Беспокойное бессмертие: 450 лет со дня рождения Уильяма Шекспира - [58]

Thou kill’dst my husband, Henry, in the Tower,

And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.

Richard

Ere you were queen, ay, 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 spent mine own.

Margaret (aside)

Ay, and much better blood than his or thine.

Richard

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 this, and what you are;

Withal, what I have been, and what I am.

Margaret (aside)

A murderous villain, and so still thou art.

Richard

Poor Clarence did forsake his father Warwick,

Ay, and forswore himself, which Jesu pardon.

Margaret (aside)

Which God revenge.

Richard

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.

Margaret (aside)

Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave the 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

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

Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof.

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.

Margaret (aside)

A 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 am queen, you bow like subjects,

Yet that by you deposed, you quake like rebels.

Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away.

Richard

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

Margaret

But repetition of what thou hast marred,

That will I make before I let thee go.

Richard

Wert thou not banishèd on pain of death?

Margaret

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.

This sorrow that I have by right is yours,

And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.

Richard

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.

Elizabeth

So just is God, to right the innocent.

Hastings

 O, ’twas the foulest deed to slay that babe,

And the most merciless that e’er was heard of.

Rivers

Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported.

Dorset

No man but prophesied revenge for it.

Buckingham

Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.

Margaret

 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 woeful banishment,

Should 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.

Though not by war, by surfeit die your king,

As ours by murder to make him a king.

Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales,

For Edward our son, that 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 death

And see another, as I see thee now,

Decked in thy rights, as thou art stalled in mine.

Long die thy happy days before thy death,

And after many lengthened hours of grief,

Die neither mother, wife, nor England’s queen.

Rivers and Dorset, you were standers-by,

And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son

Was stabbed with bloody daggers. God I pray him,

That none of you may live his natural age,

But by some unlooked accident cut off.

Richard

Have done thy charm, thou hateful, withered hag.

Margaret

 And leave out thee? Stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me.

If heaven have any grievous plague in store

Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,

Oh, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe

And then hurl down their indignation

On thee the troubler of the poor world’s peace.

The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul.

Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv’st,

And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends.

No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,

Unless it be while some tormenting dream

Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils.

Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog,

Thou that wast sealed in thy nativity

The slave of nature and the son of hell.