Enter Queen ⌜Elizabeth, the Lord Marquess of Dorset,⌝
Lord Rivers, and Lord Grey.RIVERS Have patience, madam. There’s no doubt his Majesty Will soon recover his accustomed health.GREY In that you brook it ill, it makes him worse.5 Therefore, for God’s sake, entertain good comfort And cheer his Grace with quick and merry eyes.QUEEN ELIZABETH If he were dead, what would betide on me?GREY No other harm but loss of such a lord.QUEEN ELIZABETH The loss of such a lord includes all harms.GREY 10 The heavens have blessed you with a goodly son To be your comforter when he is gone.QUEEN ELIZABETH Ah, he is young, and his minority Is put unto the trust of Richard Gloucester, A man that loves not me nor none of you.RIVERS 15 Is it concluded he shall be Protector?QUEEN ELIZABETH It is determined, not concluded yet; But so it must be if the King miscarry.
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Enter Buckingham and ⌜Lord Stanley, Earl of⌝ Derby.GREY Here comes the lord of Buckingham, and Derby.BUCKINGHAM, ⌜to Queen Elizabeth⌝ Good time of day unto your royal Grace.STANLEY 20 God make your Majesty joyful, as you have been.QUEEN ELIZABETH The Countess Richmond, good my lord of Derby, To your good prayer will scarcely say amen. Yet, Derby, notwithstanding she’s your wife And loves not me, be you, good lord, assured25 I hate not you for her proud arrogance.STANLEY I do beseech you either not believe The envious slanders of her false accusers, Or if she be accused on true report, Bear with her weakness, which I think proceeds30 From wayward sickness and no grounded malice.QUEEN ELIZABETH Saw you the King today, my lord of Derby?STANLEY But now the Duke of Buckingham and I Are come from visiting his Majesty.QUEEN ELIZABETH What likelihood of his amendment, lords?BUCKINGHAM 35 Madam, good hope. His Grace speaks cheerfully.QUEEN ELIZABETH God grant him health. Did you confer with him?BUCKINGHAM Ay, madam. He desires to make atonement Between the Duke of Gloucester and your brothers, And between them and my Lord Chamberlain,40 And sent to warn them to his royal presence.
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QUEEN ELIZABETH Would all were well—but that will never be. I fear our happiness is at the height.Enter Richard, ⌜Duke of Gloucester, and Hastings.⌝RICHARD They do me wrong, and I will not endure it! Who is it that complains unto the King45 That I, forsooth, am stern and love them not? By holy Paul, they love his Grace but lightly That fill his ears with such dissentious rumors. Because I cannot flatter and look fair, Smile in men’s faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,50 Duck with French nods and apish courtesy, I must be held a rancorous enemy. Cannot a plain man live and think no harm, But thus his simple truth must be abused With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?GREY 55 To who in all this presence speaks your Grace?RICHARD To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace. When have I injured thee? When done thee wrong?— Or thee?—Or thee? Or any of your faction?60 A plague upon you all! His royal Grace, Whom God preserve better than you would wish, Cannot be quiet scarce a breathing while But you must trouble him with lewd complaints.QUEEN ELIZABETH Brother of Gloucester, you mistake the matter.65 The King, on his own royal disposition, And not provoked by any suitor else, Aiming belike at your interior hatred That in your outward action shows itself Against my children, brothers, and myself,70 Makes him to send, that he may learn the ground.
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RICHARD 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 75 Come, come, we know your meaning, brother Gloucester. You envy my advancement, and my friends’. God grant we never may have need of you.RICHARD Meantime God grants that ⟨we⟩ have need of80 you. Our brother is imprisoned by your means, Myself disgraced, and the nobility Held in contempt, while great promotions Are daily given to ennoble those85 That scarce some two days since were worth a noble.QUEEN ELIZABETH By Him that raised me to this careful height From that contented hap which I enjoyed, I never did incense his Majesty90 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.RICHARD You may deny that you were not the mean95 Of my Lord Hastings’ late imprisonment.RIVERS She may, my lord, for—RICHARD 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
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100 And then deny her aiding hand therein, And lay those honors on your high desert. What may she not? She may, ay, marry, may she—RIVERS What, marry, may she?RICHARD What, marry, may she? Marry with a king,105 A bachelor, and a handsome stripling too. Iwis, your grandam had a worser match.QUEEN ELIZABETH My lord of Gloucester, I have too long borne Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs. By heaven, I will acquaint his Majesty110 Of those gross taunts that oft I have endured. I had rather be a country servant-maid Than a great queen with this condition, To be so baited, scorned, and stormèd at.Enter old Queen Margaret, ⌜apart from the others.⌝ Small joy have I in being England’s queen.QUEEN MARGARET, ⌜aside⌝ 115 And lessened be that small, God I beseech Him! Thy honor, state, and seat is due to me.RICHARD, ⌜to Queen Elizabeth⌝ What, threat you me with telling of the King? ⟨Tell him and spare not. Look, what I have said,⟩ I will avouch ’t in presence of the King;120 I dare adventure to be sent to th’ Tower. ’Tis time to speak. My pains are quite forgot.QUEEN MARGARET, ⌜aside⌝ Out, devil! I do remember them too well: Thou killed’st my husband Henry in the Tower, And Edward, my poor son, at Tewkesbury.RICHARD, ⌜to Queen Elizabeth⌝ 125 Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband king, I was a packhorse in his great affairs, A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,
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A liberal rewarder of his friends. To royalize his blood, I spent mine own.QUEEN MARGARET, ⌜aside⌝ 130 Ay, and much better blood than his or thine.RICHARD, ⌜to Queen Elizabeth⌝ 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?135 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, ⌜aside⌝ A murd’rous villain, and so still thou art.RICHARD, ⌜to Queen Elizabeth⌝ Poor Clarence did forsake his father Warwick,140 Ay, and forswore himself—which Jesu pardon!—QUEEN MARGARET, ⌜aside⌝ Which God revenge!RICHARD To fight on Edward’s party for the crown; And for his meed, poor lord, he is mewed up. I would to God my heart were flint, like Edward’s,145 Or Edward’s soft and pitiful, like mine. I am too childish-foolish for this world.QUEEN MARGARET, ⌜aside⌝ Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave this world, Thou cacodemon! There thy kingdom is.RIVERS My lord of Gloucester, in those busy days150 Which here you urge to prove us enemies, We followed then our lord, our sovereign king. So should we you, if you should be our king.RICHARD If I should be? I had rather be a peddler. Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof.
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QUEEN ELIZABETH 155 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, ⌜aside⌝ ⌜As⌝ little joy enjoys the queen thereof,160 For I am she, and altogether joyless. I can no longer hold me patient.⌜She steps forward.⌝ Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out In sharing that which you have pilled from me! Which of you trembles not that looks on me?165 If not, that I am queen, you bow like subjects, Yet that, by you deposed, you quake like rebels.— Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away.RICHARD Foul, wrinkled witch, what mak’st thou in my sight?QUEEN MARGARET 170 But repetition of what thou hast marred. That will I make before I let thee go.RICHARD 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.175 A husband and a son thou ow’st to me; ⌜To Queen Elizabeth.⌝ 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.RICHARD 180 The curse my noble father laid on thee When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper,
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And with thy scorns drew’st rivers from his eyes, And then, to dry them, gav’st the Duke a clout185 Steeped in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland— His curses then, from bitterness of soul Denounced against thee, are all fall’n upon thee, And God, not we, hath plagued thy bloody deed.QUEEN ELIZABETH So just is God to right the innocent.HASTINGS 190 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 195 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 heaven200 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 quick205 curses! Though not by war, by surfeit die your king, As ours by murder to make him a king. ⌜To Queen Elizabeth.⌝ Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales,210 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,
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Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self. Long mayst thou live to wail thy children’s death215 And see another, as I see thee now, Decked in thy rights, as thou art stalled in mine. Long die thy happy days before thy death, And, after many lengthened hours of grief, Die neither mother, wife, nor England’s queen.—220 Rivers and Dorset, you were standers-by, And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son Was stabbed with bloody daggers. God I pray Him That none of you may live his natural age, But by some unlooked accident cut off.RICHARD 225 Have done thy charm, thou hateful, withered 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,230 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 begnaw thy soul. Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv’st,235 And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends. 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-marked, abortive, rooting hog,240 Thou that wast sealed 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 honor, thou detested—RICHARD 245 Margaret.
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QUEEN MARGARET Richard!RICHARD Ha?QUEEN MARGARET I call thee not.RICHARD I cry thee mercy, then, for I did think250 That thou hadst called me all these bitter names.QUEEN MARGARET Why, so I did, but looked for no reply. O, let me make the period to my curse!RICHARD ’Tis done by me and ends in “Margaret.”QUEEN ELIZABETH, ⌜to Queen Margaret⌝ Thus have you breathed your curse against yourself.QUEEN MARGARET 255 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 whet’st a knife to kill thyself. The day will come that thou shalt wish for me260 To help thee curse this poisonous bunch-backed 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 moved mine.RIVERS 265 Were you well served, 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, ⌜to Rivers⌝ 270 Dispute not with her; she is lunatic.
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QUEEN MARGARET Peace, Master Marquess, you are malapert. Your fire-new stamp of honor is scarce current. O, that your young nobility could judge What ’twere to lose it and be miserable!275 They that stand high have many blasts to shake them, And if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces.RICHARD Good counsel, marry.—Learn it, learn it, marquess.DORSET It touches you, my lord, as much as me.RICHARD 280 Ay, and much more; but I was born so high. Our aerie 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,285 Whose bright out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath Hath in eternal darkness folded up. Your aerie buildeth in our aerie’s nest. O God, that seest it, do not suffer it! As it is won with blood, lost be it so.BUCKINGHAM 290 Peace, peace, for shame, if not for charity.QUEEN MARGARET Urge neither charity nor shame to me. ⌜Addressing the others.⌝ Uncharitably with me have you dealt, And shamefully my hopes by you are butchered.295 My charity is outrage, life my shame, And in that shame still live my sorrows’ rage.BUCKINGHAM Have done, have done.QUEEN MARGARET O princely Buckingham, I’ll kiss thy hand
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In sign of league and amity with thee.300 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 305 I will not think but they ascend the sky, And there awake God’s gentle sleeping peace. ⌜Aside to Buckingham.⌝ O Buckingham, take heed of yonder dog! Look when he fawns, he bites; and when he bites,310 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.RICHARD What doth she say, my lord of Buckingham?BUCKINGHAM 315 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,320 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.She exits.BUCKINGHAM My hair doth stand an end to hear her curses.RIVERS And so doth mine. I muse why she’s at liberty.RICHARD 325 I cannot blame her. By God’s holy mother,
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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.RICHARD Yet you have all the vantage of her wrong.330 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 franked up to fatting for his pains. God pardon them that are the cause thereof.RIVERS 335 A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion To pray for them that have done scathe to us.RICHARD So do I ever—(speaks to himself) being well advised, For had I cursed now, I had cursed myself.Enter Catesby.CATESBY Madam, his Majesty doth call for you,—340 And for your Grace,—and yours, my gracious ⟨lords.⟩QUEEN ELIZABETH Catesby, I come.—Lords, will you go with me?RIVERS We wait upon your Grace.All but ⌜Richard, Duke of⌝ Gloucester exit.RICHARD I do the wrong and first begin to brawl.345 The secret mischiefs that I set abroach I lay unto the grievous charge of others. Clarence, who I indeed have cast in darkness, I do beweep to many simple gulls, Namely, to Derby, Hastings, Buckingham,350 And tell them ’tis the Queen and her allies That stir the King against the Duke my brother.
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Now they believe it and withal whet me To be revenged on Rivers, Dorset, Grey; But then I sigh and, with a piece of scripture,355 Tell them that God bids us do good for evil; And thus I clothe my naked villainy With odd old ends stol’n forth of Holy Writ, And seem a saint when most I play the devil.Enter two Murderers. But soft, here come my executioners.—360 How now, my hardy, stout, resolvèd mates? Are you now going to dispatch this thing?⌜MURDERER⌝ We are, my lord, and come to have the warrant That we may be admitted where he is.RICHARD Well thought upon. I have it here about me.⌜He gives a paper.⌝365 When you have done, repair to Crosby Place. But, sirs, be sudden in the execution, Withal obdurate; do not hear him plead, For Clarence is well-spoken and perhaps May move your hearts to pity if you mark him.⌜MURDERER⌝ 370 Tut, tut, my lord, we will not stand to prate. Talkers are no good doers. Be assured We go to use our hands and not our tongues.RICHARD Your eyes drop millstones when fools’ eyes fall tears.375 I like you lads. About your business straight. Go, go, dispatch.⌜MURDERERS⌝ We will, my noble lord.⟨They exit.⟩
Richard III
