The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 306
Well are you welcome to the open air.
How hath your lordship brook’d imprisonment?
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HASTINGS
With patience, noble lord, as prisoners must;
But I shall live, my lord, to give them thanks
That were the cause of my imprisonment.
RICHARD
No doubt, no doubt; and so shall Clarence too:
For they that were your enemies are his,
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And have prevail’d as much on him, as you.
HASTINGS More pity that the eagles should be mew’d,
While kites and buzzards prey at liberty.
RICHARD What news abroad?
HASTINGS No news so bad abroad, as this at home:
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The King is sickly, weak and melancholy,
And his physicians fear him mightily.
RICHARD Now by Saint John, that news is bad indeed.
O, he hath kept an evil diet long,
And over-much consum’d his royal person:
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’Tis very grievous to be thought upon.
Where is he, in his bed?
HASTINGS He is.
RICHARD Go you before, and I will follow you.
Exit Hastings.
He cannot live, I hope, and must not die
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Till George be pack’d with post-horse up to Heaven.
I’ll in to urge his hatred more to Clarence,
With lies well-steel’d with weighty arguments;
And if I fail not in my deep intent,
Clarence hath not another day to live:
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Which done, God take King Edward to his mercy,
And leave the world for me to bustle in.
For then I’ll marry Warwick’s youngest daughter –
What though I kill’d her husband and her father?
The readiest way to make the wench amends
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Is to become her husband, and her father:
The which will I, not all so much for love
As for another secret close intent,
By marrying her which I must reach unto.
But yet I run before my horse to market:
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Clarence still breathes, Edward still lives and reigns;
When they are gone, then must I count my gains.
Exit.
1.2 Enter the corse of Henry the Sixth with Halberds to guard it, LADY ANNE being the mourner, attended by TRESSEL, BERKELEY and other Gentlemen.
ANNE Set down, set down your honourable load
(If honour may be shrouded in a hearse)
Whilst I awhile obsequiously lament
Th’untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster.
Poor key-cold Figure of a holy king,
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Pale ashes of the House of Lancaster,
Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood:
Be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost
To hear the lamentations of poor Anne,
Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughter’d son,
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Stabb’d by the selfsame hand that made these wounds.
Lo, in these windows that let forth thy life
I pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes.
O, cursed be the hand that made these holes;
Cursed the heart that had the heart to do it;
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Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence.
More direful hap betide that hated wretch
That makes us wretched by the death of thee
Than I can wish to adders, spiders, toads,
Or any creeping venom’d thing that lives.
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If ever he have child, abortive be it:
Prodigious, and untimely brought to light,
Whose ugly and unnatural aspect
May fright the hopeful mother at the view,
And that be heir to his unhappiness.
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If ever he have wife, let her be made
More miserable by the death of him
Than I am made by my young lord, and thee.
Come now towards Chertsey with your holy load,
Taken from Paul’s to be interred there;
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And still, as you are weary of the weight,
Rest you, while I lament King Henry’s corse.
Enter RICHARD.
RICHARD Stay, you that bear the corse, and set it down.
ANNE What black magician conjures up this fiend
To stop devoted charitable deeds?
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RICHARD Villains! set down the corse or by Saint Paul
I’ll make a corse of him that disobeys!
HALBERDIER
My lord, stand back and let the coffin pass.
RICHARD
Unmanner’d dog, stand thou when I command!
Advance thy halberd higher than my breast,
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Or by Saint Paul I’ll strike thee to my foot,
And spurn upon thee, beggar, for thy boldness.
ANNE What, do you tremble? Are you all afraid?
Alas, I blame you not, for you are mortal,
And mortal eyes cannot endure the devil.
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Avaunt, thou dreadful minister of hell!
Thou hadst but power over his mortal body:
His soul thou canst not have; therefore begone.
RICHARD Sweet saint, for charity be not so curst.
ANNE
Foul devil, for God’s sake hence, and trouble us not;
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For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell,
Fill’d it with cursing cries and deep exclaims.
If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds,
Behold this pattern of thy butcheries.
O gentlemen! See, see dead Henry’s wounds
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Open their congeal’d mouths and bleed afresh.
Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity,
For ’tis thy presence that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins where no blood dwells:
Thy deed inhuman and unnatural
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Provokes this deluge most unnatural.
O God! which this blood mad’st, revenge his death;
O earth! which this blood drink’st, revenge his death;
Either heav’n with lightning strike the murderer
dead,
Or earth gape open wide and eat him quick,
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As thou dost swallow up this good King’s blood
Which his hell-govern’d arm hath butchered.
RICHARD Lady, you know no rules of charity,
Which renders good for bad, blessings for curses.
ANNE Villain, thou know’st no law of God nor man.
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No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.
RICHARD But I know none, and therefore am no beast.
ANNE O wonderful, when devils tell the truth!
RICHARD More wonderful, when angels are so angry.
Vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman,
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Of these supposed crimes, to give me leave,
By circumstance, but to acquit myself.
ANNE Vouchsafe, diffus’d infection of a man,
Of these known evils, but to give me leave,
By circumstance, t’accuse thy cursed self.
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RICHARD
Fairer than tongue can name thee, let me have
Some patient leisure to excuse myself.
ANNE
Fouler than heart can think thee, thou canst make
No excuse current but to hang thyself.
RICHARD By such despair I should accuse myself.
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ANNE And by despairing shalt thou stand excus’d
For doing worthy vengeance on thyself
That didst unworthy
slaughter upon others.
RICHARD Say that I slew them not?
ANNE Then say they were not slain:
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But dead they are, and, devilish slave, by thee.
RICHARD I did not kill your husband.
ANNE Why then he is alive.
RICHARD Nay he is dead, and slain by Edward’s hand.
ANNE
In thy foul throat thou liest: Queen Margaret saw
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Thy murd’rous falchion smoking in his blood,
The which thou once didst bend against her breast,
But that thy brothers beat aside the point.
RICHARD I was provoked by her sland’rous tongue,
That laid their guilt upon my guiltless shoulders.
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ANNE Thou wast provoked by thy bloody mind,
That never dream’st on aught but butcheries.
Didst thou not kill this King?
RICHARD I grant ye, yea.
ANNE
Dost grant me, hedgehog! Then God grant me too
Thou mayst be damned for that wicked deed.
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O he was gentle, mild, and virtuous.
RICHARD
The better for the King of Heaven that hath him.
ANNE He is in Heaven, where thou shalt never come.
RICHARD
Let him thank me that holp to send him thither,
For he was fitter for that place than earth.
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ANNE And thou unfit for any place but hell.
RICHARD
Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it.
ANNE Some dungeon?
RICHARD Your bed-chamber.
ANNE Ill rest betide the chamber where thou liest.
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RICHARD So will it, madam, till I lie with you.
ANNE I hope so!
RICHARD I know so. But, gentle Lady Anne,
To leave this keen encounter of our wits,
And fall something into a slower method:
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Is not the causer of the timeless deaths
Of these Plantagenets, Henry and Edward,
As blameful as the executioner?
ANNE Thou wast the cause, and most accurs’d effect.
RICHARD Your beauty was the cause of that effect:
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Your beauty, that did haunt me in my sleep
To undertake the death of all the world,
So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom.
ANNE If I thought that, I tell thee, homicide,
These nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks.
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RICHARD
These eyes could not endure that beauty’s wrack;
You should not blemish it if I stood by.
As all the world is cheered by the sun,
So I by that; it is my day, my life.
ANNE Black night o’ershade thy day, and death thy life.
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RICHARD
Curse not thyself, fair creature; thou art both.
ANNE I would I were, to be reveng’d on thee.
RICHARD It is a quarrel most unnatural,
To be reveng’d on him that loveth thee.
ANNE It is a quarrel just and reasonable,
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To be reveng’d on him that kill’d my husband.
RICHARD He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband,
Did it to help thee to a better husband.
ANNE His better doth not breathe upon the earth.
RICHARD He lives that loves thee better than he could.
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ANNE Name him.
RICHARD Plantagenet.
ANNE Why that was he.
RICHARD The selfsame name, but one of better nature.
ANNE Where is he?
RICHARD Here. [She spits at him.]
Why dost thou spit at me?
ANNE Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake.
RICHARD Never came poison from so sweet a place.
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ANNE Never hung poison on a fouler toad.
Out of my sight! Thou dost infect mine eyes.
RICHARD Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine.
ANNE Would they were basilisks, to strike thee dead.
RICHARD I would they were, that I might die at once;
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For now they kill me with a living death.
Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears,
Sham’d their aspects with store of childish drops;
These eyes, which never shed remorseful tear,
No, when my father York and Edward wept
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To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made
When black-fac’d Clifford shook his sword at him;
Nor when thy warlike father, like a child