Richard III: Act 3

Thus, like the formal Vice, Iniquity,
I moralize two meanings in one word.

Thus, like the formal Vice, Iniquity,
I moralize two meanings in one word.

If thou dost find him tractable to us,
Encourage him and tell him all our reasons.

Your friends at Pomfret, they do need the priest;
Your Honor hath no shriving work in hand.

Catesby hath sounded Hastings in our business
And finds the testy gentleman so hot
That he will lose his head ere give consent
His master’s child, as worshipfully he terms it,
Shall lose the royalty of England’s throne.

Behold mine arm
Is like a blasted sapling withered up;
And this is Edward’s wife, that monstrous witch,
Consorted with that harlot, strumpet Shore,
That by their witchcraft thus have markèd me.

My princely father then had wars in France,
And, by true computation of the time,
Found that the issue was not his begot,
Which well appearèd in his lineaments,
Being nothing like the noble duke my father.

Who is so gross
That cannot see this palpable device?

He is not lolling on a lewd love-bed,
But on his knees at meditation;
Not dallying with a brace of courtesans,
But meditating with two deep divines

He is not lolling on a lewd love-bed,
But on his knees at meditation;
Not dallying with a brace of courtesans,
But meditating with two deep divines

For this, consorted with the citizens,
Your very worshipful and loving friends,
And by their vehement instigation,
In this just cause come I to move your Grace.

I cannot tell if to depart in silence
Or bitterly to speak in your reproof
Best fitteth my degree or your condition.

These both put off, a poor petitioner,
A care-crazed mother to a many sons,
A beauty-waning and distressèd widow,
Even in the afternoon of her best days,
Made prize and purchase of his wanton eye,
Seduced the pitch and height of his degree
To base declension and loathed bigamy.

More bitterly could I expostulate,
Save that, for reverence to some alive,
I give a sparing limit to my tongue.

Then, good my lord, take to your royal self
This proffered benefit of dignity