Salisbury. An open Place. | |
| |
Enter the Sheriff and Guard, with BUCKINGHAM, led to execution. | |
| Buck. Will not King Richard let me speak with him? | |
| Sher. No, my good lord; therefore be patient. | 4 |
| Buck. Hastings, and Edward’s children, Grey and Rivers, | |
| Holy King Henry, and thy fair son Edward, | |
| Vaughan, and all that have miscarried | |
| By underhand corrupted foul injustice, | 8 |
| If that your moody discontented souls | |
| Do through the clouds behold this present hour, | |
| Even for revenge mock my destruction! | |
| This is All-Souls’ day, fellows, is it not? | 12 |
| Sher. It is, my lord. | |
| Buck. Why, then All-Souls’ day is my body’s doomsday. | |
| This is the day that, in King Edward’s time, | |
| I wish’d might fall on me, when I was found | 16 |
| False to his children or his wife’s allies; | |
| This is the day wherein I wish’d to fall | |
| By the false faith of him whom most I trusted; | |
| This, this All-Souls’ day to my fearful soul | 20 |
| Is the determin’d respite of my wrongs. | |
| That high All-Seer which I dallied with | |
| Hath turn’d my feigned prayer on my head, | |
| And given in earnest what I begg’d in jest. | 24 |
| Thus doth he force the swords of wicked men | |
| To turn their own points on their masters’ bosoms: | |
| Thus Margaret’s curse falls heavy on my neck: | |
| ‘When he,’ quoth she, ‘shall split thy heart with sorrow, | 28 |
| Remember Margaret was a prophetess.’ | |
| Come, lead me, officers, to the block of shame: | |
| Wrong hath but wrong, and blame the due of blame. [Exeunt. | |
