RICHARD
Good day, my lord. What, at your book so hard?
KING HENRY
Ay, my good lord—my lord, I should say rather.
sin to flatter; “good” was little better:
“Good Gloucester” and “good devil” were alike,
And both preposterous; therefore, not “good lord”.
RICHARD
, leave us to ourselves; we must confer.
KING HENRY
So flies the reckless shepherd from the wolf;
So first the harmless sheep yield his fleece,
And next his throat unto the butcher’s knife.
What scene of death Roscius now to act?
RICHARD
Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;
The thief fear each bush an officer.
KING HENRY
The bird that been limed in a bush
With trembling wings misdoubteth every bush;
And I, the hapless male to one sweet bird,
Have now the fatal object in my eye
Where my poor young was limed, was caught, and killed.
RICHARD
Why, what a peevish fool was that of Crete
That taught his son the office of a fowl!
And yet, for all his wings, the fool was drowned.
KING HENRY
I, Daedalus; my poor boy, Icarus;
father, Minos, that denied our course;
The sun that seared the wings of my sweet boy,
brother Edward; and thyself, the sea
Whose envious gulf did swallow up his life.
Ah, kill me with weapon, not with words!
My breast can better brook dagger’s point
Than can my ears that tragic history.
But come? Is ’t for my life?
RICHARD
Think’st I am an executioner?
KING HENRY
A persecutor I am sure art.
If murdering innocents be executing,
Why, then art an executioner.
RICHARD
son I killed for his presumption.
KING HENRY
Hadst been killed when first presume,
hadst not lived to kill a son of mine.
And thus I prophesy: that many a thousand
Which now mistrust no parcel of my fear,
And many an old man’s sigh, and many a widow’s,
And many an orphan’s water-standing eye,
Men for their sons’, wives for their husbands’,
Orphans for their parents’ timeless death,
Shall rue the hour that ever wast born.
The owl shrieked at birth, an evil sign;
The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time;
Dogs howled, and hideous tempest shook down trees;
The raven rooked her on the chimney’s top,
And chatt’ring pies in dismal discord sung;
mother felt more than a mother’s pain,
And yet brought forth less than a mother’s hope,
To wit, an indigested and deformed lump,
Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree.
Teeth hadst in head when wast born,
To signify cam’st to bite the world;
And, if the rest be true which I have heard,
cam’st—
RICHARD
I’ll hear no more. Die, prophet, in speech.
RICHARD
For this, amongst the rest, was I ordained.
KING HENRY
Ay, and for much more slaughter after this.
O God, forgive my sins, and pardon !
RICHARD
What, will the aspiring blood of Lancaster
Sink in the ground? I thought it would have mounted.
See how my sword weeps for the poor King’s death.
O, may such purple tears be always shed
From those that wish the downfall of our house!
If any spark of life be yet remaining,
Down, down to hell; and say I sent —
RICHARD
I that have neither pity, love, nor fear.
Indeed, true that Henry told me of,
For I have often heard my mother say
I came into the world with my legs forward.
Had I not reason, think , to make haste
And seek their ruin that usurped our right?
The midwife wondered, and the women cried
“O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!”
And so I was, which plainly signified
That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog.
Then, since the heavens have shaped my body so,
Let hell make crooked my mind to answer it.
I have no brother, I am like no brother;
And this word “love,” which greybeards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another,
And not in me. I am myself alone.
Clarence, beware; keep’st me from the light,
But I will sort a pitchy day for ;
For I will buzz abroad such prophecies
That Edward shall be fearful of his life;
And then, to purge his fear, I’ll be death.
King Henry and the Prince his son are gone;
Clarence, turn is next, and then the rest,
Counting myself but bad till I be best.
I’ll throw body in another room,
And triumph, Henry, in day of doom.