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  • Title: Richard the Third (Quarto 1, 1597)
  • Editor: Adrian Kiernander

  • Copyright Internet Shakespeare Editions. This text may be freely used for educational, non-proift purposes; for all other uses contact the Coordinating Editor.
    Author: William Shakespeare
    Editor: Adrian Kiernander
    Peer Reviewed

    Richard the Third (Quarto 1, 1597)

    of Richard the third.
    Tis very grieuous to be thought vpon:
    150What is he in his bed?
    Hast. He is.
    Glo. Go you before and I will follow you. Exit Hast.
    He cannot liue I hope, and must not die,
    155Till George be packt with post horse vp to heauen.
    Ile in to vrge his hatred more to Clarence,
    With lies well steeld with weighty arguments,
    And if I faile not in my deepe intent,
    Clarence hath not an other day to liue
    160Which done, God take King Edward to his mercy,
    And leaue the world for me to bussell in,
    For then Ile marry Warwicks yongest daughter:
    What though I kild her husband and her father,
    The readiest way to make the wench amends,
    165Is to become her husband and her father:
    The which will I, not all so much for loue,
    As for another secret close intent.
    By marrying her which I must reach vnto.
    But yet I run before my horse to market:
    170Clarence still breathes, Edward still liues and raignes,
    When they are gone then must I count my gaines. Exit.
    Enter Lady Anne with the hearse of Harry the 6.
    175Lady An. Set downe set downe your honourable lo
    If honor may be shrowded in a hearse,
    Whilst I a while obsequiously lament
    The vntimely fall of vertuous Lancaster:
    Poore kei-cold figure of a holy King,
    180Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster,
    Thou bloudlesse remnant of that royall bloud,
    Be it lawfull that I inuocate thy ghost,
    To heare the lamentations of poore Anne,
    Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughtered sonne,
    185Stabd by the selfesame hands that made these holes,
    Lo in those windowes that let foorth thy life,
    I powre the helplesse balme of my poore eies,
    Curst be the hand that made these fatall holes,
    Curst be the heart that had the heart to doe it.
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