Act 1 Flashcards
A1S1 Now is the winter of discontent…
Made glorious by this son of York
A1S1 And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover…
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determinèd to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
A1S1 Plots have I laid…
inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the King
In deadly hate, the one against the other;
A1S1 Why, this it is when men are ruled by women…
’Tis not the King that sends you to the Tower.
My Lady Grey his wife, Clarence, ’tis she
That tempers him to this extremity.
A1S1 Go tread the path…
that thou shalt ne’er return.
Simple, plain Clarence, I do love thee so
That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven,
A1S1 And leave the world…
for me to bustle in.
A1S1 For then I’ll marry…
Warwick’s youngest daughter.
What though I killed her husband and her father?
A1S1
But yet I run before my horse to market…
Clarence still breathes; Edward still lives and reigns.
When they are gone, then must I count my gains.
A1S2 Set down, set down your honourable load,…
If honour may be shrouded in a hearse,
Whilst I awhile obsequiously lament
Th’ untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster.
A1S2 For ’tis thy presence…
that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins where no blood dwells.
A1S2 Lo, here I lend…
I lay it naked…
thee this sharp-pointed sword,
to the deadly stroke
And humbly beg the death upon my knee.
A1S2 I would…
I knew thy heart.
A1S2 Look how my ring…
encompasseth thy finger;
Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart.
A1S2 Was ever woman…
in this humor wooed?
Was ever woman in this humor won?
A1S2 I’ll have her,…
but I will not keep her long.
A1S2 And yet to win her,…
all the world to nothing!
Ha!
A1S2 Shine out, fair sun,…
till I have bought a glass,
That I may see my shadow as I pass.
A1S3 I fear our happiness…
is at the height.
A1S3 Cannot a plain man live…
and think no harm,
But thus his simple truth must be abused
With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?
A1S3 Come, come, we know your meaning,…
brother
Gloucester.
You envy my advancement, and my friends’.
God grant we never may have need of you.
A1S3 I was a packhorse…
in his great affairs,
A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,
A liberal rewarder of his friends.
A1S3 Though not by war…
by surfeit die your king,
As ours by murder to make him a king.
A1S3 Edward thy son that now is Prince of Wales…
For Edward our son, that was Prince of Wales,
Die in his youth by like untimely violence.
A1S3 Thyself a queen…
for me that was a queen,
Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self.
Long die thy happy days…
before thy death,
And, after many lengthened hours of grief,
Die neither mother, wife, nor England’s queen.—
A1S3 God I pray Him
That none of you…
may live his natural age,
But by some unlooked accident cut off.
A1S3 The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul…
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv’st,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends.
A1S3 (Aside to Buckingham.) O Buckingham, take heed of
yonder dog!…
Look when he fawns, he bites; and when he bites,
His venom tooth will rankle to the death.
Have not to do with him. Beware of him.
Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him,
And all their ministers attend on him.
A1S3 But, sirs, be sudden in the execution…
Withal obdurate; do not hear him plead,
For Clarence is well-spoken and perhaps
May move your hearts to pity if you mark him.
A1S4 Methought that Gloucester stumbled…
and in falling
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard
Into the tumbling billows of the main.
A1S4
Some lay in dead men’s skulls, and in the holes..
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept—
As ’twere in scorn of eyes—reflecting gems,
That wooed the slimy bottom of the deep
And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by.
S4 “Clarence is come—false,…
fleeting, perjured
Clarence,
That stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury.
Seize on him, furies. Take him unto torment.”
S4 Princes have but their titles for their glories…
An outward honor for an inward toil,
S4 Where’s thy conscience now?
O, in the Duke of Gloucester’s
purse.
S4 It cannot be, for he bewept…
my fortune,
And hugged me in his arms, and swore with sobs
That he would labor my delivery.
S4 Not to kill him, having a…
warrant,
but to be damned for killing him, from the which
no warrant can defend me.
S4 some certain dregs…
of conscience
are yet within me
S4 Take the devil in thy mind, and..
believe him not. He would insinuate with thee but
to make thee sigh
S4 And that same vengeance doth He hurl on thee…
For false forswearing and for murder too.
S4 And, like a traitor to the name of God…
Didst break that vow, and with thy treacherous
blade
Unrippedst the bowels of thy sovereign’s son.
S4 Alas! For whose sake did I that ill deed?..
For Edward, for my brother, for his sake.
S4 Why, so he doth, when he delivers you…
From this Earth’s thralldom to the joys of heaven
S4 A bloody deed, and desperately dispatched…
How fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands
Of this most grievous murder
