Ha! hath she forgot already that brave prince,
Edward her lord, whom I some three months since
Stabbed in my angry mood at Tewkesbury?
A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman,
Framed in the prodigality of nature,

Young, valiant, wise, and no doubt right royal,
The spacious world cannot again afford:
And will she yet abase her eyes on me,
That cropped the golden prime of this sweet prince,
And made her widow to a woful bed?

On me, whose all not equals Edward's moiety:
On me, that halt and am misshapen thus?
My dukedom to a beggarly denier,
I do mistake my person all this while :
Upon my life she finds, although I cannot,
Myself to be a marvellous proper man.
I'll be at charges for a looking-glass,
And entertain a score or two of tailors
To study fashions to adorn my body:
Since I am crept in favour with myself,
I will maintain it with some little cost.
But first I'll turn yon' fellow in his grave,
And then return lamenting to my love.—
Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,
That I may see my shadow as I pass.

[Exit.

SCENE III. The same. A Room in the Palace. Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, LORD RIVERS, and LORD GREY.

Riv. Have patience, madam: there's no doubt his majesty

Will soon recover his accustomed health.
Grey. 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 words. Q. Eliz. If he were dead what would betide of me?

Grey. No other harm but loss of such a lord. Q. Eliz. The loss of such a lord includes all harms.

Grey. The heavens have blessed you with a goodly son,

To be your comforter when he is gone.

Q. Eliz. Ah he is young; and his minority Is put into the trust of Richard Gloster, A man that loves not me nor none of you. Riv. Is it concluded he shall be protector? Q. Eliz. It is determined, not concluded yet: But so it must be if the King miscarry.

Enter BUCKINGHAM and STANLEY. Grey. Here come the lords of Buckingham and Stanley.

Buck. Good time of day unto your royal grace.

Stan. God make your majesty joyful as you have been.

Q. Eliz. The Countess Richmond, good my lord of Stanley,

To your good prayer will scarcely say amen. Yet, Stanley, notwithstanding she's your wife, And loves not me, be you, good lord, assured I hate not you for her proud arrogance.

Stan. 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. Q. Eliz. Saw you the King to-day, my lord of

Stanley?

Stan. But now the Duke of Buckingham and I Are come from visiting his majesty.

Q. Eliz. What likelihood of his amendment,

lords?

Buck. Madam, good hope: his grace speaks cheerfully.

Q. Eliz. God grant him health! Did you confer with him?

Buck. Ay, Madam : he desires to make atone

ment

Between the Duke of Gloster and your brothers,
And between them and my lord chamberlain :
And sent to warn them to his royal presence.
Q. Eliz. 'Would all were well!-But that will
never be :

I fear our happiness is at the height.

Enter GLOSTER, HASTINGS, ana DORSET. Glo. 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 speak 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 whom in all this presence speaks your grace?

Glo. 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.

Q. Eliz. Brother of Gloster, 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 action shews itself,
Against my children, brothers, and myself,
Makes him to send; that thereby he may gather
The ground of your ill-will, and so remove it.

Glo. I cannot tell :-The world is grown so bad
That wrens may pray where eagles dare not perch.
Since every Jack became a gentleman,
There's many a gentle person made a Jack.

Q. Eliz. Come, come, we know your meaning,
brother Gloster:

You envy my advancement and my friends'.
God grant we never may have need of you!
Glo. Meantime God grants that we 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.

Q. Eliz. 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 suspects.

Glo. You may deny that you were not the cause Of my Lord Hastings' late imprisonment.

Riv. She may, my lord; for

Glo. 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,-

Riv. What, marry, may she?

Glo. What marry, may she? marry with a king; A bachelor, a handsome stripling too. I wis your grandam had a worser match.

Q. Eliz. My lord of Gloster, I have too long
borne

Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs:
By Heaven, I will acquaint his majesty
Of those gross taunts I often 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.
Small joy have I in being England's queen.

Enter QUEEN Margaret, behind,

Q. Mar. And lessened be that small, God I
beseech thee !-

Thy honour, state, and seat, is due to me.
Glo. What! threat you me with telling of the
King?

Tell him, and spare not. Look, what I have said
I will avouch in presence of the King:

I dare adventure to be sent to the Tower. 'Tis time to speak; my pains are quite forgot.

Q. Mar. Out, devil! I remember them too well: Thou kill'dst my husband Henry in the Tower, And Edward, my poor son, at Tewkesbury.

Glo. 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 royalise his blood I spilt mine own.

Q. Mar. Ay, and much better blood than his
or thine.

Glo. 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 now, and what you are:
Withal, what I have been, and what I am.
Q. Mar. A murd'rous villain; and so still
thou art.

Glo. Poor Clarence did forsake his father
Warwick,

Ay, and forswore himself,-which Jesu pardon!-
Q. Mar. Which God revenge!

Glo. 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.

Q. Mar. Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave

In sharing that which you have pilled from me:
Which of you trembles not that looks on me?
If not that, I being queen, you bow like subjects;
Yet that, by you deposed, you quake like rebels?—
Ah gentle villain, do not turn away!

Glo. Foul wrinkled witch, what mak'st thou
in my sight?

Q. Mar. But repetition of what thou hast marred:

That will I make before I let thee go.

Glo. Wert thou not banished on pain of death? Q. Mar. 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.

Glo. 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 fallen upon thee; And God, not we, hath plagued thy bloody deed. Q. Eliz. So just is God to right the innocent. Hast. O't was the foulest deed to slay that babe, And the most merciless, that e'er was heard of. Riv. Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported.

Dors. No man but prophesied revenge for it. Buck. Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.

Q. Mar. 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 woful banishment,
Could 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, 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 may'st thou live to wail thy children's loss,
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 your natural age,
But by some unlooked accident cut off!

Glo. Have done thy charm, thou hateful withered hag.

Q. Mar. 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 mother's heavy womb:
Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins:
Thou rag of honour: thou detested-
Glo. Margaret.

Q. Mar. Richard!
Glo. Ha?

Q. Mar. I call thee not.

Glo. I cry thee mercy, then; for I did think That thou had'st called me all these bitter

names.

Q. Mar. Why so I did, but looked for no reply. O let me make the period to my curse.

Glo. "T is done by me, and ends in "Margaret." Q. Eliz. Thus have you breathed your curse against yourself.

Q. Mar. 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 pois'nous hunchbacked
toad.

Hast. False-boding woman, end thy frantic

curse,

Lest to thy harm thou move our patience. Q. Mar. Foul shame upon you! you have all moved mine.

Riv. Were you well served, you would be taught your duty.

Q. Mar. 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.
Dor. Dispute not with her; she is lunatic.
Q. Mar. Peace, master marquis; you are
malapert:

Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current.
O that your young nobility could judge
What 't were 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.
Glo. Good counsel, marry: learn it, learn it,

marquis.

Dor. It touches you, my lord, as much as me. Glo. Ay, and much more: but I was born so high,

Our aiery buildeth in the cedar's top,

And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun. Q. Mar. 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 aiery buildeth in our aiery's nest:
O God, that see'st it, do not suffer it!
As it was won with blood, lost be it so.

Buck. Peace, peace, for shame, if not for charity.
Q. Mar. Urge neither charity nor shame to me:
Uncharitably with me have you dealt,
And shamefully by you my hopes are butchered.
My charity is outrage, life my shame:
And in my shame still live my sorrow's rage!
Buck. Have done, have done.

Q. Mar. O princely Buckingham, I kiss thy hand,

In sign of league and amity with thee.
Now fair befal thee and thy noble house!
Thy garments are not spotted with our blood,
Nor thou within the compass of my curse.

Buck. Nor no one here: for curses never pass
The lips of those that breathe them in the air.
Q. Mar. I'll not believe but they ascend the
sky,

And there awake God's gentle-sleeping peace.
O Buckingham, beware 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.

Glo. What doth she say, my lord of Buckingham?

Buck. Nothing that I respect, my gracious lord.

Q. Mar. 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.
Hast. My hair doth stand on end to hear her

curses.

Riv. And so doth mine: I muse why she's at liberty.

Glo. 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.

Q. Eliz. I never did her any, to my knowledge. Glo. 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!

Riv. A virtuous and a christian-like con

Cates. Madam, his majesty doth call for you: And for your grace: and you, my noble lords. Q. Eliz. Catesby, I come.-Lords, will you go with me?

Riv. Madam, we will attend upon your grace. [Exeunt all but GLOSTER.

Glo. 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 laid in darkness, I do beweep to many simple gulls; Namely, to Stanley, Hastings, Buckingham; And tell them 't is 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, Vaughan, Grey: 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 villany With old odd 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, resolvéd mates? Are you now going to despatch this thing?

1st Murd. We are, my lord; and come to have the warrant,

That we may be admitted where he is.

me.

Glo. Well thought upon; I have it here about [Gives 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. 1st Murd. 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.
Glo. Your eyes drop millstones when fools'
eyes drop tears:

I like you, lads. About your business straight:
Go, go, despatch.

1st Murd.

We will, my noble lord.

Enter CLARENCE and BRAKENBURY. Brak. Why looks your grace so heavily to-day? Clar. 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 't were to buy a world of happy days: So full of dismal terror was the time.

Brak. What was your dream, my lord? I pray you tell me.

Clar. Methought that I had broken from the
Tower,

And was embarked to cross to Burgundy;
And in my company my brother Gloster:
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk
Upon the hatches: thence 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 Gloster stumbled, and in falling
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard
Into the tumbling billows of the main.

O Lord, methought what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of water in mine ears:
What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks:
A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon :
Wedges of gold, great anchors, 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 't were in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems, That woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep, And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by. Brak. Had you such leisure in the time of death

To gaze upon these secrets of the deep?

Clar. Methought I had; and often did I strive To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth To seek the empty, vast, and wand'ring air: But smothered it within my panting bulk, Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.

Brak. Awaked you not with this sore agony? Clar. O no, my dream was lengthened after life:

O then began the tempest to my soul!
I passed methought the melancholy flood,
With that grim 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 wandering 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:
Sieze on him, furies, take him to your torments!"
With that, methought a legion of foul fiends
Environed me, and howléd 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.
Brak. No marvel, lord, though it affrighted

you:

I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it.
Clar. O Brakenbury, I have done these things,
That now give evidence against my soul,
For Edward's sake: and see how he requites
me!

O God! if my deep prayers cannot appease thee,
But thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds,
Yet execute thy wrath on me alone:
O spare my guiltless wife and my poor children!—
I pray thee, gentle keeper, stay by me :
My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.
Brak. I will, my lord: God give your grace
[CLARENCE reposes.

good rest!

Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours:

Makes the night morning, and the noontide

night.

Princes have but their titles for their glories;