Act 1, Scene 3

London. A Room in the Palace.

[Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, LORD RIVERS, and LORD GREY.]
Earl Rivers
441 Have patience, madam: there's no doubt his majesty
442 Will soon recover his accustom'd health.
Lord Grey
443 In that you brook it ill, it makes him worse:
444 Therefore, for God's sake, entertain good comfort,
445 And cheer his grace with quick and merry eyes.
Queen Elizabeth
446 If he were dead, what would betide on me?
Lord Grey
447 No other harm but loss of such a lord.
Queen Elizabeth
448 The loss of such a lord includes all harms.
Lord Grey
449 The heavens have bless'd you with a goodly son
450 To be your comforter when he is gone.
Queen Elizabeth
451 Ah, he is young; and his minority
452 Is put unto the trust of Richard Gloster,
453 A man that loves not me, nor none of you.
Earl Rivers
454 Is it concluded he shall be protector?
Queen Elizabeth
455 It is determin'd, not concluded yet:
456 But so it must be, if the king miscarry.
[Enter BUCKINGHAM and STANLEY.]
Lord Grey
457 Here come the Lords of Buckingham and Stanley.
Duke of Buckingham
458 Good time of day unto your royal grace!
Lord Stanley (Derby)
459 God make your majesty joyful as you have been!
Queen Elizabeth
460 The Countess Richmond, good my Lord of Stanley,
461 To your good prayer will scarcely say amen.
462 Yet, Stanley, notwithstanding she's your wife,
463 And loves not me, be you, good lord, assur'd
464 I hate not you for her proud arrogance.
Lord Stanley (Derby)
465 I do beseech you, either not believe
466 The envious slanders of her false accusers;
467 Or, if she be accus'd on true report,
468 Bear with her weakness, which I think proceeds
469 From wayward sickness, and no grounded malice.
Queen Elizabeth
470 Saw you the king to-day, my Lord of Stanley?
Lord Stanley (Derby)
471 But now the Duke of Buckingham and I
472 Are come from visiting his majesty.
Queen Elizabeth
473 What likelihood of his amendment, lords?
Duke of Buckingham
474 Madam, good hope; his grace speaks cheerfully.
Queen Elizabeth
475 God grant him health! Did you confer with him?
Duke of Buckingham
476 Ay, madam; he desires to make atonement
477 Between the Duke of Gloster and your brothers,
478 And between them and my lord chamberlain;
479 And sent to warn them to his royal presence.
Queen Elizabeth
480 Would all were well!—but that will never be:
481 I fear our happiness is at the height.
[Enter GLOSTER, HASTINGS, and DORSET.]
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
482 They do me wrong, and I will not endure it:—
483 Who are they that complain unto the king
484 That I, forsooth, am stern and love them not?
485 By holy Paul, they love his grace but lightly
486 That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours.
487 Because I cannot flatter and look fair,
488 Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,
489 Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,
490 I must be held a rancorous enemy.
491 Cannot a plain man live, and think no harm,
492 But thus his simple truth must be abus'd
493 With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?
Lord Grey
494 To who in all this presence speaks your grace?
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
495 To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace.
496 When have I injur'd thee? when done thee wrong?—
497 Or thee?—or thee?—or any of your faction?
498 A plague upon you all! His royal grace,—
499 Whom God preserve better than you would wish!—
500 Cannot be quiet scarce a breathing while,
501 But you must trouble him with lewd complaints.
Queen Elizabeth
502 Brother of Gloster, you mistake the matter.
503 The king, on his own royal disposition,
504 And not provok'd by any suitor else—
505 Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred
506 That in your outward action shows itself
507 Against my children, brothers, and myself—
508 Makes him to send; that thereby he may gather
509 The ground of your ill-will, and so remove it.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
510 I cannot tell: the world is grown so bad
511 That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch:
512 Since every Jack became a gentleman,
513 There's many a gentle person made a Jack.
Queen Elizabeth
514 Come, come, we know your meaning, brother Gloster;
515 You envy my advancement, and my friends';
516 God grant we never may have need of you!
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
517 Meantime, God grants that we have need of you:
518 Our brother is imprison'd by your means,
519 Myself disgrac'd, and the nobility
520 Held in contempt; while great promotions
521 Are daily given to ennoble those
522 That scarce, some two days since, were worth a noble.
Queen Elizabeth
523 By Him that rais'd me to this careful height
524 From that contented hap which I enjoy'd,
525 I never did incense his majesty
526 Against the Duke of Clarence, but have been
527 An earnest advocate to plead for him.
528 My lord, you do me shameful injury
529 Falsely to draw me in these vile suspects.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
530 You may deny that you were not the mean
531 Of my Lord Hastings' late imprisonment.
Earl Rivers
532 She may, my lord; for,—
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
533 She may, Lord Rivers?—why, who knows not so?
534 She may do more, sir, than denying that:
535 She may help you to many fair preferments;
536 And then deny her aiding hand therein,
537 And lay those honours on your high desert.
538 What may she not? She may,—ay, marry, may she,—
Earl Rivers
539 What, marry, may she?
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
540 What, marry, may she! marry with a king,
541 A bachelor, and a handsome stripling too:
542 I wis your grandam had a worser match.
Queen Elizabeth
543 My Lord of Gloster, I have too long borne
544 Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs:
545 By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty
546 Of those gross taunts that oft I have endur'd.
547 I had rather be a country servant-maid
548 Than a great queen with this condition,—
549 To be so baited, scorn'd, and stormed at.
[Enter old QUEEN MARGARET, behind.]
Queen Elizabeth
550 Small joy have I in being England's queen.
Queen Margaret
551 And lessen'd be that small, God, I beseech Him!
552 Thy honour, state, and seat, is due to me.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
553 What! Threat you me with telling of the king?
554 Tell him, and spare not: look what I have said
555 I will avouch in presence of the king:
556 I dare adventure to be sent to the Tower.
557 'Tis time to speak,—my pains are quite forgot.
Queen Margaret
558 Out, devil! I do remember them too well:
559 Thou kill'dst my husband Henry in the Tower,
560 And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
561 Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband king,
562 I was a pack-horse in his great affairs;
563 A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,
564 A liberal rewarder of his friends;
565 To royalize his blood I spilt mine own.
Queen Margaret
566 Ay, and much better blood than his or thine.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
567 In all which time you and your husband Grey
568 Were factious for the house of Lancaster;—
569 And, Rivers, so were you: was not your husband
570 In Margaret's battle at Saint Albans slain?
571 Let me put in your minds, if you forget,
572 What you have been ere this, and what you are;
573 Withal, what I have been, and what I am.
Queen Margaret
574 A murderous villain, and so still thou art.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
575 Poor Clarence did forsake his father, Warwick;
576 Ay, and forswore himself,—which Jesu pardon!—
Queen Margaret
577 Which God revenge!
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
578 To fight on Edward's party for the crown;
579 And for his meed, poor lord, he is mew'd up.
580 I would to God my heart were flint, like Edward's,
581 Or Edward's soft and pitiful, like mine:
582 I am too childish-foolish for this world.
Queen Margaret
583 Hie thee to hell for shame and leave this world,
584 Thou cacodemon! there thy kingdom is.
Earl Rivers
585 My Lord of Gloster, in those busy days
586 Which here you urge to prove us enemies,
587 We follow'd then our lord, our sovereign king:
588 So should we you, if you should be our king.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
589 If I should be!—I had rather be a pedler:
590 Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof!
Queen Elizabeth
591 As little joy, my lord, as you suppose
592 You should enjoy, were you this country's king,—
593 As little joy you may suppose in me,
594 That I enjoy, being the queen thereof.
Queen Margaret
595 As little joy enjoys the queen thereof;
596 For I am she, and altogether joyless.
597 I can no longer hold me patient.—
[Advancing.]
Queen Margaret
598 Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out
599 In sharing that which you have pill'd from me!
600 Which of you trembles not that looks on me?
601 If not that, I am queen, you bow like subjects,
602 Yet that, by you depos'd, you quake like rebels?
603 Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away!
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
604 Foul wrinkled witch, what mak'st thou in my sight?
Queen Margaret
605 But repetition of what thou hast marr'd,
606 That will I make before I let thee go.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
607 Wert thou not banished on pain of death?
Queen Margaret
608 I was; but I do find more pain in banishment
609 Than death can yield me here by my abode.
610 A husband and a son thou ow'st to me,—
611 And thou a kingdom,—all of you allegiance:
612 This sorrow that I have, by right is yours;
613 And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
614 The curse my noble father laid on thee,
615 When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper,
616 And with thy scorns drew'st rivers from his eyes;
617 And then to dry them gav'st the Duke a clout
618 Steep'd in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland;—
619 His curses, then from bitterness of soul
620 Denounc'd against thee, are all fallen upon thee;
621 And God, not we, hath plagu'd thy bloody deed.
Queen Elizabeth
622 So just is God, to right the innocent.
Lord Hastings
623 O, 'twas the foulest deed to slay that babe,
624 And the most merciless that e'er was heard of.
Earl Rivers
625 Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported.
Marquess of Dorset
626 No man but prophesied revenge for it.
Duke of Buckingham
627 Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.
Queen Margaret
628 What, were you snarling all before I came,
629 Ready to catch each other by the throat,
630 And turn you all your hatred now on me?
631 Did York's dread curse prevail so much with heaven
632 That Henry's death, my lovely Edward's death,
633 Their kingdom's loss, my woeful banishment,
634 Should all but answer for that peevish brat?
635 Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?—
636 Why, then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses!—
637 Though not by war, by surfeit die your king,
638 As ours by murder, to make him a king!
639 Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales,
640 For Edward our son, that was Prince of Wales,
641 Die in his youth by like untimely violence!
642 Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,
643 Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self!
644 Long mayest thou live to wail thy children's death;
645 And see another, as I see thee now,
646 Deck'd in thy rights, as thou art stall'd in mine!
647 Long die thy happy days before thy death;
648 And, after many lengthen'd hours of grief,
649 Die neither mother, wife, nor England's queen!—
650 Rivers and Dorset, you were standers by,—
651 And so wast thou, Lord Hastings,—when my son
652 Was stabb'd with bloody daggers: God, I pray Him,
653 That none of you may live his natural age,
654 But by some unlook'd accident cut off!
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
655 Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither'd hag.
Queen Margaret
656 And leave out thee? stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me.
657 If heaven have any grievous plague in store
658 Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,
659 O, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,
660 And then hurl down their indignation
661 On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace!
662 The worm of conscience still be-gnaw thy soul!
663 Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv'st,
664 And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
665 No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
666 Unless it be while some tormenting dream
667 Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
668 Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog!
669 Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity
670 The slave of nature and the son of hell!
671 Thou slander of thy heavy mother's womb!
672 Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins!
673 Thou rag of honour! thou detested—
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
674 Margaret.
Queen Margaret
675 Richard!
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
676 Ha!
Queen Margaret
677 I call thee not.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
678 I cry thee mercy then; for I did think
679 That thou hadst call'd me all these bitter names.
Queen Margaret
680 Why, so I did; but look'd for no reply.
681 O, let me make the period to my curse!
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
682 'Tis done by me, and ends in—Margaret.
Queen Elizabeth
683 Thus have you breath'd your curse against yourself.
Queen Margaret
684 Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune!
685 Why strew'st thou sugar on that bottled spider,
686 Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about?
687 Fool, fool! thou whett'st a knife to kill thyself.
688 The day will come that thou shalt wish for me
689 To help thee curse this poisonous bunch-back'd toad.
Lord Hastings
690 False-boding woman, end thy frantic curse,
691 Lest to thy harm thou move our patience.
Queen Margaret
692 Foul shame upon you! you have all mov'd mine.
Earl Rivers
693 Were you well serv'd, you would be taught your duty.
Queen Margaret
694 To serve me well, you all should do me duty,
695 Teach me to be your queen, and you my subjects:
696 O, serve me well, and teach yourselves that duty!
Marquess of Dorset
697 Dispute not with her,—she is lunatic.
Queen Margaret
698 Peace, master marquis, you are malapert:
699 Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current:
700 O, that your young nobility could judge
701 What 'twere to lose it, and be miserable!
702 They that stand high have many blasts to shake them;
703 And if they fall they dash themselves to pieces.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
704 Good counsel, marry:—learn it, learn it, marquis.
Marquess of Dorset
705 It touches you, my lord, as much as me.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
706 Ay, and much more: but I was born so high,
707 Our aery buildeth in the cedar's top,
708 And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.
Queen Margaret
709 And turns the sun to shade;—alas! alas!—
710 Witness my son, now in the shade of death;
711 Whose bright out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath,
712 Hath in eternal darkness folded up.
713 Your aery buildeth in our aery's nest:—
714 O God that seest it, do not suffer it;
715 As it is won with blood, lost be it so!
Duke of Buckingham
716 Peace, peace, for shame, if not for charity.
Queen Margaret
717 Urge neither charity nor shame to me:
718 Uncharitably with me have you dealt,
719 And shamefully my hopes by you are butcher'd.
720 My charity is outrage, life my shame,—
721 And in that shame still live my sorrow's rage!
Duke of Buckingham
722 Have done, have done.
Queen Margaret
723 O princely Buckingham, I'll kiss thy hand,
724 In sign of league and amity with thee:
725 Now fair befall thee and thy noble house!
726 Thy garments are not spotted with our blood,
727 Nor thou within the compass of my curse.
Duke of Buckingham
728 Nor no one here; for curses never pass
729 The lips of those that breathe them in the air.
Queen Margaret
730 I will not think but they ascend the sky,
731 And there awake God's gentle-sleeping peace.
732 O Buckingham, take heed of yonder dog!
733 Look, when he fawns he bites; and when he bites,
734 His venom tooth will rankle to the death:
735 Have not to do with him, beware of him;
736 Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him,
737 And all their ministers attend on him.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
738 What doth she say, my Lord of Buckingham?
Duke of Buckingham
739 Nothing that I respect, my gracious lord.
Queen Margaret
740 What, dost thou scorn me for my gentle counsel?
741 And soothe the devil that I warn thee from?
742 O, but remember this another day,
743 When he shall split thy very heart with sorrow,
744 And say, poor Margaret was a prophetess!—
745 Live each of you the subjects to his hate,
746 And he to yours, and all of you to God's!
[Exit.]
Duke of Buckingham
747 My hair doth stand an end to hear her curses.
Earl Rivers
748 And so doth mine: I muse why she's at liberty.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
749 I cannot blame her: by God's holy mother,
750 She hath had too much wrong; and I repent
751 My part thereof that I have done to her.
Queen Elizabeth
752 I never did her any, to my knowledge.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
753 Yet you have all the vantage of her wrong.
754 I was too hot to do somebody good,
755 That is too cold in thinking of it now.
756 Marry, as for Clarence, he is well repaid;
757 He is frank'd up to fatting for his pains;
758 God pardon them that are the cause thereof!
Earl Rivers
759 A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion,
760 To pray for them that have done scathe to us!
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
761 So do I ever being well advis'd;
[Aside.]
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
762 For had I curs'd now, I had curs'd myself.
[Enter CATESBY.]
Sir William Catesby
763 Madam, his majesty doth can for you,—
764 And for your grace,—and you, my noble lords.
Queen Elizabeth
765 Catesby, I come.—Lords, will you go with me?
Earl Rivers
766 We wait upon your grace.
[Exeunt all but GLOSTER.]
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
767 I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.
768 The secret mischiefs that I set abroach
769 I lay unto the grievous charge of others.
770 Clarence,—whom I indeed have cast in darkness,—
771 I do beweep to many simple gulls;
772 Namely, to Stanley, Hastings, Buckingham;
773 And tell them 'tis the queen and her allies
774 That stir the king against the duke my brother.
775 Now they believe it; and withal whet me
776 To be reveng'd on Rivers, Vaughn, Grey:
777 But then I sigh; and, with a piece of Scripture,
778 Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
779 And thus I clothe my naked villany
780 With odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ;
781 And seem a saint when most I play the devil.—
782 But, soft, here come my executioners.
[Enter two MURDERERS.]
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
783 How now, my hardy stout resolved mates!
784 Are you now going to dispatch this thing?
First Murderer
785 We are, my lord, and come to have the warrant,
786 That we may be admitted where he is.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
787 Well thought upon;—I have it here about me:
[Gives the warrant.]
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
788 When you have done, repair to Crosby Place.
789 But, sirs, be sudden in the execution,
790 Withal obdurate, do not hear him plead;
791 For Clarence is well-spoken, and perhaps
792 May move your hearts to pity, if you mark him.
First Murderer
793 Tut, tut, my lord, we will not stand to prate;
794 Talkers are no good doers: be assur'd
795 We go to use our hands, and not our tongues.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III)
796 Your eyes drop millstones when fools' eyes fall tears:
797 I like you, lads;—about your business straight;
798 Go, go, despatch.
First Murderer
799 We will, my noble lord.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 451historical topical
“his minority Is put unto the trust of Richard Gloster”
When a king was under-age, a 'protector' governed in his name — a powerful regent whose authority was contested whenever rival factions existed. Queen Elizabeth fears that if Edward IV dies, her young son (Prince Edward, the heir) will be under the thumb of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who has no love for her Woodville family. The position of Lord Protector was precisely the office Richard had himself appointed to in 1483.
historical More's History of King Richard III
TLN 456archaic vocab
“if the king miscarry”
'Miscarry' here means 'die' or 'come to ruin' — not the modern sense restricted to pregnancy loss. Queen Elizabeth is saying: if King Edward IV dies.
TLN 460historical topical
“The Countess Richmond, good my Lord of Stanley”
The Countess of Richmond is Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry Tudor — the future King Henry VII. She is Lord Stanley's wife and is the most powerful Lancastrian sympathiser still at court. Queen Elizabeth suspects that Margaret prays for Lancastrian rather than Yorkist good fortune, so Stanley's prayer on the queen's behalf may not be echoed at home. Margaret Beaufort appears only as a reported presence in this play but is a key figure in Holinshed's account of Richmond's cause.
TLN 487rhetorical device
“I cannot flatter and look fair, Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog, Duck with French nods and apish courtesy”
Richard performs the blunt plain-dealer who is too honest to flatter — while the audience knows from his opening soliloquy that he is the play's master dissembler. 'Cog' means to cheat or wheedle; 'French nods' are elaborate Continental bows and curtsies, seen as theatrical insincerity; 'apish' means mimicking, monkey-like. The irony is savage: this speech is itself a masterpiece of flattery, designed to make the assembled lords believe Richard is incapable of it.
historical The Stage Machiavel
TLN 493archaic vocab
“silken, sly, insinuating Jacks”
'Jacks' are low, impertinent fellows — the name is generic for a common man, like 'knave' or 'rascal.' 'Silken' suggests a smooth, sleekly dressed courtier; 'insinuating' means worming one's way into favor by flattery. Richard uses 'Jacks' and 'Jack became a gentleman' (line 512) as a repeated slur against the Woodvilles, whom the old nobility scorned as low-born upstarts who rose through the queen's marriage.
TLN 511rhetorical device
“wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch: Since every Jack became a gentleman, There's many a gentle person made a Jack”
Richard uses the eagle-and-wren image from the traditional hierarchy of birds — in which the eagle was king — to complain that low-born men (wrens, Jacks) have risen to positions where great nobles once held sway, turning true gentlemen into displaced commoners. The 'great chain of being' assigned every creature its proper rank; birds reflected human social order, with the eagle at the summit. Richard deploys the conservative rhetoric of order disrupted, again as a performance of grievance.
historical The great chain of being (order and degree)
TLN 518historical topical
“Our brother is imprison'd by your means, Myself disgrac'd”
Richard claims that the queen's faction engineered Clarence's imprisonment in the Tower. Historically, George, Duke of Clarence, was attainted and imprisoned in 1477-78 on charges Edward IV pressed — including treasonous dealings with the Earl of Warwick and rumored plots against the king himself. Richard's accusation here is self-serving; he has in fact arranged the arrest himself, blaming the Woodvilles to deflect suspicion from his own plot to have Clarence murdered.
TLN 522wordplay
“scarce, some two days since, were worth a noble”
A 'noble' was a gold coin worth 6s. 8d. (one-third of a pound) — a specific, low sum. Richard puns on 'noble' meaning both the coin and social nobility: men who two days ago were worth mere pennies (and had no claim to rank) have been 'ennobled' — made noble — by the queen's patronage. The pun deflates her favourites as bought titles.
TLN 539wordplay
“marry, may she,— What, marry, may she! marry with a king”
'Marry' was a common mild oath — a softening of 'Mary' (the Virgin Mary). Rivers has just said 'She may,' and Richard seizes on the word to make a vicious pun: 'marry' as the oath, then 'marry' as the verb (to wed). His point is a class insult: Elizabeth Woodville, a widow with no royal blood, 'married with a king' — Edward IV — thereby leaping from obscurity to the throne, and her relatives received titles and offices they did nothing to deserve.
TLN 542archaic vocab
“I wis your grandam had a worser match”
'I wis' (sometimes written 'iwis') is an archaic affirmation meaning 'certainly' or 'I know well' — not related to 'I wish.' Richard is sneering: 'Certainly your grandmother made a worse match than Edward IV.' This is an oblique slap at Queen Elizabeth's family origins, implying the Woodvilles have always married up, and that even this unprecedented marriage to a king is just a continuation of social climbing.
TLN 559historical topical
“Thou kill'dst my husband Henry in the Tower, And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury”
Queen Margaret accuses Richard of two murders: Henry VI, killed in the Tower of London in May 1471, and their son Prince Edward, killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury (4 May 1471). Both murders are dramatized in 3 Henry VI. Richard's guilt for Henry's death in particular is asserted by Tudor sources; the drowning of Clarence and these killings are the crimes Margaret holds over him throughout the play.
historical The Wars of the Roses
TLN 568historical topical
“factious for the house of Lancaster;— And, Rivers, so were you: was not your husband In Margaret's battle at Saint Albans slain”
Richard reminds the Woodvilles that they fought on the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses: Queen Elizabeth (then Lady Grey) was a Lancastrian widow, and her first husband Sir John Grey was killed at the Second Battle of St Albans (17 February 1461), fighting for Henry VI's queen, Margaret. After his death, Lady Grey married the Yorkist Edward IV — a social transformation Richard now uses to brand her family as opportunist turncoats.
historical The Wars of the Roses
TLN 579archaic vocab
“for his meed, poor lord, he is mew'd up”
'Meed' means reward or recompense. 'Mew'd up' means shut in, confined — from 'mew,' a cage for hawks when moulting. Richard says that Clarence's 'reward' for switching sides to fight for Edward IV is to find himself imprisoned in the Tower. The tone is insincere pity; Richard is the one who arranged the imprisonment.
TLN 584archaic vocab
“Thou cacodemon! there thy kingdom is”
A 'cacodemon' (Greek kakodaimon) is an evil spirit, demon, or devil — the opposite of a 'eudaimon' (good spirit). Margaret uses it as a term of direct spiritual accusation, consigning Richard to hell as a creature of evil who naturally belongs there. It is the first time in this scene she calls him by his true nature openly to his face rather than in aside.
TLN 615historical topical
“thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper, And with thy scorns drew'st rivers from his eyes; And then to dry them gav'st the Duke a clout Steep'd in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland”
This refers to the mock-coronation of Richard's father, Richard, Duke of York, before his execution at the Battle of Wakefield (30 December 1460), dramatized in 3 Henry VI. Margaret and her soldiers put a paper crown on York's head to taunt him, then — in Shakespeare's version — wiped his tears with a cloth dipped in the blood of his young son Edmund, Earl of Rutland, whom Clifford had just killed. It is the play's most notorious act of cruelty, and Richard invokes it to remind Margaret that York's dying curse on her has now been fulfilled.
historical The Wars of the Roses
TLN 635rhetorical device
“Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?— Why, then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses”
Margaret turns a rhetorical question into a kind of invocation: if curses can reach God in heaven, then she commands the clouds to part and let hers through. The question-then-answer structure — called apophasis or self-interruption — is characteristic of her prophetic ranting mode. It also positions her as a figure with genuine supernatural power, standing midway between a bereaved woman and a curse-hurling witch; the play keeps both possibilities open.
TLN 637historical topical
“Though not by war, by surfeit die your king”
'Surfeit' means excess, specifically of food, drink, or pleasure. Margaret curses Edward IV to die not gloriously in battle (as Henry VI's son did) but through self-indulgence. Edward IV did die in April 1483 at age forty, apparently of illness following excessive feasting and physical excess — Tudor chroniclers described him as having become very fat in his later years. The curse comes true within the play's opening acts.
TLN 639historical topical
“Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales, For Edward our son, that was Prince of Wales, Die in his youth by like untimely violence”
Margaret constructs her curses as formal symmetrical exchanges, matching each Yorkist possession to a Lancastrian loss. Her son Edward, Prince of Wales — the Lancastrian heir killed at Tewkesbury (1471) — is set against Queen Elizabeth's son Edward, the current Prince of Wales and heir to the throne. The curse is precise: the new Edward should die young by violence, as her Edward did. It is fulfilled when the young Edward V is smothered in the Tower.
historical The Princes in the Tower
TLN 655archaic vocab
“Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither'd hag”
'Charm' here means a spoken incantation or spell, not something pleasant — from Latin carmen, a song or verse used in magic. Richard's contemptuous reply casts Margaret's formal cursing not as prayer or prophecy but as witchcraft, dismissing her as a 'hag' (an old witch). The play holds these two possibilities — prophet of God versus pagan witch — in deliberate tension throughout Margaret's role.
TLN 662biblical allusion
“The worm of conscience still be-gnaw thy soul”
The image of a worm gnawing the conscience comes from Isaiah 66:24 ('their worm shall not die'), quoted by Jesus in Mark 9:44 and 9:48 as a description of hell: 'where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.' The 'worm of conscience' became a standard Elizabethan metaphor for the unquiet, guilt-ridden soul. Margaret's curse aims precisely at this: Richard's own guilty conscience as his perpetual tormentor — which is exactly what the ghost-visitation scene (5.3) fulfils.
TLN 668historical topical
“Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog! Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity The slave of nature and the son of hell”
'Elvish-mark'd' means bearing marks placed at birth by malevolent fairy spirits — a deformed body taken as a sign of evil nature. 'Abortive' means monstrous or incomplete, born before full term. 'Rooting hog' ties Richard directly to his heraldic badge, the white boar, which roots in the earth — here turned from a symbol of power into one of beastly destruction. 'Seal'd in thy nativity' continues the idea: Richard was stamped with damnation from the moment of birth. This whole curse-stanza is the play's richest cluster of the 'boar' imagery.
historical The White Boar (Richard's Badge)
TLN 673rhetorical device
“Thou rag of honour! thou detested— Margaret. Richard!”
Margaret's tirade is cut off mid-curse when she inadvertently speaks Richard's name. Richard seizes on it to interrupt her and 'complete' the curse himself — substituting his own name for whatever epithet she intended. The joke: by naming him, the curse turns on her (as Elizabeth then notes). It is a piece of stage wit that gives Richard the last word in the most concentrated burst of cursing in the scene. A 'rag of honour' is a shred or remnant of it — all that is left after the cloth of honour has been torn away.
TLN 684rhetorical device
“Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune! Why strew'st thou sugar on that bottled spider, Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about”
Margaret calls Queen Elizabeth a 'painted queen' — a mere surface copy of royal dignity, painted rather than genuine (like a stage prop). 'Vain flourish of my fortune' means an empty ornament on what was Margaret's throne. 'Bottled spider' is the most striking image: a spider whose swollen body is like a bottle or gourd — large in the middle, dangerous. Richard will ensnare Elizabeth in his web just as a spider traps a fly. The whole speech has the compressed ferocity of a prophetic warning.
TLN 698archaic vocab
“Peace, master marquis, you are malapert: Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current”
'Malapert' means impudent or presumptuous. 'Fire-new stamp of honour' is a coinage metaphor: just as a new coin is freshly stamped ('fire-new,' still hot from the mint), Dorset's rank is so recently acquired that it is 'scarce current' — not yet accepted at face value. Dorset has just told Margaret to be quiet; she turns his youth and new title against him. 'Fire-new' (brand-new) appears several times in Shakespeare for this mockingly fresh quality.
TLN 707rhetorical device
“Our aery buildeth in the cedar's top, And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun”
An 'aery' (also 'eyrie') is an eagle's or hawk's nest at a great height. Richard claims his line nests at the summit of the cedar — the tree traditionally symbolic of royal or divinely appointed power — playing with the wind and contemptuous of the sun. It is an image of supreme, fearless elevation. Margaret then takes the same image and turns it: his 'aery' was built in what was her family's nest, and the sun he scorns is her murdered son.
TLN 723historical topical
“O princely Buckingham, I'll kiss thy hand, In sign of league and amity with thee”
Margaret singles out Buckingham as the one great lord whose hands are not yet stained with her blood, blesses him, and warns him specifically that Richard will destroy him. Her warning — 'When he shall split thy very heart with sorrow, / And say, poor Margaret was a prophetess!' — is the play's most pointed prophecy. Buckingham is Richard's closest ally in the first half of the play and is executed by his order in Act 5. When Buckingham goes to his death, he will remember this scene.
historical More's History of King Richard III
TLN 757archaic vocab
“He is frank'd up to fatting for his pains”
'Frank'd up' means shut in a sty to fatten — a 'frank' (or 'franc') was a pen where pigs were enclosed and fattened for slaughter. Richard says Clarence is being 'fattened' in prison — the metaphor makes him livestock being prepared to be killed. It is a casual, horrible image for the murder he has already set in motion, delivered with Richard's characteristic dark wit.
TLN 777biblical allusion
“with a piece of Scripture, Tell them that God bids us do good for evil: And thus I clothe my naked villany With odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ; And seem a saint when most I play the devil”
Richard confesses in soliloquy that he weaponises Scripture, citing the Christian teaching that one should 'do good for evil' — drawn from Matthew 5:44 ('do good to them that hate you') or Romans 12:21 ('overcome evil with good') — not because he believes it but as rhetorical armour. He 'clothes' his villainy in 'holy writ' to 'seem a saint when most I play the devil.' The speech is the play's clearest statement of Richard as a hypocritical stage Machiavel who uses religion as camouflage.
historical The Vice of the morality playshistorical More's History of King Richard III
TLN 788historical topical
“repair to Crosby Place”
Crosby Place (later Crosby Hall) was a large late-medieval mansion in Bishopsgate, London, built in the 1460s and leased by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, from about 1483. He used it as his London base during the period of the usurpation. Shakespeare's reference is accurate: More's History of Richard III mentions Crosby Place as Richard's headquarters. Part of the original great hall survives and was relocated to Chelsea in the early twentieth century.
historical More's History of King Richard III
TLN 796rhetorical device
“Your eyes drop millstones when fools' eyes fall tears”
Richard praises the murderers for their hardness: where a fool's eyes 'fall tears,' theirs 'drop millstones' — heavy grindstones incapable of weeping. The antithesis flatters them as tougher than ordinary men. The image of weeping millstones (impossibly hard objects substituted for soft tears) is an ironic hyperbole that also mocks the very idea of compassion. The line is Richard at his most coldly witty, bonding with hired killers by celebrating their incapacity for feeling.