Richard
I did not kill your husband.
Anne
Why, then he is alive.
Richard
Nay, he is dead, and slain by Edward’s hands.
Anne
In thy foul throat thou liest. Queen Margaret saw
Thy murd’rous falchion smoking in his blood,
The which thou once didst bend against her breast,
But that thy brothers beat aside the point.
Richard
I was provokèd by her sland’rous tongue,
That laid their guilt upon my guiltless shoulders.
Anne
Thou wast provokèd by thy bloody mind,
Which never dream’st on aught but butcheries.
Didst thou not kill this king?
Richard
I grant ye.
Anne
Dost grant me, hedgehog? Then God grant me too
Thou mayst be damnèd for that wicked deed.
Oh, he was gentle, mild, and virtuous.
Richard
The better for the king of heaven that hath him.
Anne
He is in heaven, where thou shalt never come.
Richard
Let him thank me, that holp to send him thither,
For he was fitter for that place than earth.
Anne
And thou unfit for any place but hell.
Richard
Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it.
Anne
Some dungeon.
Richard
Your bedchamber.
Anne
Ill rest betide the chamber where thou liest.
Richard
So will it, madam, till I lie with you.
Anne
I hope so.
Richard
I know so. But gentle Lady Anne,
To leave this keen encounter of our wits
And fall something into a slower method,
Is not the causer of the timeless deaths
Of these Plantagenets, Henry and Edward,
As blameful as the executioner?
Anne
Thou wast the cause and most accursed effect.
Richard
Your beauty was the cause of that effect:
Your beauty, that did haunt me in my sleep
To undertake the death of all the world,
So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom.
Anne
If I thought that, I tell thee, homicide,
These nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks.
Richard
These eyes could never endure sweet beauty’s wreck.
You should not blemish it if I stood by.
As all the world is cheered by the sun,
So I by that. It is my day, my life.
Anne
Black night o’ershade thy day, and death thy life.
Richard
Curse not thyself, fair creature; thou art both.
Anne
I would I were, to be revenged on thee.
Richard
It is a quarrel most unnatural
To be revenged on him that loveth you.
Anne
It is a quarrel just and reasonable
To be revenged on him that killed my husband.
Richard
He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband
Did it to help thee to a better husband.
Anne
His better doth not breathe upon the earth.
Richard
He lives that loves thee better than he could.
Anne
Name him.
Richard
Anne
Richard
The selfsame name, but one of better nature.
Anne
Where is he?
Richard
[She] spits at him.
Why dost thou spit at me?
Anne
Would it were mortal poison for thy sake.
Richard
Never came poison from so sweet a place.
Anne
Never hung poison on a fouler toad.
Out of my sight. Thou dost infect mine eyes.
Richard
Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine.
Anne
Would they were basilisks’, to strike thee dead.
Richard
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,
Shamed their aspècts with store of childish drops.
These eyes, that never shed remorseful tear,
No, when my father York and Edward wept
To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made
When black-faced 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 bedashed 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 sued to friend nor enemy.
My tongue could never learn sweet smoothing word.
But now thy beauty is proposed my fee,
My proud heart sues and prompts my tongue to speak.
