Since every jack became a gentleman,

There’s many a gentle person made a jack.

QUEEN ELIZABETH

Come, come, we know your meaning, brother

Gloucester.

You envy my advancement, and my friends’.

God grant we never may have need of you.

RICHARD GLOUCESTER

Meantime, God grants that I have need of you.

Our brother is imprisoned by your means,

Myself disgraced, and the nobility

Held in contempt, while great promotions

Are daily given to ennoble those

That scarce some two days since were worth a noble.

QUEEN ELIZABETH

By him that raised me to this care-full height

From that contented hap which I enjoyed,

I never did incense his majesty

Against the Duke of Clarence, but have been

An earnest advocate to plead for him.

My lord, you do me shameful injury

Falsely to draw me in these vile suspects.

RICHARD GLOUCESTER

You may deny that you were not the mean

Of my Lord Hastings’ late imprisonment.

RIVERS She may, my lord, for—

RICHARD GLOUCESTER

She may, Lord Rivers; why, who knows not so?

She may do more, sir, than denying that.

She may help you to many fair preferments,

And then deny her aiding hand therein,

And lay those honours on your high desert.

What may she not? She may—ay, marry, may she.

RIVERS What ‘marry, may she’?

RICHARD GLOUCESTER

What marry, may she? Marry with a king:

A bachelor, and a handsome stripling, too.

Iwis your grandam had a worser match.

QUEEN ELIZABETH

My lord of Gloucester, I have too long borne

Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs.

By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty

Of those gross taunts that oft I have endured.

I had rather be a country servant-maid

Than a great queen, with this condition:

To be so baited, scorned, and stormed at.

Enter old Queen Margaret, unseen behind them

Small joy have I in being England’s queen.

QUEEN MARGARET (aside)

And lessened be that small, God I beseech him.

Thy honour, state, and seat is due to me.

RICHARD GLOUCESTER (to Elizabeth)

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.

I dare adventure to be sent to th’ Tower.

‘Tis time to speak; my pains are quite forgot.

QUEEN MARGARET (aside)

Out, devil! I remember them too well.

Thou killed’st my husband Henry in the Tower,

And Edward, my poor son, at Tewkesbury.

RICHARD GLOUCESTER (to Elizabeth)

Ere you were queen—ay, or your husband king—

I was a packhorse 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.

QUEEN MARGARET (aside)

Ay, and much better blood than his or thine.

RICHARD GLOUCESTER (to Elizabeth)

In all which time you and your husband Gray

Were factious for the house of Lancaster;

And Rivers, so were you.—Was not your husband

In Margaret’s battle at Saint Albans slain?

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.

QUEEN MARGARET (aside)

A murd’rous villain, and so still thou art.

RICHARD GLOUCESTER

Poor Clarence did forsake his father Warwick—

Ay, and forswore himself, which Jesu pardon—

QUEEN MARGARET (aside) Which God revenge!

RICHARD GLOUCESTER

To fight on Edward’s party for the crown,

And for his meed, poor lord, he is mewed up.

I would to God my heart were flint like Edward’s,

Or Edward’s soft and pitiful like mine.

I am too childish-foolish for this world.

QUEEN 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

Which here you urge to prove us enemies,

We followed then our lord, our sovereign king.

So should we you, if you should be our king.

RICHARD GLOUCESTER

If I should be? I had rather be a pedlar.

Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof.

QUEEN ELIZABETH

As little joy, my lord, as you suppose

You should enjoy, were you this country’s king,

As little joy may you suppose in me,

That I enjoy being the queen thereof.

QUEEN MARGARET (aside)

Ah, little joy enjoys the queen thereof,

For I am she, and altogether joyless.

I can no longer hold me patient.

She comes forward

Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out

In sharing that which you have pilled from me.

Which of you trembles not that looks on me?

If not that I am Queen, you bow like subjects;

Yet that by you deposed, you quake like rebels.

(To Richard) Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away.

RICHARD GLOUCESTER

Foul wrinkled witch, what mak’st thou in my sight?

QUEEN MARGARET

But repetition of what thou hast marred:

That will I make before I let thee go.

A husband and a son thou ow’st to me,

(To Elizabeth) And thou a kingdom; (to the rest) all of

you allegiance.

This sorrow that I have by right is yours,

And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.

RICHARD GLOUCESTER