And pardon us the interruption

Of thy devotion and right Christian zeal.

RICHARD GLOUCESTER

My lord, there needs no such apology.

I do beseech your grace to pardon me,

Who, earnest in the service of my God,

Deferred 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 ungoverned isle.

RICHARD GLOUCESTER

I do suspect I have done some offence

That seems disgracious in the city’s eye,

And that you come to reprehend my ignorance.

BUCKINGHAM

You have, my lord. Would it might please your grace

On our entreaties to amend your fault.

RICHARD GLOUCESTER

Else wherefore breathe I in a Christian land?

BUCKINGHAM

Know then, it is your fault that you resign

The supreme seat, the throne majestical,

The sceptred 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,

Whiles in the mildness of your sleepy thoughts—

Which here we waken to our country’s good—

The noble isle doth want her proper limbs:

Her face defaced with scars of infamy,

Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants

And almost shouldered in the swallowing gulf

Of dark forgetfulness and deep 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 cause come I to move your grace.

RICHARD GLOUCESTER

I cannot tell if to depart in silence

Or bitterly to speak in your reproof

Best fitteth my degree or your condition.

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 the ripe revenue and due of birth,

Yet so much is my poverty of spirit,

So mighty and so many my defects,

That I would rather hide me from my greatness—

Being a barque to brook no mighty sea—

Than in my greatness covet to be hid,

And in the vapour of my glory smothered.

But God be thanked, there is no need of me,

And much I need to help you, were there need.

The royal tree hath left us royal fruit,

Which, mellowed 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 that 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 was he contract to Lady Lucy—

Your mother lives a witness to his vow—

And afterward, by substitute, betrothed

To Bona, sister to the King of France.

These both put off, a poor petitioner,

A care-crazed mother to a many sons,

A beauty-waning and distressed widow

Even in the afternoon of her best days,

Made prize and purchase of his wanton eye,

Seduced the pitch and height of his degree

To base declension and loathed bigamy.

By her in his unlawful bed he got

This Edward, whom our manners call 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 proffered benefit of dignity—

If not 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.

MAYOR (to Richard)

Do, good my lord; your citizens entreat you.

BUCKINGHAM (to Richard)

Refuse not, mighty lord, this proffered love.

CATFSBY (to Richard)

O make them joyful: grant their lawful suit.

RICHARD GLOUCESTER

Alas, why would you heap this care 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 kindred,