Richard III: Act 5

Who hath descried the number of the traitors?

I have not that alacrity of spirit
Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have.

The leisure and the fearful time
Cuts off the ceremonious vows of love
And ample interchange of sweet discourse,
Which so-long-sundered friends should dwell upon.

God give us leisure for these rites of love!

I’ll strive with troubled thoughts to take a nap,
Lest leaden slumber peise me down tomorrow
When I should mount with wings of victory.

Richard, thy wife, that wretched Anne thy wife,
That never slept a quiet hour with thee,
Now fills thy sleep with perturbations.

Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree;
Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all used in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all “Guilty, guilty!”

Cry mercy, lords and watchful gentlemen,
That you have ta’en a tardy sluggard here.

I promise you, my soul is very jocund.

The prayers of holy saints and wrongèd souls,
Like high-reared bulwarks, stand before our faces.

The foe vaunts in the field.

Let us to it pell mell,
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.

Remember whom you are to cope withal,
A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,
A scum of Bretons and base lackey peasants,
Whom their o’ercloyèd country vomits forth
To desperate adventures and assured destruction.

Let’s whip these stragglers o’er the seas again,
Lash hence these overweening rags of France,
These famished beggars weary of their lives,
Who, but for dreaming on this fond exploit,
For want of means, poor rats, had hanged themselves.

Fight, gentlemen of England.—Fight, bold yeomen.—