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:

Therefore, for God's sake, entertain good comfort,

And cheer his grace with quick and merry eyes.

Elizabeth

If he were dead, what would betide on me?

Rivers

No other harm but loss of such a lord.

Elizabeth

The loss of such a lord includes all harm.

Grey

The heavens have blessed you with a goodly son,

To be your comforter when he is gone.

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

Is it concluded he shall be protector?

Elizabeth

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!

Stanley

God make your majesty joyful as you have been!

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, assured

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, proceeds

From wayward sickness, and no grounded malice.

Rivers

Saw you the king to-day, my Lord of Derby?

Stanley

But now the Duke of Buckingham and I

Are come from visiting his majesty.

Elizabeth

What likelihood of his amendment, lords?

Buckingham

Madam, good hope; his grace speaks cheerfully.

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;

And sent to warn them to his royal presence.

Elizabeth

Would all were well! but that will never be

I fear our happiness is at the height. Enter GLOUCESTER, HASTINGS, and DORSET.

Gloucester

They do me wrong, and I will not endure it:

Who is it that complains unto the king,

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 rumours.

Because I cannot flatter and look fair,

Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive and cog,

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?

Rivers

To who in all this presence speaks your grace?

Gloucester

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 grace, —

Whom God preserve better than you would wish! —

Cannot be quiet scarce a breathing while,

But you must trouble him with lewd complaints.

Elizabeth

Brother of Gloucester, you mistake the matter.

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,

Makes him to send; that he may learn the ground.

Gloucester

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.

Elizabeth

Come, come, we know your meaning, brother Gloucester;

You envy my advancement and my friends':

God grant we never may have need of you!

Gloucester

Meantime, God grants that I have need of you:

Our brother is imprisoned by your means,

Myself disgraced, 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.

Elizabeth

By Him that raised me to this careful height

From that contented hap which I enjoyed,

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.

Gloucester

You may deny that you were not the mean

Of my Lord Hastings' late imprisonment.

Rivers

She may, my lord, for —

Gloucester

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?

Gloucester

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

A bachelor, and a handsome stripling too:

Iwis your grandam had a worser match.

Elizabeth

My Lord of Gloucester, 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 endured.

I had rather be a country servant maid

Than a great queen, with this condition,

To be so baited, scorned, and stormed at: Enter QUEEN MARGARET, behind.

Small joy have I in being England's queen.

Margaret

And lessened be that small, God, I beseech him!

Thy honour, state and seat is due to me.

Gloucester

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:

I dare adventure to be sent to the Tower.

'Tis time to speak; my pains are quite forgot.

Margaret

Out, devil! I do remember them too well:

Thou killedst my husband Henry in the Tower,

And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.

Gloucester

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 royalise his blood I spent mine own.

Margaret

Ay, 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;

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.

Margaret

A murderous villain, and so still thou art.

Gloucester

Poor Clarence did forsake his father, Warwick;

Ay, and forswore himself, — which Jesu pardon! —

Margaret

Which God revenge!

Gloucester

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;

Or Edward's soft and pitiful, like mine:

I am too childish-foolish for this world.

Margaret

Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave this world.

Thou cacodemon! there thy kingdom is.

Rivers

My Lord of Gloucester, in those busy days

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.

Gloucester

If I should be! I had rather be a pedlar:

Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof!

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.

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

In sharing that which you have pilled 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 deposed, you quake like rebels?

Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away!

Gloucester

Foul wrinkled witch, what makest thou in my sight?

Margaret

But repetition of what thou hast marred;

That will I make before I let thee go.

Gloucester

Wert thou not banished on pain of death?

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 owest 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.

Gloucester

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

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.

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.

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 mayst thou live to wail thy children's death;

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!

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!

Gloucester

Have done thy charm, thou hateful withered hag!

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 begnaw thy soul!

Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou livest,

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!

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 loathed issue of thy father's loins!

Thou rag of honour! thou detested —

Gloucester

Margaret.

Margaret

Richard!

Gloucester

Ha!

Margaret

I call thee not.

Gloucester

I cry thee mercy then, for I did think

That thou hadst called me all these bitter names.

Margaret

Why, so I did; but looked for no reply.

O, let me make the period to my curse!

Gloucester

'Tis done by me, and ends in “Margaret.”

Elizabeth

Thus have you breathed your curse against yourself.

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 whet'st a knife to kill thyself.

The day will come that thou shalt wish for me

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.

Margaret

Foul shame upon you! you have all moved mine.

Rivers

Were you well served, you would be taught your duty.

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.

Margaret

Peace, master marquess, 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.

Gloucester

Good counsel, marry: learn it, learn it, marquess.

Dorset

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

Gloucester

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.

Margaret

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.

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.

Margaret

Urge neither charity nor shame to me:

Uncharitably with me have you dealt,

And shamefully my hopes by you are butchered.

My charity is outrage, life my shame;

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

Buckingham

Have done, have done.

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.

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.

Gloucester

What doth she say, my Lord of Buckingham?

Buckingham

Nothing that I respect, my gracious lord.

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.

Hastings

My hair doth stand an end to hear her curses.

Rivers

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

Gloucester

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.

Elizabeth

I never did her any, to my knowledge.

Gloucester

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 franked up to fatting for his pains:

God pardon them that are the cause thereof!

Rivers

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

Madam, his majesty doth call for you;

And for your grace; and yours, my gracious lord.

Elizabeth

Catesby, I come. Lords, will you go with me?

Rivers

We wait upon your grace. Exeunt all but Gloucester.

Gloucester

I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.

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;

And tell them 'tis 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, Dorset, Grey:

But then I sigh; and, with a piece of scripture,

Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:

And thus I clothe my naked villainy

With odd old ends stolen forth of holy writ;

And seem a saint, when most I play the devil. Enter two Murderers.

But, soft! here come my executioners.

How now, my hardy, stout resolved mates!

Are you now going to dispatch this thing?

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.

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

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.

Gloucester

Your eyes drop millstones, when fools' eyes fall tears:

I like you, lads; about your business straight;

Go, go, dispatch.

First Murderer

We will, my noble lord. Exeunt.