William Shakespeare: The Life and Death of King Richard III

ACT I. 2. SCENE II. London. Another street. (continued)

GLOSTER.
I would they were, that I might die at once;
For now they kill me with a living death.
Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears,
Sham'd their aspects with store of childish drops:
These eyes, which never shed remorseful tear,
No, when my father York and Edward wept,
To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made
When black-fac'd Clifford shook his sword at him;
Nor when thy warlike father, like a child,
Told the sad story of my father's death,
And twenty times made pause, to sob and weep,
That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks,
Like trees bedash'd with rain; in that sad time
My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear;
And what these sorrows could not thence exhale,
Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping.
I never su'd to friend nor enemy;
My tongue could never learn sweet smoothing word;
But, now thy beauty is propos'd my fee,
My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to speak.

[She looks scornfully at him.]

Teach not thy lip such scorn; for it was made
For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.
If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive,
Lo, here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword;
Which if thou please to hide in this true breast
And let the soul forth that adoreth thee,
I lay it naked to the deadly stroke,
And humbly beg the death upon my knee,
Nay, do not pause; for I did kill King Henry,--

[He lays his breast open; she offers at it with his sword.]

But 'twas thy beauty that provoked me.
Nay, now dispatch; 'twas I that stabb'd young Edward,--

[She again offers at his breast.]

But 'twas thy heavenly face that set me on.

[She lets fall the sword.]

Take up the sword again, or take up me.

ANNE.
Arise, dissembler: though I wish thy death,
I will not be thy executioner.

GLOSTER.
Then bid me kill myself, and I will do it.

ANNE.
I have already.

GLOSTER.
That was in thy rage:
Speak it again, and even with the word,
This hand, which for thy love did kill thy love;
Shall, for thy love, kill a far truer love;
To both their deaths shalt thou be accessary.