings’ late imprisonment.

RIVERS

She may, my lord; for,—

GLOSTER

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 desert.

What may she not? She may,—ay, marry, may she,—

RIVERS

What, marry, may she?

GLOSTER.

What, marry, may she! marry with a king,

A bachelor, and a handsome stripling too:

I wis your grandam had a worser match.

QUEEN ELIZABETH

My Lord of Gloster, I have too long borne

Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs:

By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty

Of those gross taunts that oft I have endur’d.

I had rather be a country servant-maid

Than a great queen with this condition,—

To be so baited, scorn’d, and stormed at.

[Enter old QUEEN MARGARET, behind.]

Small joy have I in being England’s queen.

QUEEN MARGARET

And lessen’d be that small, God, I beseech Him!

Thy honour, state, and seat, is due to me.

GLOSTER

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 do remember them too well:

Thou kill’dst my husband Henry in the Tower,

And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.

GLOSTER

Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband king,

I was a packhorse in his great affairs;

A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,

A liberal rewarder of his friends;

To royalize his blood I spilt mine own.

QUEEN MARGARET

Ay, and much better blood than his or thine.

GLOSTER

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 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