Shakespeare's Richard III 4.2 - Murder on Richard's Mind

Richard III

Please see the bottom of this page for full explanatory notes.

ACT IV SCENE II	London. A Room of State in the Palace.
[ Sennet. Enter KING RICHARD III, in pomp, crowned; BUCKINGHAM, CATESBY, a page, and others. ]
KING RICHARD III	Stand all apart Cousin of Buckingham!
BUCKINGHAM	My gracious sovereign!
KING RICHARD III	Give me thy hand.
[Here he ascendeth his throne]
	Thus high, by thy advice
	And thy assistance, is King Richard seated;
	But shall we wear these honours for a day?
	Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them?
BUCKINGHAM	Still live they and for ever may they last!
KING RICHARD III	O Buckingham, now do I play the touch,
	To try if thou be current gold indeed
	Young Edward lives: think now what I would speak.	10
BUCKINGHAM	Say on, my loving lord.
KING RICHARD III	Why, Buckingham, I say, I would be king,
BUCKINGHAM	Why, so you are, my thrice-renowned liege.
KING RICHARD III	Ha! am I king? 'tis so: but Edward lives.
BUCKINGHAM	True, noble prince.
KING RICHARD III	O bitter consequence,
	That Edward still should live! 'True, noble prince!'
	Cousin, thou wert not wont to be so dull:
	Shall I be plain? I wish the bastards dead;
	And I would have it suddenly perform'd.
	What sayest thou? speak suddenly; be brief.	20
BUCKINGHAM	Your grace may do your pleasure.
KING RICHARD III	Tut, tut, thou art all ice, thy kindness freezeth:
	Say, have I thy consent that they shall die?
BUCKINGHAM	Give me some breath, some little pause, my lord
	Before I positively herein:
	I will resolve your grace immediately.
[Exit BUCKINGHAM]
CATESBY	[Aside]
	The king is angry: see, he bites the lip.
KING RICHARD III	I will converse with iron-witted fools
	And unrespective boys: none are for me
	That look into me with considerate eyes:	30
	High-reaching Buckingham grows circumspect.
	Boy!
Page	My lord?
KING RICHARD III	Know'st thou not any whom corrupting gold
	Would tempt unto a close exploit of death?
Page	My lord, I know a discontented gentleman,
	Whose humble means match not his haughty mind:
	Gold were as good as twenty orators,
	And will, no doubt, tempt him to any thing.
KING RICHARD III	What is his name?
Page	His name, my lord, is Tyrrel.	40
KING RICHARD III	I partly know the man: go, call him hither.
[Exit Page]
	The deep-revolving witty Buckingham
	No more shall be the neighbour to my counsel:
	Hath he so long held out with me untired,
	And stops he now for breath?
Enter STANLEY.
	How now, Lord Stanley! what news with you?
STANLEY	Know, my loving lord, the Marquis Dorset, as I hear, is fled
	To Richmond, in the parts
	Where he abides.
KING RICHARD III	Come hither, Catesby:
KING RICHARD III	Rumour is abroad
	That Anne, my wife, is very grievous sick;
	I will take order for her keeping close.
	Inquire me out some mean-born gentleman,
	Whom I will marry straight to Clarence' daughter:
	The boy is foolish, and I fear not him.
	Look, how thou dream'st! I say again, give out
	That Anne my queen is sick and like to die:
	About it; for it stands me much upon,
	To stop all hopes whose growth may damage me.
[Exit CATESBY]
	I must be married to my brother's daughter,	60
	Or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass.
	Murder her brothers, and then marry her!
	Uncertain way of gain! But I am in
	So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin:
	Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye.
[Re-enter Page, with TYRREL]
	Is thy name Tyrrel?
TYRREL	James Tyrrel, and your most obedient subject.
KING RICHARD III	Art thou, indeed?
TYRREL	Prove me, my gracious sovereign.
KING RICHARD III	Dar'st thou resolve to kill a friend of mine?
TYRREL	Ay, my lord;
	Please you, I had rather kill two enemies.	70
KING RICHARD III	Why, there thou hast it: two deep enemies,
	Foes to my rest and my sweet sleep's disturbers
	Are they that I would have thee deal upon:
	Tyrrel, I mean those bastards in the Tower.
TYRREL	Let me have open means to come to them,
	And soon I'll rid you from the fear of them.
KING RICHARD III	Thou sing'st sweet music. Hark, come hither, Tyrrel
	Go, by this token: rise, and lend thine ear:
[Whispers]
	There is no more but so: say it is done,
	And I will love thee, and prefer thee too.	80
TYRREL	'Tis done, my gracious lord.
KING RICHARD III	Shall we hear from thee, Tyrrel, ere we sleep?
TYRREL	Ye shall, my Lord.
Re-enter BUCKINGHAM.
BUCKINGHAM	My Lord, I have consider'd in my mind
	The late demand that you did sound me in.
KING RICHARD III	Well, let that pass. Dorset is fled to Richmond.
BUCKINGHAM	I hear that news, my lord.
KING RICHARD III	Stanley, he is your wife's son well, look to it.
BUCKINGHAM	My lord, I claim your gift, my due by promise,
	For which your honour and your faith is pawn'd;	90
	The earldom of Hereford and the moveables
	The which you promised I should possess.
KING RICHARD III	Stanley, look to your wife; if she convey
	Letters to Richmond, you shall answer it.
BUCKINGHAM	What says your highness to my just demand?
KING RICHARD III	As I remember, Henry the Sixth
	Did prophesy that Richmond should be king,
	When Richmond was a little peevish boy.
	A king, perhaps, perhaps,--
BUCKINGHAM	My lord!	100
KING RICHARD III	How chance the prophet could not at that time
	Have told me, I being by, that I should kill him?
BUCKINGHAM	My lord, your promise for the earldom,--
KING RICHARD III	Richmond! When last I was at Exeter,
	The mayor in courtesy show'd me the castle,
	And call'd it Rougemont: at which name I started,
	Because a bard of Ireland told me once
	I should not live long after I saw Richmond.
BUCKINGHAM	My Lord!
KING RICHARD III	Ay, what's o'clock?
BUCKINGHAM	I am thus bold to put your grace in mind	110
	Of what you promised me.
KING RICHARD III	Well, but what's o'clock?
BUCKINGHAM	Upon the stroke of ten.
KING RICHARD III	Well, let it strike.
BUCKINGHAM	Why let it strike?
KING RICHARD III	Because that, like a Jack, thou keep'st the stroke
	Betwixt thy begging and my meditation.
	I am not in the giving vein to-day.
BUCKINGHAM	Why, then resolve me whether you will or no.
KING RICHARD III	Tut, tut,
	Thou troublest me; am not in the vein.
[Exeunt RICHARD and train.
BUCKINGHAM	And is it thus? repays my deep service
	With such contempt? made I him king for this?
	O, let me think on Hastings, and be gone
	To Brecknock, while my fearful head is on!
[Exit.

Richard III, Act 4, Scene 3

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Explanatory Notes for Act 4, Scene 2
From King Richard III. Ed. Brainerd Kellogg. New York: Clark & Maynard.

Abbreviations. — A.-S. = Anglo-Saxon: M.E. = Middle English (from the 13th to the 15th century) ; Fr. = French ; Ger. = German ; Gr. = Greek ; Cf. = compare (Lat. confer) ; Abbott refers to the excellent Shakespearean Grammar of Dr. Abbott; Schmidt, to Dr. Schmidt's invaluable Shakespeare Lexicon.

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8. Touch, the touchstone used to test the genuineness or purity of any metal which has the appearance of gold. The purity of the metal is judged from the streak which it leaves upon the stone, as compared with the streak made by the touch-needle, which is of pure gold. The stone is an extremely compact siliceous schist, almost as close as flint, and is known also as Black Jasper and Basanite.

15. Consequence, something that must follow, a necessary or inevitable event.

15-16. The bitter consequence lay in the fact that Edward lived as the true, noble prince — to quote Buckingham's words with another meaning in them.

27. This is mentioned by Hall as a habit of Richard's. When he stode musing he would byte and chew besely his nether lippe, as who sayd, that his fyerce nature in hys cruell body alwaies chafed, sturred and was ever vnquiete.

28. Iron-witted, unfeeling, insensible.

30. Considerate, thoughtful, observant, the opposite of unrespective.

35. Close, secret.

42. Witty, quick-witted, clever.

55. The boy is foolish. Edward, son of Clarence, was imprisoned by Richard III in Sheriff Button Castle. Was removed by Henry VII to the Tower. Beheaded in 1499. Imprisonment and lack of education made him idiotic. But he was not yet foolish.

68. About it; for it is very important for me.

64. Pluck on, draw on.

73. Deal upon, act with.

79. No more out so, that is, to carry out Richard's whispered instructions.

98. Peevish, silly, thoughtless.

104. Richard visited Exeter in the first year of his reign. This incident is mentioned by Hollnshed. "And during his abode here he went about the citie and viewed the seal of the same, and at length he came to the castell: and when he vnderstood that it was called Rugemont, suddenlie he fell into a dumpe and (as one astonied) said: Well, I see my dales be not long. He spake this of a prophesie told him, that when he came once to Richmond, he should not live long after."

114. Jack, the figure which struck the hour upon the bell in old clocks. Keep'st the stroke, keepest on striking.

117. Resolve, answer.

How to cite the explanatory notes:
Shakespeare, William. Richard III. Ed. Brainerd Kellogg. New York: Clark & Maynard, 1886. Shakespeare Online. 20 Feb. 2014. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/richardiii_4_2.html >.

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Textual Notes

"[Richard III] is distinguished by the extraordinary divergence of the text of the Quarto of 1597 from that of the Folio. Were this divergence confined solely to verbal changes, the editor would be guided in the task of forming a composite text either by his own personal preference or by the consensus of opinion of his predecessors; but the divergences here are so wide that no such guide avail him. There are many consecutive lines in the Folio whereof there are no traces in the Quarto, and again there are similar lines in the Quartos which are omitted in the Folio." (Horace Howard Furness. Variorum Edition of Shakespeare)

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