mov'd mine.
RIVERS. Were you well serv'd, 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.
GLOUCESTER. Good
counsel, marry; learn it, learn it, Marquis.
DORSET. It touches you, my lord, as much as me.
GLOUCESTER. Ay, and much more; but I was born so high,
Our aery 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 out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath
Hath in
eternal darkness folded up.
Your aery buildeth in our aery's nest.
O God that seest it, do not suffer it;
As it is won with blood, lost be it so!
BUCKINGHAM. 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 butcher'd.
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!
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.
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
BUCKINGHAM. My hair doth stand an end to hear her curses.
RIVERS. And so doth mine. I muse why she's at liberty.
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.
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 frank'd 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!
GLOUCESTER. So do I ever- [Aside] being well advis'd;
For had I curs'd now, I had curs'd myself.
Enter CATESBY
CATESBY. Madam, his Majesty doth can 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 GLOUCESTER
GLOUCESTER. I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.
The secret mischiefs that I set abroach
I lay unto the
grievouscharge of others.
Clarence, who 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 reveng'd on Rivers, Dorset, 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 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
resolved mates!
Are you now going to
dispatch this thing?
FIRST MURDERER. We are, my lord, and come to have the
warrant,
That we may be admitted where he is.
GLOUCESTER. Well thought upon; I have it here about me.
[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.
FIRST MURDERER. Tut, tut, my lord, we will not stand to
prate;
Talkers are no good doers. Be assur'd
We go to use our hands and not our tongues.
GLOUCESTER. Your eyes drop millstones when fools' eyes fall
tears.
I like you, lads; about your business straight;
Go, go,
dispatch.
FIRST MURDERER. We will, my noble lord. Exeunt
ACT1|SC4
SCENE 4.
London. The Tower
Enter CLARENCE and KEEPER
KEEPER. Why looks your Grace so heavily to-day?
CLARENCE. O, I have pass'd 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
dismalterror was the time!
KEEPER. What was your dream, my lord? I pray you
tell me.
CLARENCE. Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower
And was embark'd to cross to Burgundy;
And in my company my brother Gloucester,
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk
Upon the hatches. Thence we look'd toward England,
And cited up a thousand heavy times,
During the wars of York and Lancaster,
That had
befall'n us. As we pac'd along
Upon the giddy
footing of the hatches,
Methought that Gloucester stumbled, and in falling
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard
Into the tumbling billows of the main.
O Lord,
methinks的过去式">
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,
A thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon,
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scatt'red in the bottom of the sea;
Some lay in dead men's skulls, and in the holes
Where eyes did once
inhabit there were crept,
As 'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,
That woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep
And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatt'red by.
KEEPER. 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
Stopp'd in my soul and would not let it forth
To find the empty, vast, and wand'ring air;
But smother'd it within my panting bulk,
Who almost burst to belch it in the sea.
KEEPER. Awak'd you not in this sore agony?
CLARENCE. No, no, my dream was lengthen'd after life.
O, then began the
tempest to my soul!
I pass'd,
methinks的过去式">
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 spake aloud 'What
scourge for perjury
Can this dark
monarchy afford false Clarence?'
And so he vanish'd. Then came wand'ring by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood, and he shriek'd out aloud
'Clarence is come-false,
fleeting, perjur'd Clarence,
That stabb'd me in the field by Tewksbury.
Seize on him, Furies, take him unto torment!'
With that,
methinks的过去式">
methoughts, a
legion of foul fiends
Environ'd me, and howled in mine ears
Such
hideous cries that, with the very noise,
I trembling wak'd, and for a season after
Could not believe but that I was in hell,
Such terrible
impression made my dream.
KEEPER. No
marvel, lord, though it affrighted you;
I am afraid,
methinks, to hear you tell it.
CLARENCE. Ah, Keeper, Keeper, 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 aveng'd on my misdeeds,
Yet
execute Thy wrath in me alone;
O, spare my
guiltless wife and my poor children!
KEEPER, I prithee sit by me awhile;
My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.
KEEPER. I will, my lord. God give your Grace good rest.
[CLARENCE sleeps]