Elizabeth
My lord of Gloucester, I have too long borneYour blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs.By heaven, I will acquaint his majestyOf those gross taunts that oft I have endured.I had rather be a country servant maidThan a great queen, with this condition,To be so baited, scorned, and stormèd at.Small joy have I in being England’s queen.
Enter old queen Margaret.
Margaret (aside)
And lessened be that small, God I beseech him.Thy honour, state and seat is due to me.
Richard
What? Threat you me with telling of the king?I will avouch’t in presence of the king.I dare adventure to be sent to th’Tower.ʼTis time to speak. My pains are quite forgot.
Margaret (aside)
Out, devil. I do remember them too well.Thou kill’dst my husband, Henry, in the Tower,And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.
Richard
Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband king,I was a pack-horse 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 (aside)
Ay, and much better blood than his or thine.
Richard
In all which time, you and your husband GreyWere factious for the house of Lancaster,And, Rivers, so were you. Was not your husbandIn Margaret’s battle at Saint Alban’s 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 (aside)
A murderous villain, and so still thou art.
Richard
Poor Clarence did forsake his father Warwick,Ay, and forswore himself, which Jesu pardon.
Margaret (aside)
Which God revenge.
Richard
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 (aside)
Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave the world,Thou cacodemon. There thy kingdom is.
Rivers
My Lord of Gloucester, in those busy daysWhich 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
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 supposeYou should enjoy were you this country’s king.As little joy may you suppose in meThat I enjoy, being the queen thereof.
Margaret (aside)
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 outIn 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.
Richard
Foul wrinkled witch, what mak’st thou in my sight?
Margaret
But repetition of what thou hast marred,That will I make before I let thee go.
Richard
Wert thou not banishèd on pain of death?
Margaret
I was. But I do find more pain in banishmentThan death can yield me here by my abode.A husband and a son thou ow’st 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.
Richard
The curse my noble father laid on theeWhen thou didst crown his warlike brows with paperAnd with thy scorns drew’st rivers from his eyes,And then to dry them gav’st the duke a cloutSteeped in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland —His curses then, from bitterness of soulDenounced 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 heavenThat 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 deathAnd 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 sonWas 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
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 storeExceeding those that I can wish upon thee,Oh, let them keep it till thy sins be ripeAnd then hurl down their indignationOn 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 dreamAffrights thee with a hell of ugly devils.Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog,Thou that wast sealed in thy nativityThe slave of nature and the son of hell.Thou slander of thy heavy mother’s womb,Thou loathèd issue of thy father’s loins,Thou rag of honour, thou detested —
Richard
Margaret.
Margaret
Richard.
Richard
Ha?
Margaret
I call thee not.
Richard
I cry thee mercy then, for I did thinkThat thou hadst called me all these bitter names.
Margaret
Why so I did, but looked for no reply.Oh, let me make the period to my curse.
Richard
ʼTis done by me, and ends in ʼMargaret’.
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 spiderWhose deadly web ensnareth thee about?Fool, fool, thou whet’st a knife to kill thyself.The time will come that thou shalt wish for meTo help thee curse that 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;Oh, 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.Oh, that your young nobility could judgeWhat ’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
Good counsel, marry. Learn it, learn it, marquess.
Dorset
It toucheth you, my lord, as much as me.
Richard
Ay, and much more. But I was born so high.Our aerie 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 wrathHath in eternal darkness folded up.Your aerie buildeth in our aerie’s nest.O God that seest it, do not suffer it;As it was 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 handIn 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 passThe lips of those that breathe them in the air.
Margaret
I will not think but they ascend the skyAnd 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.
Richard
What doth she say, my lord of Buckingham?
Buckingham
Nothing that I respect, my gracious lord.
Margaret
