Complete Plays, The (304 page)

Lord Mayor

Marry, God forbid his grace should say us nay!

Buckingham

I fear he will.

Re-enter Catesby

How now, Catesby, what says your lord?

Catesby

My lord,
He wonders to what end you have assembled
Such troops of citizens to speak with him,
His grace not being warn’d thereof before:
My lord, he fears you mean no good to him.

Buckingham

Sorry I am my noble cousin should
Suspect me, that I mean no good to him:
By heaven, I come in perfect love to him;
And so once more return and tell his grace.

Exit Catesby

When holy and devout religious men
Are at their beads, ’tis hard to draw them thence,
So sweet is zealous contemplation.

Enter Gloucester aloft, between two Bishops. Catesby returns

Lord Mayor

See, where he stands between two clergymen!

Buckingham

Two props of virtue for a Christian prince,
To stay him from the fall of vanity:
And, see, a book of prayer in his hand,
True ornaments to know a holy man.
Famous Plantagenet, most gracious prince,
Lend favourable ears to our request;
And pardon us the interruption
Of thy devotion and right Christian zeal.

Gloucester

My lord, there needs no such apology:
I rather do beseech you pardon me,
Who, earnest in the service of my God,
Neglect the visitation of my friends.
But, leaving this, what is your grace’s pleasure?

Buckingham

Even that, I hope, which pleaseth God above,
And all good men of this ungovern’d isle.

Gloucester

I do suspect I have done some offence
That seems disgracious in the city’s eyes,
And that you come to reprehend my ignorance.

Buckingham

You have, my lord: would it might please your grace,
At our entreaties, to amend that fault!

Gloucester

Else wherefore breathe I in a Christian land?

Buckingham

Then know, it is your fault that you resign
The supreme seat, the throne majestical,
The scepter’d office of your ancestors,
Your state of fortune and your due of birth,
The lineal glory of your royal house,
To the corruption of a blemished stock:
Whilst, in the mildness of your sleepy thoughts,
Which here we waken to our country’s good,
This noble isle doth want her proper limbs;
Her face defaced with scars of infamy,
Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants,
And almost shoulder’d in the swallowing gulf
Of blind forgetfulness and dark oblivion.
Which to recure, we heartily solicit
Your gracious self to take on you the charge
And kingly government of this your land,
Not as protector, steward, substitute,
Or lowly factor for another’s gain;
But as successively from blood to blood,
Your right of birth, your empery, your own.
For this, consorted with the citizens,
Your very worshipful and loving friends,
And by their vehement instigation,
In this just suit come I to move your grace.

Gloucester

I know not whether to depart in silence,
Or bitterly to speak in your reproof.
Best fitteth my degree or your condition
If not to answer, you might haply think
Tongue-tied ambition, not replying, yielded
To bear the golden yoke of sovereignty,
Which fondly you would here impose on me;
If to reprove you for this suit of yours,
So season’d with your faithful love to me.
Then, on the other side, I cheque’d my friends.
Therefore, to speak, and to avoid the first,
And then, in speaking, not to incur the last,
Definitively thus I answer you.
Your love deserves my thanks; but my desert
Unmeritable shuns your high request.
First if all obstacles were cut away,
And that my path were even to the crown,
As my ripe revenue and due by birth
Yet so much is my poverty of spirit,
So mighty and so many my defects,
As I had rather hide me from my greatness,
Being a bark to brook no mighty sea,
Than in my greatness covet to be hid,
And in the vapour of my glory smother’d.
But, God be thank’d, there’s no need of me,
And much I need to help you, if need were;
The royal tree hath left us royal fruit,
Which, mellow’d by the stealing hours of time,
Will well become the seat of majesty,
And make, no doubt, us happy by his reign.
On him I lay what you would lay on me,
The right and fortune of his happy stars;
Which God defend that I should wring from him!

Buckingham

My lord, this argues conscience in your grace;
But the respects thereof are nice and trivial,
All circumstances well considered.
You say that Edward is your brother’s son:
So say we too, but not by Edward’s wife;
For first he was contract to Lady Lucy —
Your mother lives a witness to that vow —
And afterward by substitute betroth’d
To Bona, sister to the King of France.
These both put by a poor petitioner,
A care-crazed mother of a many children,
A beauty-waning and distressed widow,
Even in the afternoon of her best days,
Made prize and purchase of his lustful eye,
Seduced the pitch and height of all his thoughts
To base declension and loathed bigamy
By her, in his unlawful bed, he got
This Edward, whom our manners term the prince.
More bitterly could I expostulate,
Save that, for reverence to some alive,
I give a sparing limit to my tongue.
Then, good my lord, take to your royal self
This proffer’d benefit of dignity;
If non to bless us and the land withal,
Yet to draw forth your noble ancestry
From the corruption of abusing times,
Unto a lineal true-derived course.

Lord Mayor

Do, good my lord, your citizens entreat you.

Buckingham

Refuse not, mighty lord, this proffer’d love.

Catesby

O, make them joyful, grant their lawful suit!

Gloucester

Alas, why would you heap these cares on me?
I am unfit for state and majesty;
I do beseech you, take it not amiss;
I cannot nor I will not yield to you.

Buckingham

If you refuse it,— as, in love and zeal,
Loath to depose the child, Your brother’s son;
As well we know your tenderness of heart
And gentle, kind, effeminate remorse,
Which we have noted in you to your kin,
And egally indeed to all estates,—
Yet whether you accept our suit or no,
Your brother’s son shall never reign our king;
But we will plant some other in the throne,
To the disgrace and downfall of your house:
And in this resolution here we leave you.—
Come, citizens: ’zounds! I’ll entreat no more.

Gloucester

O, do not swear, my lord of Buckingham.

Exit Buckingham with the Citizens

Catesby

Call them again, my lord, and accept their suit.

Another

Do, good my lord, lest all the land do rue it.

Gloucester

Would you enforce me to a world of care?
Well, call them again. I am not made of stone,
But penetrable to your. kind entreats,
Albeit against my conscience and my soul.

Re-enter Buckingham and the rest

Cousin of Buckingham, and you sage, grave men,
Since you will buckle fortune on my back,
To bear her burthen, whether I will or no,
I must have patience to endure the load:
But if black scandal or foul-faced reproach
Attend the sequel of your imposition,
Your mere enforcement shall acquittance me
From all the impure blots and stains thereof;
For God he knows, and you may partly see,
How far I am from the desire thereof.

Lord Mayor

God bless your grace! we see it, and will say it.

Gloucester

In saying so, you shall but say the truth.

Buckingham

Then I salute you with this kingly title:
Long live Richard, England’s royal king!

Lord Mayor

Citizens

Amen.

Buckingham

To-morrow will it please you to be crown’d?

Gloucester

Even when you please, since you will have it so.

Buckingham

To-morrow, then, we will attend your grace:
And so most joyfully we take our leave.

Gloucester

Come, let us to our holy task again.
Farewell, good cousin; farewell, gentle friends.

Exeunt

A
CT
IV

S
CENE
I. B
EFORE
THE
T
OWER
.

Enter, on one side, Queen Elizabeth, Duchess Of York, and Dorset; on the other, Anne, Duchess of Gloucester, leading Lady Margaret Plantagenet, Clarence’s young Daughter

Duchess Of York

Who m eets us here? my niece Plantagenet
Led in the hand of her kind aunt of Gloucester?
Now, for my life, she’s wandering to the Tower,
On pure heart’s love to greet the tender princes.
Daughter, well met.

Lady Anne

God give your graces both
A happy and a joyful time of day!

Queen Elizabeth

As much to you, good sister! Whither away?

Lady Anne

No farther than the Tower; and, as I guess,
Upon the like devotion as yourselves,
To gratulate the gentle princes there.

Queen Elizabeth

Kind sister, thanks: we’ll enter all together.

Enter Brakenbury

And, in good time, here the lieutenant comes.
Master lieutenant, pray you, by your leave,
How doth the prince, and my young son of York?

Brakenbury

Right well, dear madam. By your patience,
I may not suffer you to visit them;
The king hath straitly charged the contrary.

Queen Elizabeth

The king! why, who’s that?

Brakenbury

I cry you mercy: I mean the lord protector.

Queen Elizabeth

The Lord protect him from that kingly title!
Hath he set bounds betwixt their love and me?
I am their mother; who should keep me from them?

Duchess Of York

I am their fathers mother; I will see them.

Lady Anne

Their aunt I am in law, in love their mother:
Then bring me to their sights; I’ll bear thy blame
And take thy office from thee, on my peril.

Brakenbury

No, madam, no; I may not leave it so:
I am bound by oath, and therefore pardon me.

Exit

Enter Lord Stanley

Lord Stanley

Let me but meet you, ladies, one hour hence,
And I’ll salute your grace of York as mother,
And reverend looker on, of two fair queens.

To Lady Anne

Come, madam, you must straight to Westminster,
There to be crowned Richard’s royal queen.

Queen Elizabeth

O, cut my lace in sunder, that my pent heart
May have some scope to beat, or else I swoon
With this dead-killing news!

Lady Anne

Despiteful tidings! O unpleasing news!

Dorset

Be of good cheer: mother, how fares your grace?

Queen Elizabeth

O Dorset, speak not to me, get thee hence!
Death and destruction dog thee at the heels;
Thy mother’s name is ominous to children.
If thou wilt outstrip death, go cross the seas,
And live with Richmond, from the reach of hell
Go, hie thee, hie thee from this slaughter-house,
Lest thou increase the number of the dead;
And make me die the thrall of Margaret’s curse,
Nor mother, wife, nor England’s counted queen.

Lord Stanley

Full of wise care is this your counsel, madam.
Take all the swift advantage of the hours;
You shall have letters from me to my son
To meet you on the way, and welcome you.
Be not ta’en tardy by unwise delay.

Duchess Of York

O ill-dispersing wind of misery!
O my accursed womb, the bed of death!
A cockatrice hast thou hatch’d to the world,
Whose unavoided eye is murderous.

Lord Stanley

Come, madam, come; I in all haste was sent.

Lady Anne

And I in all unwillingness will go.
I would to God that the inclusive verge
Of golden metal that must round my brow
Were red-hot steel, to sear me to the brain!
Anointed let me be with deadly venom,
And die, ere men can say, God save the queen!

Queen Elizabeth

Go, go, poor soul, I envy not thy glory
To feed my humour, wish thyself no harm.

Lady Anne

No! why? When he that is my husband now
Came to me, as I follow’d Henry’s corse,
When scarce the blood was well wash’d from his hands
Which issued from my other angel husband
And that dead saint which then I weeping follow’d;
O, when, I say, I look’d on Richard’s face,
This was my wish: ‘Be thou,’ quoth I, ‘accursed,
For making me, so young, so old a widow!
And, when thou wed’st, let sorrow haunt thy bed;
And be thy wife — if any be so mad —
As miserable by the life of thee
As thou hast made me by my dear lord’s death!
Lo, ere I can repeat this curse again,
Even in so short a space, my woman’s heart
Grossly grew captive to his honey words
And proved the subject of my own soul’s curse,
Which ever since hath kept my eyes from rest;
For never yet one hour in his bed
Have I enjoy’d the golden dew of sleep,
But have been waked by his timorous dreams.
Besides, he hates me for my father Warwick;
And will, no doubt, shortly be rid of me.

Queen Elizabeth

Poor heart, adieu! I pity thy complaining.

Lady Anne

No more than from my soul I mourn for yours.

Queen Elizabeth

Farewell, thou woful welcomer of glory!

Lady Anne

Adieu, poor soul, that takest thy leave of it!

Duchess Of York

[To Dorset]
Go thou to Richmond, and good fortune guide thee!