What may she not? She may – ay, marry may she –
RIVERS What, marry may she?
RICHARD What marry may she? Marry with a king;
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A bachelor, and a handsome stripling too:
Iwis, your grandam had a worser match.
ELIZABETH
My lord of Gloucester, I have too long borne
Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs;
By heaven, I will acquaint his Majesty
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Of those gross taunts that oft I have endur’d.
Enter old QUEEN MARGARET.
I had rather be a country servant maid,
Than a great queen, with this condition,
To be so baited, scorn’d, and stormed at:
Small joy have I in being England’s queen.
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MARGARET [aside]
And lessen’d be that small, God I beseech Him:
Thy honour, state, and seat is due to me.
RICHARD
What, threat you me with telling of the King?
Tell him, and spare not: look what I have said
I will avouch’t in presence of the King:
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I dare adventure to be sent to th’ Tower;
’Tis time to speak: my pains are quite forgot.
MARGARET [aside]
Out, devil! I remember them too well:
Thou kill’dst my husband Henry in the Tower,
And Edward, my poor son, at Tewkesbury.
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RICHARD
Ere you were queen, ay, 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:
To royalize his blood, I spent mine own.
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MARGARET [aside]
Ay, and much better blood than his, or thine.
RICHARD
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
In Margaret’s battle at Saint Albans slain?
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Let me put in your minds, if you forget,
What you have been ere this, and what you are;
Withal, what I have been, and what I am.
MARGARET [aside]
A murd’rous villain, and so still thou art.
RICHARD
Poor Clarence did forsake his father Warwick,
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Ay, and forswore himself – which Jesu pardon –
MARGARET [aside] Which God revenge.
RICHARD To fight on Edward’s party for the crown:
And for his meed, poor lord, he is mew’d up.
I would to God my heart were flint, like Edward’s,
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Or Edward’s soft and pitiful, like mine.
I am too childish-foolish for this world.
MARGARET [aside]
Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave this world,
Thou cacodemon: there thy kingdom is.
RIVERS My lord of Gloucester, in those busy days
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Which here you urge to prove us enemies,
We follow’d then our lord, our sovereign king:
So should we you, if you should be our king.
RICHARD If I should be? I had rather be a pedlar!
Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof.
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ELIZABETH As little joy, my lord, as you suppose
You should enjoy, were you this country’s king:
As little joy you may suppose in me
That I enjoy, being the Queen thereof.
MARGARET [aside]
Ay, little joy enjoys the Queen thereof:
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For I am she, and altogether joyless.
I can no longer hold me patient! [coming forward]
Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out
In sharing that which you have pill’d from me:
Which of you trembles not, that looks on me?
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If not that I am Queen you bow like subjects,
Yet that by you depos’d you quake like rebels.
Ah, gentle villain! do not turn away.
RICHARD
Foul wrinkled witch, what mak’st thou in my sight?
MARGARET But repetition of what thou hast marr’d:
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That will I make, before I let thee go.
RICHARD Wert thou not banished on pain of death?
MARGARET
I was, but I do find more pain in banishment
Than death can yield me here by my abode.
A husband and a son thou ow’st to me;
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And thou a kingdom; all of you, allegiance.
This sorrow that I have by right is yours;
And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.
RICHARD The curse my noble father laid on thee
When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper,
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And with thy scorns drew’st rivers from his eyes,
And then to dry them, gav’st the Duke a clout
Steep’d in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland –
His curses then, from bitterness of soul
Denounc’d against thee, are all fall’n upon thee,
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And God, not we, hath plagu’d thy bloody deed.
ELIZABETH So just is God, to right the innocent.
HASTINGS O, ’twas the foulest deed to slay that babe,
And the most merciless, that e’er was heard of.
RIVERS
Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported.
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DORSET No man but prophesied revenge for it.
BUCKINGHAM
Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.
MARGARET
What? Were you snarling all before I came,
Ready to catch each other by the throat,
And turn you all your hatred now on me?
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Did York’s dread curse prevail so much with heaven
That Henry’s death, my lovely Edward’s death,
Their kingdom’s loss, my woeful banishment,
Should all but answer for that peevish brat?
Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?
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Why then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses:
Though not by war, by surfeit die your King,
As ours by murder, to make him a king.
Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales,
For Edward my son, that was Prince of Wales,
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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 may’st thou live to wail thy children’s death,
And see another, as I see thee now,
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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.
Rivers and Dorset, you were standers-by,
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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 his natural age,
But by some unlook’d accident cut off.
RICHARD
Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither’d hag.
215
MARGARET
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,
And then hurl down their indignation
220
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 liv’st,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends;
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
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Unless it be while 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
The slave of Nature, and the son of hell;
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Thou slander of thy heavy mother’s womb,
Thou loathed issue of thy father’s loins,
Thou rag of honour, thou detested –
RICHARD Margaret!
MARGARET Richard!
RICHARD Ha?
MARGARET I call thee not.
RICHARD I cry thee mercy then, for I did think
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That thou hadst call’d me all these bitter names.
MARGARET
Why so I did, but look’d for no reply.
O, let me make the period to my curse!
RICHARD ’Tis done by me, and ends in ‘Margaret’.
ELIZABETH
Thus have you breath’d your curse against yourself.
240
MARGARET
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.
The day will come that thou shalt wish for me
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To help thee curse this poisonous bunch-back’d toad.
HASTINGS False-boding woman, end thy frantic curse,
Lest to thy harm thou move our patience.
MARGARET
Foul shame upon you, you have all mov’d mine.
RIVERS
Were you well serv’d, you would be taught your duty.
250
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.
MARGARET Peace, Master Marquess: you are malapert;
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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.
260
RICHARD
Good counsel, marry! Learn it, learn it, Marquess.
DORSET It touches you, my lord, as much as me.
RICHARD 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.
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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;
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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.
MARGARET Urge neither charity nor shame to me:
Uncharitably with me have you dealt,
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And shamefully my hopes by you are butcher’d.
My charity is outrage, life my shame;
And in that shame, still live my sorrows’ rage.
BUCKINGHAM Have done, have done!
MARGARET O princely Buckingham, I’ll kiss thy hand
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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
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The lips of those that breathe them in the air.
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
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His venom tooth will rankle to the death.
Have not to do with him; beware of him;
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 308
