William Shakespeare: The Life and Death of King Richard III

ACT IV. 4. SCENE IV. London. Before the palace. (continued)

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
My words are dull; O, quicken them with thine!

QUEEN MARGARET.
Thy woes will make them sharp, and pierce like mine.

[Exit.]

DUCHESS.
Why should calamity be full of words?

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Windy attorneys to their client woes,
Airy succeeders of intestate joys,
Poor breathing orators of miseries!
Let them have scope: though what they do impart
Help nothing else, yet do they ease the heart.

DUCHESS.
If so, then be not tongue-tied: go with me,
And in the breath of bitter words let's smother
My damned son, that thy two sweet sons smother'd.

[Drum within.]

I hear his drum:--be copious in exclaims.

[Enter KING RICHARD and his Train, marching.]

KING RICHARD.
Who intercepts me in my expedition?

DUCHESS.
O, she that might have intercepted thee,
By strangling thee in her accursed womb,
From all the slaughters, wretch, that thou hast done!

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Hidest thou that forehead with a golden crown,
Where should be branded, if that right were right,
The slaughter of the prince that ow'd that crown,
And the dire death of my poor sons and brothers?
Tell me, thou villain-slave, where are my children?

DUCHESS.
Thou toad, thou toad, where is thy brother Clarence?
And little Ned Plantagenet, his son?

QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Where is the gentle Rivers, Vaughan, Grey?

DUCHESS.
Where is kind Hastings?

KING RICHARD.
A flourish, trumpets! strike alarum, drums!
Let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women
Rail on the Lord's anointed: strike, I say!

[Flourish. Alarums.]

Either be patient and entreat me fair,
Or with the clamorous report of war
Thus will I drown your exclamations.

DUCHESS.
Art thou my son?

KING RICHARD.
Ay, I thank God, my father, and yourself.