♦ 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.
255 Q. Mar. Peace, master marquess, 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;
260 And if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces.
Glou. Good counsel, marry: learn it, learn it, marquess.
♦ Dor. It toucheth you, my lord, as much as me.
♦ Glou. Yea, and much more: but I was born so high,
Our aery buildeth in the cedar’s top,
265 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 out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath
Hath in eternal darkness folded up.
270 Your aery buildeth in our aery’s nest.
O God, that seest it, do not suffer it;
♦ As it was won with blood, lost be it so!
♦ Buck. Have done! for shame, if not for charity.
Q. Mar. Urge neither charity nor shame to me:
275 Uncharitably with me have you dealt,
♦ And shamefully by you my hopes are butcher’d.
My charity is outrage, life my shame;
♦ And in that shame still live my sorrow’s rage!
♦ Buck. Have done, have done.
280 Q. Mar. O princely Buckingham, I’ll 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.
285 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, take heed of yonder dog!
290 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.
295 Glou. 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,
300 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.
305 Riv. And so doth mine: I muse why she’s at liberty.
Glou. 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.
310 Glou. But 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:
315 God pardon them that are the cause of it!
♦ Riv. A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion,
To pray for them that have done scathe to us.
♦ Glou. So do I ever: [Aside] being well advised:
♦ For had I cursed now, I had cursed myself.
Enter CATESBY.
320 Cates. Madam, his majesty doth call for you;
♦ And for your grace; and you, my noble lords.
♦ Q. Eliz. Catesby, we come. Lords, will you go with us?
♦ Riv. Madam, we will attend your grace. [Exeunt all but Gloucester.
♦ Glou. I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.
325 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 Hastings, Derby, Buckingham;
330 And say it 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,
335 Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villany
♦ With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ;
♦ And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.
Enter two Murderers.
♦ But, soft! here come my executioners.
340 How now, my hardy stout resolved mates!
♦ Are you now going to dispatch this deed?
♦ First Murd. We are, my lord; and come to have the warrant,
That we may be admitted where he is.
♦ Glou. Well thought upon; I have it here about me. [Gives the warrant.
345 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.
350 First Murd. Tush!
Fear not, my lord, we will not stand to prate;
♦ Talkers are no good doers: be assured
♦ We come to use our hands and not our tongues.
♦ Glou. Your eyes drop millstones, when fools’ eyes drop tears.
355 I like you, lads: about your business straight.
♦ Go, go, dispatch.
First Murd. We will, my noble lord. [Exeunt.