fac SCENE III. The palace.

Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, LORD RIVERS, and LORD GREY.
♦ Riv. Have patience, madam: there’s no doubt his majesty
Will soon recover his accustom’d health.
♦ Grey. In that you brook it ill, it makes him worse:
Therefore, for God’s sake, entertain good comfort,
5 And cheer his grace with quick and merry words.
♦ Q. Eliz. If he were dead, what would betide of me?
♦ Riv. No other harm but loss of such a lord.
♦ Q. Eliz. The loss of such a lord includes all harm.
Grey. The heavens have bless’d you with a goodly son,
10 To be your comforter when he is gone.
♦ Q. Eliz. Oh, he is young, and his minority
♦ Is put unto the trust of Richard Gloucester,
A man that loves not me, nor none of you.
♦ Riv. Is it concluded he shall be protector?
15 Q. Eliz. It is determined, not concluded yet:
♦ But so it must be, if the king miscarry.
Enter BUCKINGHAM and DERBY.
♦ Grey. Here come the lords of Buckingham and Derby.
Buck. Good time of day unto your royal grace!
Der. God make your majesty joyful as you have been!
20 Q. Eliz. The Countess Richmond, good my Lord of Derby,
♦ To your good prayers 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.
25 Der. I do beseech you, either not believe
♦ The envious slanders of her false accusers;
♦ Or, if she be accused in true report,
Bear with her weakness, which, I think, proceeds
From wayward sickness, and no grounded malice.
30 Riv. Saw you the king to-day, my Lord of Derby?
Der. 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.
35 Q. Eliz. God grant him health! Did you confer with him?
♦ Buck. Madam, we did: he desires to make atonement
♦ Betwixt the Duke of Gloucester and your brothers,
And betwixt them and my lord chamberlain;
♦ And sent to warn them to his royal presence.
40 Q. Eliz. Would all were well! but that will never be:
♦ I fear our happiness is at the highest.
Enter GLOUCESTER, HASTINGS, and DORSET.
Glou. 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?
45 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,
50 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?
♦ Riv. To whom in all this presence speaks your grace?
55 Glou. 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 person—
♦ Whom God preserve better than you would wish!—
60 Cannot be quiet scarce a breathing-while,
But you must trouble him with lewd complaints.
Q. Eliz. Brother of Gloucester, you mistake the matter.
♦ The king, of his own royal disposition,
♦ And not provoked by any suitor else;
65 Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred,
♦ Which in your outward actions shows itself
♦ Against my kindred, brothers, and myself,
♦ Makes him to send; that thereby he may gather
The ground of your ill-will, and so remove it.
70 Glou. 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.
Q. Eliz. Come, come, we know your meaning, brother Gloucester;
75 You envy my advancement and my friends’:
God grant we never may have need of you!
♦ Glou. Meantime, God grants that we have need of you:
Our brother is imprison’d by your means,
Myself disgraced, and the nobility
80 Held in contempt; whilst many fair 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 enjoy’d,
85 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.
90 Glou. You may deny that you were not the cause
Of my Lord Hastings’ late imprisonment.
♦ Riv. She may, my lord, for—
Glou. She may, Lord Rivers! why, who knows not so?
She may do more, sir, than denying that:
95 She may help you to many fair preferments;
And then deny her aiding hand therein,
♦ And lay those honours on your high deserts.
♦ What may she not? She may, yea, marry, may she,—
♦ Riv. What, marry, may she?
100 Glou. 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 Gloucester, I have too long borne
Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs:
105 By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty
♦ With those gross taunts I often have endured.
I had rather be a country servant-maid
♦ Than a great queen, with this condition,
♦ To be thus taunted, scorn’d, and baited at:
Enter QUEEN MARGARET, behind.
110 Small joy have I in being England’s queen.
♦ Q. Mar. And lessen’d be that small, God, I beseech thee!
Thy honour, state and seat is due to me.
♦ Glou. What! threat you me with telling of the king?
♦ Tell him, and spare not: look, what I have said
115 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 slewest my husband Henry in the Tower,
120 And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.
♦ Glou. Ere you were queen, yea, 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:
125 To royalise his blood I spilt mine own.
♦ Q. Mar. Yea, and much better blood than his or thine.
Glou. 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
130 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 murderous villain, and so still thou art.
135 Glou. Poor Clarence did forsake his father, Warwick;
Yea, and forswore himself,—which Jesu pardon!—
Q. Mar. Which God revenge!
Glou. To fight on Edward’s party for the crown;
And for his meed, poor lord, he is mew’d up.
140 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 the world,
Thou cacodemon! there thy kingdom is.
145 Riv. My Lord of Gloucester, in those busy days
Which here you urge to prove us enemies,
♦ We follow’d then our lord, our lawful king:
♦ So should we you, if you should be our king.
♦ Glou. If I should be! I had rather be a pedlar:
150 Far be it from my heart, the thought of it!
♦ Q. Eliz. 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.
155 Q. Mar. 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 pill’d from me!
160 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?
♦ O gentle villain, do not turn away!
Glou. Foul wrinkled witch, what makest thou in my sight?
165 Q. Mar. But repetition of what thou hast marr’d;
That will I make before I let thee go.
♦ Glou. 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.
170 A husband and a son thou owest to me;
And thou a kingdom; all of you allegiance:
♦ The sorrow that I have, by right is yours,
♦ And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.
Glou. The curse my noble father laid on thee,
175 When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper
♦ And with thy scorns drew’st rivers from his eyes,
And then, to dry them, gavest the duke a clout
♦ Steep’d in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland,—
His curses, then from bitterness of soul
180 Denounced against thee, are all fall’n upon thee;
♦ And God, not we, hath plagued thy bloody deed.
♦ Q. Eliz. So just is God, to right the innocent.
Hast. O, ’twas the foulest deed to slay that babe,
♦ And the most merciless that e’er was heard of!
185 Riv. Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported.
Dor. 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,
190 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?
195 Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?
Why, then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses!
♦ If not by war, by surfeit die your king,
♦ As ours by murder, to make him a king!
♦ Edward thy son, which now is Prince of Wales,
200 For Edward my son, which 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 loss;
205 And see another, as I see thee now,
♦ Deck’d in thy rights, as thou art stall’d in mine!
Long die thy happy days before thy death;
♦ And, after many lengthen’d hours of grief,
Die neither mother, wife, nor England’s queen!
210 Rivers and Dorset, you were standers by,
♦ And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son
Was stabb’d with bloody daggers: God, I pray him,
♦ That none of you may live your natural age,
♦ But by some unlook’d accident cut off!
215 Glou. Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither’d 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,
220 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 livest,
♦ And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
225 No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
♦ Unless it be whilst some tormenting dream
♦ Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
♦ Thou elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog!
Thou that wast seal’d in thy nativity
230 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—
Glou. Margaret.
Q. Mar.   Richard!
Glou.   Ha!
♦ Q. Mar.   I call thee not.
235 Glou. I cry thee mercy then, for I had thought
♦ That thou hadst call’d me all these bitter names.
♦ Q. Mar. Why, so I did; but look’d for no reply.
O, let me make the period to my curse!
♦ Glou. ’Tis done by me, and ends in ‘Margaret.’
240 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.
245 The time will come that thou shalt wish for me
♦ To help thee curse that poisonous bunch-back’d 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.
250 Riv. Were you well served, you would be taught your duty.
♦ Q. Mar. To serve me well, you all should do me duty,