Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"
Автор книги: William Shakespeare
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1.3 Enter Queen Elizabeth, Lord Rivers, ⌈Marquis Dorset⌉, and Lord Gray
RIVERS (to Elizabeth)
Have patience, madam. There’s no doubt his majesty
Will soon recover his accustomed health.
GRAY (to Elizabeth)
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.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
If he were dead, what would betide on me?
⌈RIVERS⌉
No other harm but loss of such a lord.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
The loss of such a lord includes all harms.
GRAY
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
Is it concluded he shall be Protector?
QUEEN ELIZABETH
It is determined, not concluded yet;
But so it must be, if the King miscarry.
Enter the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Stanley
Earl of Derby
GRAY
Here come the Lords of Buckingham and Derby.
BUCKINGHAM (to Elizabeth)
Good time of day unto your royal grace.
STANLEY (to Elizabeth)
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, 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 today, my lord of Derby?
STANLEY
But now the Duke of Buckingham and I
Are come from visiting his majesty.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
With likelihood of his amendment, lords?
BUCKINGHAM
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,
And sent to warn them to his royal presence.
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 Lord Hastings
RICHARD 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?
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 whom in all this presence speaks your grace ?
RICHARD 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.
QUEEN 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
Of your ill will, and thereby to remove it.
RICHARD 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.
QUEEN 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.
RICHARD 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.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
By him that raised me to this care-full 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.
RICHARD GLOUCESTER
You may deny that you were not the mean
Of my Lord Hastings’ late imprisonment.
RIVERS She may, my lord, for—
RICHARD 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’?
RICHARD GLOUCESTER
What marry, may she? Marry with a king:
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 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 old Queen Margaret, unseen behind them
Small joy have I in being England’s queen.
QUEEN MARGARET (aside)
And lessened be that small, God I beseech him.
Thy honour, state, and seat is due to me.
RICHARD GLOUCESTER (to 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.
I dare adventure to be sent to th’ Tower.
‘Tis time to speak; my pains are quite forgot.
QUEEN MARGARET (aside)
Out, devil! I remember them too well.
Thou killed’st my husband Henry in the Tower,
And Edward, my poor son, at Tewkesbury.
RICHARD GLOUCESTER (to Elizabeth)
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 royalize his blood, I spent mine own.
QUEEN MARGARET (aside)
Ay, and much better blood than his or thine.
RICHARD GLOUCESTER (to Elizabeth)
In all which time you and your husband Gray
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.
QUEEN MARGARET (aside)
A murd’rous villain, and so still thou art.
RICHARD GLOUCESTER
Poor Clarence did forsake his father Warwick—
Ay, and forswore himself, which Jesu pardon—
QUEEN MARGARET (aside) Which God revenge!
RICHARD 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.
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 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.
RICHARD GLOUCESTER
If I should be? I had rather be a pedlar.
Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof.
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,
That I enjoy being the queen thereof.
QUEEN MARGARET (aside)
Ah, little joy enjoys the queen thereof,
For I am she, and altogether joyless.
I can no longer hold me patient.
She comes 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?
If not that I am Queen, you bow like subjects;
Yet that by you deposed, you quake like rebels.
(To Richard) Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away.
RICHARD GLOUCESTER
Foul wrinkled witch, what mak’st thou in my sight?
QUEEN MARGARET
But repetition of what thou hast marred:
That will I make before I let thee go.
A husband and a son thou ow’st to me,
(To Elizabeth) And thou a kingdom; (to the rest) all of
you allegiance.
This sorrow that I have by right is yours,
And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.
RICHARD 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, gav’st 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.
QUEEN ELIZABETH (to Margaret)
So just is God to right the innocent.
LORD HASTINGS (to Margaret)
O ‘twas the foulest deed to slay that babe,
And the most merciless that e’er was heard of.
RIVERS (to Margaret)
Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported.
DORSET (to Margaret)
No man but prophesied revenge for it.
BUCKINGHAM (to Margaret)
Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.
QUEEN 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.
(To Elizabeth) Edward thy son, that now is Prince of
Wales,
For Edward my 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.
RICHARD GLOUCESTER
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,
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,
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—
RICHARD GLOUCESTER Margaret.
QUEEN MARGARET
Richard.
RICHARD GLOUCESTER Ha?
QUEEN MARGARET I call thee not.
RICHARD GLOUCESTER
I cry thee mercy then, for I did think
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 GLOUCESTER
‘Tis done by me, and ends in ‘Margaret’.
QUEEN ELIZABETH (to Margaret)
Thus have you breathed your curse against yourself.
QUEEN 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.
LORD 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
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 Marquis, 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.
RICHARD GLOUCESTER
Good counsel, marry!—Learn it, learn it, Marquis.
DORSET
It touches you, my lord, as much as me.
RICHARD GLOUCESTER
Ay, and much more; but I was born so high.
Our eyrie 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 outshining beams thy cloudy wrath
Hath in eternal darkness folded up.
Your eyrie buildeth in our eyrie’s nest.—
O God that seest it, do not suffer it;
As it was won with blood, lost be it so.
⌈RICHARD GLOUCESTER⌉
Peace, peace! For shame, if not for charity.
QUEEN 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.
QUEEN 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.
QUEEN 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.
She points at Richard
Look when he fawns, he bites; and when he bites,
His venom tooth will rankle to the death.
Have naught 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 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
⌈LORD HASTINGS⌉
My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses.
RIVERS
And so doth mine. I muse why she’s at liberty.
RICHARD 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.
RICHARD 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.
RICHARD GLOUCESTER
So do I ever—(speaks to himself) being well advised:
For had I cursed now, I had cursed myself.
Enter Sir William Catesby
CATESBY
Madam, his majesty doth call for you,
And for your grace, and you my gracious lords.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
Catesby, I come.—Lords, will you go with me?
RIVERS We wait upon your grace. Exeunt all but Richard
RICHARD 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 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, Gray;
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, 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.—
How now, my hardy, stout, resolvèd mates!
Are you now going to dispatch this thing?
A MURDERER
We are, my lord, and come to have the warrant,
That we may be admitted where he is.
RICHARD GLOUCESTER
Well thought upon; I have it here about me.
He gives them 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.
A 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.
RICHARD GLOUCESTER
Your eyes drop millstones when fools’ eyes fall tears.
I like you, lads. About your business straight.
Go, go, dispatch.
⌈MURDERERS⌉ We will, my noble lord.
Exeunt Richard at one door, the Murderers at another
1.4 Enter George Duke of Clarence and ⌈Sir Robert Brackenbury⌉
⌈BRACKENBURY⌉
Why looks your grace so heavily today?
CLARENCE
O I have passed a miserable night,
So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,
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.
⌈BRACKENBURY⌉
What was your dream, my lord? I pray you, tell me.
CLARENCE
Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower,
And was embarked to cross to Burgundy,
And in my company my brother Gloucester,
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk
Upon the hatches; there we looked toward England,
And cited up a thousand heavy 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 sought to stay him—overboard
Into the tumbling billows of the main.
O Lord! Methought what pain it was to drown,
What dreadful noise of waters in my ears,
What sights of ugly death within my eyes.
Methoughts I saw a thousand fearful wrecks,
Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon,
Wedges of gold, great ouches, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scattered 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 wooed the slimy bottom of the deep
And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by.
⌈BRACKENBURY⌉
Had you such leisure in the time of death,
To gaze upon these secrets of the deep?
CLARENCE
Methought I had, and often did I strive
To yield the ghost, but still the envious flood
Stopped-in my soul and would not let it forth
To find the empty, vast, and wand’ring air,
But smothered it within my panting bulk,
Who almost burst to belch it in the sea.
⌈BRACKENBURY⌉
Awaked you not in this sore agony?
CLARENCE
No, no, my dream was lengthened after life.
O then began the tempest to my soul!
I passed, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that sour 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 vanished. Then came wand‘ring by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair,
Dabbled in blood, and he shrieked out aloud,
‘Clarence is come: false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,
That stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury.
Seize on him, furies! Take him unto torment!’
With that, methoughts a legion of foul fiends
Environed me, 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 my dream.
⌈BRACKENBURY⌉
No marvel, lord, though it affrighted you;
I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it.
CLARENCE
Ah, Brackenbury, I have done these things,
That now give evidence against my soul,
For Edward’s sake; and see how he requites me.
Keeper, I pray thee, sit by me awhile.
My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.
⌈BRACKENBURY⌉
I will, my lord. God give your grace good rest.
Clarence sleeps
Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours,
Makes the night morning and the noontide night.
Princes have but their titles for their glories,
An outward honour for an inward toil,
And for unfelt imaginations
They often feel a world of restless cares;
So that, between their titles and low name,
There’s nothing differs but the outward fame.
Enter two Murderers
FIRST MURDERER Ho, who’s here?
BRACKENBURY
What wouldst thou, fellow? And how cam’st thou
hither?
SECOND MURDERER I would speak with Clarence, and I came hither on my legs.
BRACKENBURY What, so brief?
FIRST MURDERER ‘Tis better, sir, than to be tedious. (To Second Murderer) Let him see our commission, and talk no more.
Brackenbury reads
BRACKENBURY
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.
There lies the Duke asleep, and there the keys.
⌈He throws down the keys⌉
I’ll to the King and signify to him
That thus I have resigned to you my charge.
FIRST MURDERER You may, sir; ‘tis a point of wisdom.
Fare you well. Exit Brackenbury
SECOND MURDERER What, shall I stab him as he sleeps?
FIRST MURDERER No. He’ll say ‘twas done cowardly, when he wakes.
SECOND MURDERER Why, he shall never wake until the great judgement day.
FIRST MURDERER Why, then he’ll say we stabbed him sleeping.
SECOND MURDERER The urging of that word ‘judgement’ hath bred a kind of remorse in me.
FIRST MURDERER What, art thou afraid?
SECOND MURDERER Not to kill him, having a warrant, but to be damned for killing him, from the which no warrant can defend me.
FIRST MURDERER I thought thou hadst been resolute. SECOND MURDERER So I am—to let him live.
FIRST MURDERER I’ll back to the Duke of Gloucester and tell him so.
SECOND MURDERER Nay, I pray thee. Stay a little. I hope this passionate humour of mine will change. It was wont to hold me but while one tells twenty.
⌈He counts to twenty⌉
FIRST MURDERER How dost thou feel thyself now? SECOND MURDERER Some certain dregs of conscience are yet within me.
FIRST MURDERER Remember our reward, when the deed’s done.
SECOND MURDERER ‘Swounds, he dies. I had forgot the reward.
FIRST MURDERER Where’s thy conscience now?
SECOND MURDERER’ O, in the Duke of Gloucester’s purse. FIRST MURDERER When he opens his purse to give us our reward, thy conscience flies out.
SECOND MURDERER ‘Tis no matter. Let it go. There’s few or none will entertain it.
FIRST MURDERER What if it come to thee again?
SECOND MURDERER I’ll not meddle with it. It makes a man a coward. A man cannot steal but it accuseth him. A man cannot swear but it checks him. A man cannot lie with his neighbour’s wife but it detects him. ‘Tis a blushing, shamefaced spirit, that mutinies in a man’s bosom. It fills a man full of obstacles. It made me once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found. It beggars any man that keeps it. It is turned out of towns and cities for a dangerous thing, and every man that means to live well endeavours to trust to himself and live without it.
FIRST MURDERER ‘Swounds, ’tis even now at my elbow, persuading me not to kill the Duke.
SECOND MURDERER Take the devil in thy mind, and believe him not: he would insinuate with thee but to make thee sigh.
FIRST MURDERER I am strong framed; he cannot prevail with me.
SECOND MURDERER Spoke like a tall man that respects thy reputation. Come, shall we fall to work?
FIRST MURDERER Take him on the costard with the hilts of thy sword, and then throw him into the malmsey butt in the next room.
SECOND MURDERER O excellent device!—and make a sop of him.
FIRST MURDERER Soft, he wakes.
SECOND MURDERER Strike!
FIRST MURDERER No, we’ll 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?
FIRST MURDERER
A man, as you are.
CLARENCE But not as I am, royal.
FIRST MURDERER Nor you as we are, loyal.
CLARENCE
Thy voice is thunder, but thy looks are humble.
FIRST MURDERER
My voice is now the King’s; my looks, mine own.
CLARENCE
How darkly and how deadly dost thou speak.
Your eyes do menace me. Why look you pale?
Who sent you hither? Wherefore do you come?
SECOND MURDERER
To, to, to—
CLARENCE To murder me.
BOTH MURDERERS Ay, ay.
CLARENCE
You scarcely have the hearts to tell me so,
And therefore cannot have the hearts to do it.
Wherein, my friends, have I offended you?
FIRST MURDERER
Offended us you have not, but the King.
CLARENCE
I shall be reconciled to him again.
SECOND MURDERER
Never, my lord; therefore prepare to die.
CLARENCE
Are you drawn forth among a world of men
To slay the innocent? What is my offence?
Where is the evidence that doth accuse me?
What lawful quest have given their verdict up
Unto the frowning judge, or who pronounced
The bitter sentence of poor Clarence’ death?
Before I be convict by course of law,
To threaten me with death is most unlawful.
I charge you, as you hope to have redemption
By Christ’s dear blood, shed for our grievous sins,
That you depart and lay no hands on me.
The deed you undertake is damnable.
FIRST MURDERER
What we will do, we do upon command.
SECOND MURDERER
And he that hath commanded is our king.
CLARENCE
Erroneous vassals, the great King of Kings
Hath in the table of his law commanded
That thou shalt do no murder. Will you then
Spurn at his edict, and fulfil a man’s?
Take heed, for he holds vengeance in his hand
To hurl upon their heads that break his law.
SECOND MURDERER
And that same vengeance doth he hurl on thee,
For false forswearing, and for murder too.
Thou didst receive the sacrament to fight
In quarrel of the house of Lancaster.
FIRST MURDERER
And, like a traitor to the name of God,
Didst break that vow, and with thy treacherous blade
Unripped‘st the bowels of thy sov’reign’s son.
SECOND MURDERER
Whom thou wast sworn to cherish and defend.
FIRST MURDERER
How canst thou urge God’s dreadful law to us, When thou hast broke it in such dear degree?
CLARENCE
Alas, for whose sake did I that ill deed?
For Edward, for my brother, for his sake.
He sends ye not to murder me for this,
For in that sin he is as deep as I.
If God will be avenged for the deed,
O know you yet, he doth it publicly.
Take not the quarrel from his pow’rful arm;
He needs no indirect or lawless course
To cut off those that have offended him.
FIRST MURDERER
Who made thee then a bloody minister
When gallant springing brave Plantagenet,
That princely novice, was struck dead by thee?
CLARENCE
My brother’s love, the devil, and my rage.
FIRST MURDERER
Thy brother’s love, our duty, and thy faults
Provoke us hither now to slaughter thee.
CLARENCE
If you do love my brother, hate not me.
I am his brother, and I love him well.
If you are hired for meed, go back again,
And I will send you to my brother Gloucester,
Who shall reward you better for my life
Than Edward will for tidings of my death.
SECOND MURDERER
You are deceived. Your brother Gloucester hates you.
CLARENCE
O no, he loves me, and he holds me dear.
Go you to him from me.
FIRST MURDERER
Ay, so we will.
CLARENCE
Tell him, when that our princely father York
Blessed his three sons with his victorious arm,
And charged us from his soul to love each other,
He little thought of this divided friendship.
Bid Gloucester think of this, and he will weep.
FIRST MURDERER
Ay, millstones, as he lessoned us to weep.
CLARENCE
O do not slander him, for he is kind.
FIRST MURDERER
As snow in harvest. Come, you deceive yourself.
‘Tis he that sends us to destroy you here.
CLARENCE
It cannot be, for he bewept my fortune,
And hugged me in his arms, and swore with sobs
That he would labour my delivery.
FIRST MURDERER
Why, so he doth, when he delivers you
From this earth’s thraldom to the joys of heaven.
SECOND MURDERER
Make peace with God, for you must die, my lord.
CLARENCE
Have you that holy feeling in your souls
To counsel me to make my peace with God,
And are you yet to your own souls so blind
That you will war with God by murd’ring me?
O sirs, consider: they that set you on
To do this deed will hate you for the deed.
SECOND MURDERER (to First)
What shall we do?
CLARENCE
Relent, and save your souls.
FIRST MURDERER
Relent? No. ’Tis cowardly and womanish.
CLARENCE
Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish.—
My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks.
O if thine eye be not a flatterer,
Come thou on my side, and entreat for me.
A begging prince, what beggar pities not?
Which of you, if you were a prince’s son,
Being pent from liberty as I am now,
If two such murderers as yourselves came to you,
Would not entreat for life? As you would beg
Were you in my distress—
SECOND MURDERER Look behind you, my lord!
FIRST MURDERER (stabbing Clarence)
Take that, and that! If all this will not serve,
I’ll drown you in the malmsey butt within.
Exit with Clarence’s body
SECOND MURDERER
A bloody deed, and desperately dispatched!
How fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands
Of this most grievous, guilty murder done.
Enter First Murderer
FIRST MURDERER
How now? What mean‘st thou, that thou help’st me not?
By heaven, the Duke shall know how slack you have
been.
SECOND MURDERER
I would he knew that I had saved his brother.
Take thou the fee, and tell him what I say,
For I repent me that the Duke is slain. Exit
FIRST MURDERER
So do not I. Go, coward as thou art.—
Well, I’ll go hide the body in some hole
Till that the Duke give order for his burial.