Richard III: Act 2

When I have most need to employ a friend,
And most assurèd that he is a friend,
Deep, hollow, treacherous, and full of guile
Be he unto me: this do I beg of God,
When I am cold in love to you or yours.

Gloucester, we have done deeds of charity,
Made peace of enmity, fair love of hate,
Between these swelling, wrong-incensèd peers.

Among this princely heap, if any here
By false intelligence or wrong surmise
Hold me a foe,
If I unwittingly, or in my rage,
Have aught committed that is hardly borne
By any in this presence, I desire
To reconcile me to his friendly peace.

Why, madam, have I offered love for this,
To be so flouted in this royal presence?

Some tardy cripple bare the countermand,
That came too lag to see him burièd.

The forfeit, sovereign, of my servant’s life,
Who slew today a riotous gentleman
Lately attendant on the Duke of Norfolk.

God will revenge it, whom I will importune
With earnest prayers, all to that effect.

I have bewept a worthy husband’s death
And lived with looking on his images;
But now two mirrors of his princely semblance
Are cracked in pieces by malignant death,
And I, for comfort, have but one false glass
That grieves me when I see my shame in him.

Our fatherless distress was left unmoaned.
Your widow- dolor likewise be unwept!

In common worldly things, ’tis called ungrateful
With dull unwillingness to repay a debt
Which with a bounteous hand was kindly lent

No, no, good friends, God wot,
For then this land was famously enriched
With politic grave counsel; then the King
Had virtuous uncles to protect his Grace.

By a divine instinct, men’s minds mistrust
Ensuing danger, as by proof we see
The water swell before a boist’rous storm.

“Ay,” quoth my uncle Gloucester,
“Small herbs have grace; great weeds do grow apace.”

Now, by my troth, if I had been remembered,
I could have given my uncle’s Grace a flout
To touch his growth nearer than he touched mine.

O, preposterous
And frantic outrage, end thy damnèd spleen,
Or let me die, to look on Earth no more.