previous next

SCENE III

Pomfret Castle.
Enter SIR RICHARD RATCLIFF, with halberds, carrying RIVERS, GREY, and VAUGHAN to death.

Rat.
Come, bring forth the prisoners.

Riv.
Sir Richard Ratcliff, let me tell thee this:

To-day shalt thou behold a subject die

For truth, for duty, and for loyalty.

Grey.
God keep the prince from all the pack of you!

A knot you are of damned blood-suckers.

Vaug.
You live that shall cry woe for this hereafter.

Rat.
Dispatch; the limit of your lives is out.

Riv.
O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison, (10)

Fatal and ominous to noble peers!

Within the guilty closure of thy walls

Richard the second here was hack'd to death;

And, for more slander to thy dismal seat,

We give thee up our guiltless blood to drink.

Grey.
Now Margaret's curse is fall'n upon our heads,

For standing by when Richard stabb'd her son.

Riv.
Then cursed she Hastings, then cursed she Buckingham,

Then cursed she Richard. O, remember, God,

To hear her prayers for them, as now for us! (20)

And for my sister and her princely sons,

Be satisfied, dear God, with our true blood,

Which, as thou know'st, unjustly must be spilt.

Rat.
Make haste; the hour of death is expiate.

Riv.
Come, Grey, come, Vaughan, let us all embrace:

And take our leave, until we meet in heaven. [Exeunt.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide References (1 total)
  • Cross-references in text-specific dictionaries to this page (1):
    • Schmidt, I,
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: