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
By silken, sly, insinuating jacks?
Grey
To who in all this presence speaks your grace?
Richard
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.
Elizabeth
Brother of Gloucester, you mistake the matter.
The king, of his own royal disposition,
And not provoked by any suitor else,
Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred,
That in your outward actions shows itself
Against my children, brothers, and myself,
Makes him to send, that he may learn the ground.
Richard
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.
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
Meantime, God grants that I have need of you.
Your brother is imprisoned by your means,
My self 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.
Elizabeth
By Him that raised me to this careful 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 suspècts.
Richard
You may deny that you were not the mean
Of my Lord Hastings’ late imprisonment.
Rivers
She may, my lord, for —
Richard
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
What, marry, may she? Marry with a king,
A bachelor, a handsome stripling too.
I wis your grandam had a worser match.
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 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 Grey
Were factious for the house of Lancaster,
And, Rivers, so were you. Was not your husband
In 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 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
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 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.
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 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.
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 banishment
Than 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 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.
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 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.
Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales,
For Edward our son, that was Prince of Wale