The curse my noble father laid on theeWhen thou didst crown his warlike brows with paperAnd with thy scorns drew’st rivers from his eyes,And then to dry them gav’st the duke a cloutSteeped in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland —His curses then, from bitterness of soulDenounced 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 heavenThat 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 deathAnd 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 sonWas 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