Whom God preserve better than you would wish !—
Cannot be quiet scarce a breathing-while,

But you must trouble him with lewd complaints.
Q. Eliz. Brother of Gloster, you mistake the

matter.

The king, of his own royal disposition,
And not provoked by any suitor else,
Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred
Which in your outward actions shows itself
Against my kindred, brothers, and myself,
Makes him to send; that thereby he may gather
The ground of your ill-will, and so remove it.

Glo. I cannot tell the world is grown so bad, That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch: Since every Jack became a gentleman,

There's many a gentle person made a Jack.

Q. Eliz. Come, come, we know your meaning, brother Gloster;

You envy my advancement and my

friends': God grant we never may have need of you!

Glo. Meantime, God grants that we have need of you:

Our brother is imprisoned by your means,
Myself disgraced, and the nobility

Held in contempt; whilst many fair promotions
Are daily given to ennoble those

That scarce, some two days since, were worth a noble. Q. Eliz. By him that raised me to this careful 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.

Glo. You may deny that you were not the cause Of my Lord Hastings' late imprisonment.

Riv. She may, my lord, for—

Glo. 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 deserts.
What may she not? She may, yea, marry, may she,-
Riv. What, marry, may she?

Glo. What, marry, may she! marry with a king, A bachelor, a handsome stripling too :

I wis your grandam had a worser match.

Q. Eliz. My Lord of Gloster, I have too long borne
Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs:
By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty

With those gross taunts I often have endured.
I had rather be a country servant-maid
Than a great queen, with this condition,
To be thus taunted, scorned, and storméd at:

Enter QUEEN MARGARET, behind.

Small joy have I in being England's queen.-
Q. Mar. [Aside.] And lessened be that small,
God, I beseech thee !

Thy honour, state and seat is due to me.

Glo. What! threat you me with telling of the king?

Tell him, and spare not: look, what I have said
I will avouch in presence of the king:

I dare adventure to be sent to the Tower.

'Tis time to speak,-my pains are quite forgot.—

Q. Mar. [Aside.] Out, devil! I remember them

too well:

Thou slew'st my husband Henry in the Tower,
And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.—

Glo. Ere you were queen, yea, 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 royalise his blood I spilt mine own.

Q. Mar. [Aside.] Ay, and much better blood

than his or thine.

Glo. 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 Alban's slain ?
Let me put in your minds, if you forget,

What you have been ere now, and what you are ;
Withal, what I have been, and what I am.-

Q. Mar. [Aside.] A murderous villain, and so still thou art.

Glo. Poor Clarence did forsake his father, Warwick;

Yea, and forswore himself,-which Jesu pardon !— Q. Mar. [Aside.] Which God revenge

Glo. 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.—

Q. Mar. [Aside.] Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave the world,

Thou cacodemon! There thy kingdom is.

Riv. My Lord of Gloster, in those busy days Which here you urge to prove us enemies, We followed then our lord, our lawful king: So should we you, if you should be our king. Glo. If I should be! I had rather be a pedlar : Far be it from my heart, the thought of it!

Q. Eliz. 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.

Q. Mar. [Aside.] As little joy enjoys the queen thereof;

For I am she, and altogether joyless.

I can no longer hold me patient.

[Advancing. 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 being queen, you bow like subjects, Yet that, by you deposed, you quake like rebels! O gentle villain, do not turn away!

Glo. Foul wrinkled witch, what mak'st thou in my sight?

Q. Mar. But repetition of what thou hast marred; That will I make before I let thee go.

Glo. Wert thou not banishéd on pain of death}
Q. Mar. 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 ;-
And thou a kingdom;-all of you allegiance:
The sorrow that I have, by right is yours,
And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.

Glo. The curse my noble father laid on thee, When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper

And with thy scorns drew'st rivers from his eyes,
And then, to dry them, gav'st the duke a clout
Steeped in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland,—
His curses, then from bitterness of soul

Denounced against thee, are all fall'n upon thee;
And God, not we, hath plagued thy bloody deed.
Q. Eliz. So just is God, to right the innocent.
Hast. O, 'twas the foulest deed to slay that babe,
And the most merciless that e'er was heard of!
Riv. Tyrants themselves wept when it was re-
ported.

Dor. No man but prophesied revenge for it. Buck. Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.

Q. Mar. 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?

Did York's dread curse prevail so much with heaven
That Henry's death, my lovely Edward's death,
Their kingdom's loss, my woful banishment,
Could all but answer for that peevish brat?
Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?
Why, then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick

curses!

If not by war, by surfeit die your king,
As ours by murder, to make him a king!
Edward thy son, which now is Prince of Wales,
For Edward my son, which was Prince of Wales
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 mayst thou live to wail thy children's loss;
And see another, as I see thee now,