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.