Your beauty: which did haunt me in my sleep To undertake the death of all the world, So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom. LADY ANNE If I thought that, I tell thee, homicide, These nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks. GLOUCESTER These eyes could never endure sweet beauty's wreck;
You should not blemish it, if I stood by:
As all the world is cheered by the sun, So I by that; it is my day, my life. LADY ANNE Black night o'ershade thy day, and death thy life! GLOUCESTER Curse not thyself, fair creature thou art both. LADY ANNE I would I were, to be revenged on thee. GLOUCESTER It is a quarrel most unnatural, To be revenged on him that loveth you. LADY ANNE It is a quarrel just and reasonable, To be revenged on him that slew my husband. GLOUCESTER He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband, Did it to help thee to a better husband. LADY ANNE His better doth not breathe upon the earth. GLOUCESTER He lives that loves thee better than he could. LADY ANNE Name him. GLOUCESTER Plantagenet. LADY ANNE Why, that was he. GLOUCESTER The selfsame name, but one of better nature. LADY ANNE Where is he? GLOUCESTER Here.
She spitteth at him Why dost thou spit at me? LADY ANNE Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake! GLOUCESTER Never came poison from so sweet a place. LADY ANNE Never hung poison on a fouler toad.
Out of my sight! thou dost infect my eyes. GLOUCESTER Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine. LADY ANNE Would they were basilisks, to strike thee dead! GLOUCESTER I would they were, that I might die at once;
For now they kill me with a living death.
Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears, Shamed their aspect with store of childish drops:
These eyes that never shed remorseful tear, No, when my father York and Edward wept, To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made When black-faced Clifford shook his sword at him;
Nor when thy warlike father, like a child, Told the sad story of my father's death, And twenty times made pause to sob and weep, That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks Like trees bedash'd with rain: in that sad time My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear;
And what these sorrows could not thence exhale, Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping.
I never sued to friend nor enemy;
My tongue could never learn sweet smoothing word;
But now thy beauty is proposed my fee, My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to speak.
She looks scornfully at him Teach not thy lips such scorn, for they were made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.
If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive, Lo, here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword;
Which if thou please to hide in this true bosom.
And let the soul forth that adoreth thee, I lay it naked to the deadly stroke, And humbly beg the death upon my knee.
He lays his breast open: she offers at it with his sword Nay, do not pause; for I did kill King Henry, But 'twas thy beauty that provoked me.
Nay, now dispatch; 'twas I that stabb'd young Edward, But 'twas thy heavenly face that set me on.
