TPTT The Tragedy of Richard the Third: ACT I
Introduction
ACT I
SCENE I. London. A street.
SCENE II. The same. Another street.
SCENE III. The palace.
SCENE IV. London. The Tower.
ACT II
ACT III
ACT IV
ACT V
About the Play
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SCENE III. The palace.
Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, RIVERS, and GREY
RIVERS
      Have patience, madam: there's no doubt his majesty
      Will soon recover his accustom'd health.
GREY
      In that you brook it in, it makes him worse:
      Therefore, for God's sake, entertain good comfort,
5     And cheer his grace with quick and merry words.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
      If he were dead, what would betide of me?
RIVERS
      No other harm but loss of such a lord.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
      The loss of such a lord includes all harm.
GREY
      The heavens have bless'd you with a goodly son,
10    To be your comforter when he is gone.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
      Oh, 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
      Is it concluded that he shall be protector?
QUEEN ELIZABETH
15    It is determined, not concluded yet:
      But so it must be, if the king miscarry.
Enter BUCKINGHAM and DERBY
GREY
      Here come the lords of Buckingham and Derby.
BUCKINGHAM
      Good time of day unto your royal grace!
DERBY
      God make your majesty joyful as you have been!
QUEEN ELIZABETH
20    The Countess Richmond, good my Lord of Derby.
      To your good prayers will scarcely say amen.
      Yet, Derby, notwithstanding she's your wife,
      And loves not me, be you, good lord, assured
      I hate not you for her proud arrogance.
DERBY
25    I do beseech you, either not believe
      The envious slanders of her false accusers;
      Or, if she be accused in true report,
      Bear with her weakness, which, I think proceeds
      From wayward sickness, and no grounded malice.
RIVERS
30    Saw you the king to-day, my Lord of Derby?
DERBY
      But now the Duke of Buckingham and I
      Are come from visiting his majesty.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
      What likelihood of his amendment, lords?
BUCKINGHAM
      Madam, good hope; his grace speaks cheerfully.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
35    God grant him health! Did you confer with him?
BUCKINGHAM
      Madam, we did: he desires to make atonement
      Betwixt the Duke of Gloucester and your brothers,
      And betwixt them and my lord chamberlain;
      And sent to warn them to his royal presence.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
40    Would all were well! but that will never be
      I fear our happiness is at the highest.
Enter GLOUCESTER, HASTINGS, and DORSET
GLOUCESTER
      They do me wrong, and I will not endure it:
      Who are they that complain unto the king,
      That I, forsooth, am stern, and love them not?
45    By holy Paul, they love his grace but lightly
      That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours.
      Because I cannot flatter and speak fair,
      Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive and cog,
      Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,
50    I must be held a rancorous enemy.
      Cannot a plain man live and think no harm,
      But thus his simple truth must be abused
      By silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?
RIVERS
      To whom in all this presence speaks your grace?
GLOUCESTER
55    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?
      A plague upon you all! His royal person,--
      Whom God preserve better than you would wish!--
60    Cannot be quiet scarce a breathing-while,
      But you must trouble him with lewd complaints.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
      Brother of Gloucester, you mistake the matter.
      The king, of his own royal disposition,
      And not provoked by any suitor else;
65    Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred,
      Which in your outward actions shows itself
      Against my kindred, brothers, and myself,
      Makes him to send; that thereby he may gather
      The ground of your ill-will, and so remove it.
GLOUCESTER
70    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
75    Gloucester;
      You envy my advancement and my friends':
      God grant we never may have need of you!
GLOUCESTER
      Meantime, God grants that we have need of you:
      Your brother is imprison'd by your means,
80    Myself disgraced, and the nobility
      Held in contempt; whilst many fair promotions
      Are daily given to ennoble those
      That scarce, some two days since, were worth a noble.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
      By Him that raised me to this careful height
85    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,
90    Falsely to draw me in these vile suspects.
GLOUCESTER
      You may deny that you were not the cause
      Of my Lord Hastings' late imprisonment.
RIVERS
      She may, my lord, for--
GLOUCESTER
      She may, Lord Rivers! why, who knows not so?
95    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 deserts.
      What may she not? She may, yea, marry, may she--
RIVERS
100   What, marry, may she?
GLOUCESTER
      What, marry, may she! marry with a king,
      A bachelor, a handsome stripling too:
      I wis your grandam had a worser match.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
      My Lord of Gloucester, I have too long borne
105   Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs:
      By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty
      With those gross taunts I often have endured.
      I had rather be a country servant-maid
      Than a great queen, with this condition,
110   To be thus taunted, scorn'd, and baited at:

Enter QUEEN MARGARET, behind

      Small joy have I in being England's queen.
QUEEN MARGARET
      And lessen'd be that small, God, I beseech thee!
      Thy honour, state and seat is due to me.
GLOUCESTER
      What! threat you me with telling of the king?
115   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 remember them too well:
120   Thou slewest my husband Henry in the Tower,
      And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.
GLOUCESTER
      Ere you were queen, yea, or your husband king,
      I was a pack-horse in his great affairs;
      A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,
125   A liberal rewarder of his friends:
      To royalize his blood I spilt mine own.
QUEEN MARGARET
      Yea, and much better blood than his or thine.
GLOUCESTER
      In all which time you and your husband Grey
      Were factious for the house of Lancaster;
130   And, Rivers, so were you. Was not your husband
      In Margaret's battle at Saint Alban's slain?
      Let me put in your minds, if you forget,
      What you have been ere now, and what you are;
      Withal, what I have been, and what I am.
QUEEN MARGARET
135   A murderous villain, and so still thou art.
GLOUCESTER
      Poor Clarence did forsake his father, Warwick;
      Yea, and forswore himself,--which Jesu pardon!--
QUEEN MARGARET
      Which God revenge!
GLOUCESTER
      To fight on Edward's party for the crown;
140   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 the world,
145   Thou cacodemon! there thy kingdom is.
RIVERS
      My Lord of Gloucester, in those busy days
      Which here you urge to prove us enemies,
      We follow'd then our lord, our lawful king:
      So should we you, if you should be our king.
GLOUCESTER
150   If I should be! I had rather be a pedlar:
      Far be it from my heart, the thought of it!
QUEEN ELIZABETH
      As little joy, my lord, as you suppose
      You should enjoy, were you this country's king,
      As little joy may you suppose in me.
155   That I enjoy, being the queen thereof.
QUEEN MARGARET
      A 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
160   In sharing that which you have pill'd from me!
      Which of you trembles not that looks on me?
      If not, that, I being queen, you bow like subjects,
      Yet that, by you deposed, you quake like rebels?
      O gentle villain, do not turn away!
GLOUCESTER
165   Foul wrinkled witch, what makest thou in my sight?
QUEEN MARGARET
      But repetition of what thou hast marr'd;
      That will I make before I let thee go.
GLOUCESTER
      Wert thou not banished on pain of death?
QUEEN MARGARET
      I was; but I do find more pain in banishment
170   Than death can yield me here by my abode.
      A husband and a son thou owest to me;
      And thou a kingdom; all of you allegiance:
      The sorrow that I have, by right is yours,
      And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.
GLOUCESTER
175   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, gavest the duke a clout
      Steep'd in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland--
180   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
      O, 'twas the foulest deed to slay that babe,
185   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,
190   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 woful banishment,
195   Could 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!
      If not by war, by surfeit die your king,
      As ours by murder, to make him a king!
200   Edward thy son, which now is Prince of Wales,
      For Edward my son, which 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!
205   Long mayst thou live to wail thy children's loss;
      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,
210   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 your natural age,
215   But by some unlook'd accident cut off!
GLOUCESTER
      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,
220   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 livest,
225   And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
      No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
      Unless it be whilst some tormenting dream
      Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
      Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog!
230   Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity
      The slave of nature and the son of hell!
      Thou slander of thy mother's heavy womb!
      Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins!
      Thou rag of honour! thou detested--
GLOUCESTER
235   Margaret.
QUEEN MARGARET
      Richard!
GLOUCESTER
      Ha!
QUEEN MARGARET
      I call thee not.
GLOUCESTER
      I cry thee mercy then, for I had thought
240   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!
GLOUCESTER
      'Tis done by me, and ends in 'Margaret.'
QUEEN ELIZABETH
      Thus have you breathed your curse against yourself.
QUEEN MARGARET
245   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 time will come when thou shalt wish for me
250   To help thee curse that poisonous bunchback'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 moved mine.
RIVERS
      Were you well served, you would be taught your duty.
QUEEN MARGARET
255   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 marquess, you are malapert:
260   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.
GLOUCESTER
265   Good counsel, marry: learn it, learn it, marquess.
DORSET
      It toucheth you, my lord, as much as me.
GLOUCESTER
      Yea, 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
270   And turns the sun to shade; alas! alas!
      Witness my son, now in the shade of death;
      Whose bright out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath
      Hath in eternal darkness folded up.
      Your aery buildeth in our aery's nest.
275   O God, that seest it, do not suffer it!
      As it was won with blood, lost be it so!
BUCKINGHAM
      Have done! for shame, if not for charity.
QUEEN MARGARET
      Urge neither charity nor shame to me:
      Uncharitably with me have you dealt,
280   And shamefully by you my hopes 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,
285   In sign of league and amity with thee:
      Now fair befal 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
290   The lips of those that breathe them in the air.
QUEEN MARGARET
      I'll not believe 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,
295   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.
GLOUCESTER
      What doth she say, my Lord of Buckingham?
BUCKINGHAM
300   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,
305   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
HASTINGS
      My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses.
RIVERS
      And so doth mine: I muse why she's at liberty.
GLOUCESTER
310   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.
GLOUCESTER
      But you have all the vantage of her wrong.
315   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
      God pardon them that are the cause of it!
RIVERS
320   A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion,
      To pray for them that have done scathe to us.
GLOUCESTER
      So do I ever:

Aside

      being well-advised.
      For had I cursed now, I had cursed myself.
Enter CATESBY
CATESBY
325   Madam, his majesty doth call for you,
      And for your grace; and you, my noble lords.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
      Catesby, we come. Lords, will you go with us?
RIVERS
      Madam, we will attend your grace.
Exeunt all but GLOUCESTER
GLOUCESTER
      I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.
330   The secret mischiefs that I set abroach
      I lay unto the grievous charge of others.
      Clarence, whom I, indeed, have laid in darkness,
      I do beweep to many simple gulls
      Namely, to Hastings, Derby, Buckingham;
335   And say it is the queen and her allies
      That stir the king against the duke my brother.
      Now, they believe it; and withal whet me
      To be revenged on Rivers, Vaughan, Grey:
      But then I sigh; and, with a piece of scripture,
340   Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
      And thus I clothe my naked villany
      With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ;
      And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

Enter two Murderers

      But, soft! here come my executioners.
345   How now, my hardy, stout resolved mates!
      Are you now going to dispatch this deed?
First Murderer
      We are, my lord; and come to have the warrant
      That we may be admitted where he is.
GLOUCESTER
      Well thought upon; I have it here about me.

Gives the warrant

350   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.
First Murderer
355   Tush!
      Fear not, my lord, we will not stand to prate;
      Talkers are no good doers: be assured
      We come to use our hands and not our tongues.
GLOUCESTER
      Your eyes drop millstones, when fools' eyes drop tears:
360   I like you, lads; about your business straight;
      Go, go, dispatch.
First Murderer
      We will, my noble lord.
Exeunt
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