Act 1

Question 1

A1S1 Now is the winter of discontent…

Answer 1

Made glorious by this son of York

Question 2

A1S1 And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover…

Answer 2

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determinèd to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Question 3

A1S1 Plots have I laid…

Answer 3

inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the King
In deadly hate, the one against the other;

Question 4

A1S1 Why, this it is when men are ruled by women…

Answer 4

’Tis not the King that sends you to the Tower.
My Lady Grey his wife, Clarence, ’tis she
That tempers him to this extremity.

Question 5

A1S1 Go tread the path…

Answer 5

that thou shalt ne’er return.
Simple, plain Clarence, I do love thee so
That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven,

Question 6

A1S1 And leave the world…

Answer 6

for me to bustle in.

Question 7

A1S1 For then I’ll marry…

Answer 7

Warwick’s youngest daughter.
What though I killed her husband and her father?

Question 8

A1S1
But yet I run before my horse to market…

Answer 8

Clarence still breathes; Edward still lives and reigns.
When they are gone, then must I count my gains.

Question 9

A1S2 Set down, set down your honourable load,…

Answer 9

If honour may be shrouded in a hearse,
Whilst I awhile obsequiously lament
Th’ untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster.

Question 10

A1S2 For ’tis thy presence…

Answer 10

that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins where no blood dwells.

Question 11

A1S2 Lo, here I lend…

I lay it naked…

Answer 11

thee this sharp-pointed sword,

to the deadly stroke
And humbly beg the death upon my knee.

Question 12

A1S2 I would…

Answer 12

I knew thy heart.

Question 13

A1S2 Look how my ring…

Answer 13

encompasseth thy finger;
Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart.

Question 14

A1S2 Was ever woman…

Answer 14

in this humor wooed?
Was ever woman in this humor won?

Question 15

A1S2 I’ll have her,…

Answer 15

but I will not keep her long.

Question 16

A1S2 And yet to win her,…

Answer 16

all the world to nothing!
Ha!

Question 17

A1S2 Shine out, fair sun,…

Answer 17

till I have bought a glass,
That I may see my shadow as I pass.

Question 18

A1S3 I fear our happiness…

Answer 18

is at the height.

Question 19

A1S3 Cannot a plain man live…

Answer 19

and think no harm,
But thus his simple truth must be abused
With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

Question 20

A1S3 Come, come, we know your meaning,…

Answer 20

brother
Gloucester.
You envy my advancement, and my friends’.
God grant we never may have need of you.

Question 21

A1S3 I was a packhorse…

Answer 21

in his great affairs,
A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,
A liberal rewarder of his friends.

Question 22

A1S3 Though not by war…

Answer 22

by surfeit die your king,
As ours by murder to make him a king.

Question 23

A1S3 Edward thy son that now is Prince of Wales…

Answer 23

For Edward our son, that was Prince of Wales,
Die in his youth by like untimely violence.

Question 24

A1S3 Thyself a queen…

Answer 24

for me that was a queen,
Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self.

Question 25

Long die thy happy days…

Answer 25

before thy death,
And, after many lengthened hours of grief,
Die neither mother, wife, nor England’s queen.—

Question 26

A1S3 God I pray Him
That none of you…

Answer 26

may live his natural age,
But by some unlooked accident cut off.

Question 27

A1S3 The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul…

Answer 27

Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv’st,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends.

Question 28

A1S3 (Aside to Buckingham.) O Buckingham, take heed of
yonder dog!…

Answer 28

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.

Question 29

A1S3 But, sirs, be sudden in the execution…

Answer 29

Withal obdurate; do not hear him plead,
For Clarence is well-spoken and perhaps
May move your hearts to pity if you mark him.

Question 30

A1S4 Methought that Gloucester stumbled…

Answer 30

and in falling
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard
Into the tumbling billows of the main.

Question 31

A1S4
Some lay in dead men’s skulls, and in the holes..

Answer 31

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.

Question 32

A1S4 “Clarence is come—false,…

Answer 32

fleeting, perjured
Clarence,
That stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury.
Seize on him, furies. Take him unto torment.”

Question 33

A1S4 Princes have but their titles for their glories…

Answer 33

An outward honor for an inward toil,

Question 34

A1S4 Where’s thy conscience now?

Answer 34

O, in the Duke of Gloucester’s
purse.