Complete Plays, The (298 page)

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

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 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,
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,
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
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,
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.

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

Hastings

My hair doth stand on 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.

Queen Elizabeth

I never did her any, to my knowledge.

Gloucester

But 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
God pardon them that are the cause of it!

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 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.
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;
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,
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.
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

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

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:
I like you, lads; about your business straight;
Go, go, dispatch.

First Murderer

 
We will, my noble lord.

Exeunt

S
CENE
IV. L
ONDON
. T
HE
T
OWER
.

Enter Clarence and Brakenbury

Brakenbury

Why looks your grace so heavily today?

Clarence

O, I have pass’d a miserable night,
So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams,
That, as I am a Christian faithful man,
I would not spend another such a night,
Though ’twere to buy a world of happy days,
So full of dismal terror was the time!

Brakenbury

What was your dream? I long to hear you tell it.

Clarence

Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower,
And was embark’d to cross to Burgundy;
And, in my company, my brother Gloucester;
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk
Upon the hatches: thence we looked toward England,
And cited up a thousand fearful times,
During the wars of York and Lancaster
That had befall’n us. As we paced along
Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,
Methought that Gloucester stumbled; and, in falling,
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard,
Into the tumbling billows of the main.
Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!
What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw’d upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scatter’d in the bottom of the sea:
Some lay in dead men’s skulls; and, in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As ’twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,
Which woo’d the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mock’d the dead bones that lay scatter’d by.

Brakenbury

Had you such leisure in the time of death
To gaze upon the secrets of the deep?

Clarence

Methought I had; and often did I strive
To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood
Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth
To seek the empty, vast and wandering air;
But smother’d it within my panting bulk,
Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.

Brakenbury

Awaked you not with this sore agony?

Clarence

O, no, my dream was lengthen’d after life;
O, then began the tempest to my soul,
Who pass’d, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.
The first that there did greet my stranger soul,
Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick;
Who cried aloud, ‘What scourge for perjury
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?’
And so he vanish’d: then came wandering by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood; and he squeak’d out aloud,
‘Clarence is come; false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,
That stabb’d me in the field by Tewksbury;
Seize on him, Furies, take him to your torments!’
With that, methoughts, a legion of foul fiends
Environ’d me about, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries, that with the very noise
I trembling waked, and for a season after
Could not believe but that I was in hell,
Such terrible impression made the dream.

Brakenbury

No marvel, my lord, though it affrighted you;
I promise, I am afraid to hear you tell it.

Clarence

O Brakenbury, I have done those things,
Which now bear evidence against my soul,
For Edward’s sake; and see how he requites me!
O God! if my deep prayers cannot appease thee,
But thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds,
Yet execute thy wrath in me alone,
O, spare my guiltless wife and my poor children!
I pray thee, gentle keeper, stay by me;
My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.

Brakenbury

I will, my lord: God give your grace good rest!

Clarence sleeps

Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours,
Makes the night morning, and the noon-tide night.
Princes have but their tides for their glories,
An outward honour for an inward toil;
And, for unfelt imagination,
They often feel a world of restless cares:
So that, betwixt their tides and low names,
There’s nothing differs but the outward fame.

Enter the two Murderers

First Murderer

Ho! who’s here?

Brakenbury

In God’s name what are you, and how came you hither?

First Murderer

I would speak with Clarence, and I came hither on my legs.

Brakenbury

Yea, are you so brief?

Second Murderer

O sir, it is better to be brief than tedious. Show him our commission; talk no more.

Brakenbury reads it

Brakenbury

I am, in this, commanded to deliver
The noble Duke of Clarence to your hands:
I will not reason what is meant hereby,
Because I will be guiltless of the meaning.
Here are the keys, there sits the duke asleep:
I’ll to the king; and signify to him
That thus I have resign’d my charge to you.

First Murderer

Do so, it is a point of wisdom: fare you well.

Exit Brakenbury

Second Murderer

What, shall we stab him as he sleeps?

First Murderer

No; then he will say ’twas done cowardly, when he wakes.

Second Murderer

When he wakes! why, fool, he shall never wake till the judgment-day.

First Murderer

Why, then he will say we stabbed him sleeping.

Second Murderer

The urging of that word ‘judgment’ hath bred a kind of remorse in me.

First Murderer

What, art thou afraid?

Second Murderer

Not to kill him, having a warrant for it; but to be damned for killing him, from which no warrant can defend us.

First Murderer

I thought thou hadst been resolute.

Second Murderer

So I am, to let him live.

First Murderer

Back to the Duke of Gloucester, tell him so.

Second Murderer

I pray thee, stay a while: I hope my holy humour will change; ’twas wont to hold me but while one would tell twenty.

First Murderer

How dost thou feel thyself now?

Second Murderer

’Faith, some certain dregs of conscience are yet within me.

First Murderer

Remember our reward, when the deed is done.

Second Murderer

’Zounds, he dies: I had forgot the reward.

First Murderer

Where is thy conscience now?

Second Murderer

In the Duke of Gloucester’s purse.

First Murderer

So when he opens his purse to give us our reward, thy conscience flies out.

Second Murderer

Let it go; there’s few or none will entertain it.

First Murderer

How if it come to thee again?

Second Murderer

I’ll not meddle with it: it is a dangerous thing: it makes a man a coward: a man cannot steal, but it accuseth him; he cannot swear, but it cheques him; he cannot lie with his neighbour’s wife, but it detects him: ’tis a blushing shamefast spirit that mutinies in a man’s bosom; it fills one full of obstacles: it made me once restore a purse of gold that I found; it beggars any man that keeps it: it is turned out of all towns and cities for a dangerous thing; and every man that means to live well endeavours to trust to himself and to live without it.

First Murderer

’Zounds, it is even now at my elbow, persuading me not to kill the duke.

Second Murderer

Take the devil in thy mind, and relieve him not: he would insinuate with thee but to make thee sigh.

First Murderer

Tut, I am strong-framed, he cannot prevail with me,
I warrant thee.

Second Murderer

Spoke like a tail fellow that respects his reputation. Come, shall we to this gear?

First Murderer

Take him over the costard with the hilts of thy sword, and then we will chop him in the malmsey-butt in the next room.

Second Murderer

O excellent devise! make a sop of him.

First Murderer

Hark! he stirs: shall I strike?

Second Murderer

No, first let’s reason with him.

Clarence

Where art thou, keeper? give me a cup of wine.

Second murderer

You shall have wine enough, my lord, anon.

Clarence

In God’s name, what art thou?

Second Murderer