Complete Plays, The (306 page)

Sitting down by her

Queen Margaret

If ancient sorrow be most reverend,
Give mine the benefit of seniory,
And let my woes frown on the upper hand.
If sorrow can admit society,

Sitting down with them

Tell o’er your woes again by viewing mine:
I had an Edward, till a Richard kill’d him;
I had a Harry, till a Richard kill’d him:
Thou hadst an Edward, till a Richard kill’d him;
Thou hadst a Richard, till a Richard killed him;

Duchess Of York

I had a Richard too, and thou didst kill him;
I had a Rutland too, thou holp’st to kill him.

Queen Margaret

Thou hadst a Clarence too, and Richard kill’d him.
From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept
A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death:
That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes,
To worry lambs and lap their gentle blood,
That foul defacer of God’s handiwork,
That excellent grand tyrant of the earth,
That reigns in galled eyes of weeping souls,
Thy womb let loose, to chase us to our graves.
O upright, just, and true-disposing God,
How do I thank thee, that this carnal cur
Preys on the issue of his mother’s body,
And makes her pew-fellow with others’ moan!

Duchess Of York

O Harry’s wife, triumph not in my woes!
God witness with me, I have wept for thine.

Queen Margaret

Bear with me; I am hungry for revenge,
And now I cloy me with beholding it.
Thy Edward he is dead, that stabb’d my Edward:
Thy other Edward dead, to quit my Edward;
Young York he is but boot, because both they
Match not the high perfection of my loss:
Thy Clarence he is dead that kill’d my Edward;
And the beholders of this tragic play,
The adulterate Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey,
Untimely smother’d in their dusky graves.
Richard yet lives, hell’s black intelligencer,
Only reserved their factor, to buy souls
And send them thither: but at hand, at hand,
Ensues his piteous and unpitied end:
Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar, saints pray.
To have him suddenly convey’d away.
Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I prey,
That I may live to say, The dog is dead!

Queen Elizabeth

O, thou didst prophesy the time would come
That I should wish for thee to help me curse
That bottled spider, that foul bunch-back’d toad!

Queen Margaret

I call’d thee then vain flourish of my fortune;
I call’d thee then poor shadow, painted queen;
The presentation of but what I was;
The flattering index of a direful pageant;
One heaved a-high, to be hurl’d down below;
A mother only mock’d with two sweet babes;
A dream of what thou wert, a breath, a bubble,
A sign of dignity, a garish flag,
To be the aim of every dangerous shot,
A queen in jest, only to fill the scene.
Where is thy husband now? where be thy brothers?
Where are thy children? wherein dost thou, joy?
Who sues to thee and cries ‘God save the queen’?
Where be the bending peers that flatter’d thee?
Where be the thronging troops that follow’d thee?
Decline all this, and see what now thou art:
For happy wife, a most distressed widow;
For joyful mother, one that wails the name;
For queen, a very caitiff crown’d with care;
For one being sued to, one that humbly sues;
For one that scorn’d at me, now scorn’d of me;
For one being fear’d of all, now fearing one;
For one commanding all, obey’d of none.
Thus hath the course of justice wheel’d about,
And left thee but a very prey to time;
Having no more but thought of what thou wert,
To torture thee the more, being what thou art.
Thou didst usurp my place, and dost thou not
Usurp the just proportion of my sorrow?
Now thy proud neck bears half my burthen’d yoke;
From which even here I slip my weary neck,
And leave the burthen of it all on thee.
Farewell, York’s wife, and queen of sad mischance:
These English woes will make me smile in France.

Queen Elizabeth

O thou well skill’d in curses, stay awhile,
And teach me how to curse mine enemies!

Queen Margaret

Forbear to sleep the nights, and fast the days;
Compare dead happiness with living woe;
Think that thy babes were fairer than they were,
And he that slew them fouler than he is:
Bettering thy loss makes the bad causer worse:
Revolving this will teach thee how to curse.

Queen Elizabeth

My words are dull; O, quicken them with thine!

Queen Margaret

Thy woes will make them sharp, and pierce like mine.

Exit

Duchess Of York

Why should calamity be full of words?

Queen Elizabeth

Windy attorneys to their client woes,
Airy succeeders of intestate joys,
Poor breathing orators of miseries!
Let them have scope: though what they do impart
Help not all, yet do they ease the heart.

Duchess Of York

If so, then be not tongue-tied: go with me.
And in the breath of bitter words let’s smother
My damned son, which thy two sweet sons smother’d.
I hear his drum: be copious in exclaims.

Enter King Richard III, marching, with drums and trumpets

King Richard III

Who intercepts my expedition?

Duchess Of York

O, she that might have intercepted thee,
By strangling thee in her accursed womb
From all the slaughters, wretch, that thou hast done!

Queen Elizabeth

Hidest thou that forehead with a golden crown,
Where should be graven, if that right were right,
The slaughter of the prince that owed that crown,
And the dire death of my two sons and brothers?
Tell me, thou villain slave, where are my children?

Duchess Of York

Thou toad, thou toad, where is thy brother Clarence?
And little Ned Plantagenet, his son?

Queen Elizabeth

Where is kind Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey?

King Richard III

A flourish, trumpets! strike alarum, drums!
Let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women
Rail on the Lord’s enointed: strike, I say!

Flourish. Alarums

Either be patient, and entreat me fair,
Or with the clamorous report of war
Thus will I drown your exclamations.

Duchess Of York

Art thou my son?

King Richard III

Ay, I thank God, my father, and yourself.

Duchess Of York

Then patiently hear my impatience.

King Richard III

Madam, I have a touch of your condition,
Which cannot brook the accent of reproof.

Duchess Of York

O, let me speak!

King Richard III

 
Do then: but I’ll not hear.

Duchess Of York

I will be mild and gentle in my speech.

King Richard III

And brief, good mother; for I am in haste.

Duchess Of York

Art thou so hasty? I have stay’d for thee,
God knows, in anguish, pain and agony.

King Richard III

And came I not at last to comfort you?

Duchess Of York

No, by the holy rood, thou know’st it well,
Thou camest on earth to make the earth my hell.
A grievous burthen was thy birth to me;
Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy;
Thy school-days frightful, desperate, wild, and furious,
Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous,
Thy age confirm’d, proud, subdued, bloody, treacherous,
More mild, but yet more harmful, kind in hatred:
What comfortable hour canst thou name,
That ever graced me in thy company?

King Richard III

Faith, none, but Humphrey Hour, that call’d your grace
To breakfast once forth of my company.
If I be so disgracious in your sight,
Let me march on, and not offend your grace.
Strike the drum.

Duchess Of York

 
I prithee, hear me speak.

King Richard III

You speak too bitterly.

Duchess Of York

Hear me a word;
For I shall never speak to thee again.

King Richard III

So.

Duchess Of York

Either thou wilt die, by God’s just ordinance,
Ere from this war thou turn a conqueror,
Or I with grief and extreme age shall perish
And never look upon thy face again.
Therefore take with thee my most heavy curse;
Which, in the day of battle, tire thee more
Than all the complete armour that thou wear’st!
My prayers on the adverse party fight;
And there the little souls of Edward’s children
Whisper the spirits of thine enemies
And promise them success and victory.
Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end;
Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend.

Exit

Queen Elizabeth

Though far more cause, yet much less spirit to curse
Abides in me; I say amen to all.

King Richard III

Stay, madam; I must speak a word with you.

Queen Elizabeth

I have no more sons of the royal blood
For thee to murder: for my daughters, Richard,
They shall be praying nuns, not weeping queens;
And therefore level not to hit their lives.

King Richard III

You have a daughter call’d Elizabeth,
Virtuous and fair, royal and gracious.

Queen Elizabeth

And must she die for this? O, let her live,
And I’ll corrupt her manners, stain her beauty;
Slander myself as false to Edward’s bed;
Throw over her the veil of infamy:
So she may live unscarr’d of bleeding slaughter,
I will confess she was not Edward’s daughter.

King Richard III

Wrong not her birth, she is of royal blood.

Queen Elizabeth

To save her life, I’ll say she is not so.

King Richard III

Her life is only safest in her birth.

Queen Elizabeth

And only in that safety died her brothers.

King Richard III

Lo, at their births good stars were opposite.

Queen Elizabeth

No, to their lives bad friends were contrary.

King Richard III

All unavoided is the doom of destiny.

Queen Elizabeth

True, when avoided grace makes destiny:
My babes were destined to a fairer death,
If grace had bless’d thee with a fairer life.

King Richard III

You speak as if that I had slain my cousins.

Queen Elizabeth

Cousins, indeed; and by their uncle cozen’d
Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life.
Whose hand soever lanced their tender hearts,
Thy head, all indirectly, gave direction:
No doubt the murderous knife was dull and blunt
Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart,
To revel in the entrails of my lambs.
But that still use of grief makes wild grief tame,
My tongue should to thy ears not name my boys
Till that my nails were anchor’d in thine eyes;
And I, in such a desperate bay of death,
Like a poor bark, of sails and tackling reft,
Rush all to pieces on thy rocky bosom.

King Richard III

Madam, so thrive I in my enterprise
And dangerous success of bloody wars,
As I intend more good to you and yours,
Than ever you or yours were by me wrong’d!

Queen Elizabeth

What good is cover’d with the face of heaven,
To be discover’d, that can do me good?

King Richard III

The advancement of your children, gentle lady.

Queen Elizabeth

Up to some scaffold, there to lose their heads?

King Richard III

No, to the dignity and height of honour
The high imperial type of this earth’s glory.

Queen Elizabeth

Flatter my sorrows with report of it;
Tell me what state, what dignity, what honour,
Canst thou demise to any child of mine?

King Richard III

Even all I have; yea, and myself and all,
Will I withal endow a child of thine;
So in the Lethe of thy angry soul
Thou drown the sad remembrance of those wrongs
Which thou supposest I have done to thee.

Queen Elizabeth

Be brief, lest that be process of thy kindness
Last longer telling than thy kindness’ date.

King Richard III

Then know, that from my soul I love thy daughter.

Queen Elizabeth

My daughter’s mother thinks it with her soul.

King Richard III

What do you think?

Queen Elizabeth

That thou dost love my daughter from thy soul:
So from thy soul’s love didst thou love her brothers;
And from my heart’s love I do thank thee for it.

King Richard III

Be not so hasty to confound my meaning:
I mean, that with my soul I love thy daughter,
And mean to make her queen of England.

Queen Elizabeth

Say then, who dost thou mean shall be her king?

King Richard III

Even he that makes her queen who should be else?

Queen Elizabeth

What, thou?

King Richard III

I, even I: what think you of it, madam?

Queen Elizabeth

How canst thou woo her?

King Richard III

That would I learn of you,
As one that are best acquainted with her humour.

Queen Elizabeth

And wilt thou learn of me?

King Richard III

Madam, with all my heart.

Queen Elizabeth

Send to her, by the man that slew her brothers,
A pair of bleeding-hearts; thereon engrave
Edward and York; then haply she will weep:
Therefore present to her — as sometime Margaret
Did to thy father, steep’d in Rutland’s blood,—
A handkerchief; which, say to her, did drain
The purple sap from her sweet brother’s body
And bid her dry her weeping eyes therewith.
If this inducement force her not to love,
Send her a story of thy noble acts;
Tell her thou madest away her uncle Clarence,
Her uncle Rivers; yea, and, for her sake,
Madest quick conveyance with her good aunt Anne.