Rail on the Lord’s anointed: strike, I say!
[Flourish. Alarums.]
Either be patient and entreat me fair,
Or with the clamorous report of war
Thus will I drown your exclamations.
DUCHESS
Art thou my son?
KING RICHARD
Ay, I thank God, my father, and yourself.
DUCHESS
Then patiently hear my impatience.
KING RICHARD
Madam, I have a touch of your condition
That cannot brook the accent of reproof.
DUCHESS
O, let me speak!
KING RICHARD
Do, then; but I’ll not hear.
DUCHESS
I will be mild and gentle in my words.
KING RICHARD
And brief, good mother; for I am in haste.
DUCHESS
Art thou so hasty? I have stay’d for thee,
God knows, in torment and in agony.
KING RICHARD
And came I not at last to comfort you?
DUCHESS
No, by the holy rood, thou know’st it well
Thou cam’st on earth to make the earth my hell.
A grievous burden was thy birth to me;
Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy;
Thy schooldays frightful, desperate, wild, and furious;
Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous;
Thy age confirm’d, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody,
More mild, but yet more harmful, kind in hatred:
What comfortable hour canst thou name
That ever grac’d me with thy company?
KING RICHARD
Faith, none but Humphrey Hour, that call’d your grace
To breakfast once forth of my company.
If I be so disgracious in your eye,
Let me march on and not offend you, madam.—
Strike up the drum.
DUCHESS
I pr’ythee hear me speak.
KING RICHARD
You speak too bitterly.
DUCHESS
Hear me a word;
For I shall never speak to thee again.
KING RICHARD
So.
DUCHESS
Either thou wilt die by God’s just ordinance
Ere from this war thou turn a conqueror;
Or I with grief and extreme age shall perish
And never more behold thy face again.
Therefore take with thee my most grievous curse;
Which in the day of battle tire thee more
Than all the complete armour that thou wear’st!
My prayers on the adverse party fight;
And there the little souls of Edward’s children
Whisper the spirits of thine enemies,
And promise them success and victory.
Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end:
Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend.
[Exit.]
QUEEN ELIZABETH
Though far more cause, yet much less spirit to curse
Abides in me; I say amen to her.
[Going.]
KING RICHARD
Stay, madam, I must talk a word with you.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
I have no more sons of the royal blood
For thee to slaughter: for my daughters, Richard,—
They shall be praying nuns, not weeping queens;
And therefore level not to hit their lives.
KING RICHARD
You have a daughter call’d Elizabeth.
Virtuous and fair, royal and gracious.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
And must she die for this? O, let her live,
And I’ll corrupt her manners, stain her beauty:
Slander myself as false to Edward’s bed;
Throw over her the veil of infamy:
So she may live unscarr’d of bleeding slaughter,
I will confess she was not Edward’s daughter.
KING RICHARD
Wrong not her birth; she is of royal blood.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
To save her life I’ll say she is not so.
KING RICHARD
Her life is safest only in her birth.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
And only in that safety died her brothers.
KING RICHARD
Lo, at their births good stars were opposite.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
No, to their lives bad friends were contrary.
KING RICHARD
All unavoided is the doom of destiny.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
True, when avoided grace makes destiny:
My babes were destined to a fairer death,
If grace had bless’d thee with a fairer life.
KING RICHARD
You speak as if that I had slain my cousins.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
Cousins, indeed; and by their uncle cozen’d
Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life.
Whose hand soever lanc’d their tender hearts,
Thy head, all indirectly, gave direction:
No doubt the murderous knife was dull and blunt
Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart,
To revel in the entrails of my lambs.
But that still use of grief makes wild grief tame,
My tongue should to thy ears not name my boys
Till that my nails were anchor’d in thine eyes;
And I, in such a desperate bay of death,
Like a poor bark, of sails and tackling reft,
Rush all to pieces on thy rocky bosom.
KING RICHARD
Madam, so thrive I in my enterprise
And dangerous success of bloody wars,
As I intend more good to you and yours
Than ever you or yours by me were harm’d!