style="font-size:15px;"> He needs no indirect or lawless courseTo cut off those that have offended Him.
FIRST MURDERER
Who made thee, then, a bloody minister
When gallant-springing brave Plantagenet,
That princely novice, was struck dead by thee?
CLARENCE
My brother’s love, the devil, and my rage.
FIRST MURDERER
Thy brother’s love, our duty, and thy faults,
Provoke us hither now to slaughter thee.
CLARENCE
If you do love my brother, hate not me;
I am his brother, and I love him well.
If you are hir’d for meed, go back again,
And I will send you to my brother Gloster,
Who shall reward you better for my life
Than Edward will for tidings of my death.
SECOND MURDERER
You are deceiv’d, your brother Gloster hates you.
CLARENCE
O, no, he loves me, and he holds me dear:
Go you to him from me.
FIRST MURDERER
Ay, so we will.
CLARENCE
Tell him when that our princely father York
Bless’d his three sons with his victorious arm
And charg’d us from his soul to love each other,
He little thought of this divided friendship:
Bid Gloster think of this, and he will weep.
FIRST MURDERER
Ay, millstones; as he lesson’d us to weep.
CLARENCE
O, do not slander him, for he is kind.
FIRST MURDERER
Right, as snow in harvest.—Come, you deceive yourself:
‘Tis he that sends us to destroy you here.
CLARENCE
It cannot be; for he bewept my fortune,
And hugg’d me in his arms, and swore, with sobs,
That he would labour my delivery.
FIRST MURDERER
Why, so he doth, when he delivers you
From this earth’s thraldom to the joys of heaven.
SECOND MURDERER
Make peace with God, for you must die, my lord.
CLARENCE
Have you that holy feeling in your souls,
To counsel me to make my peace with God,
And are you yet to your own souls so blind
That you will war with God by murdering me?—
O, sirs, consider, they that set you on
To do this deed will hate you for the deed.
SECOND MURDERER
What shall we do?
CLARENCE
Relent, and save your souls.
FIRST MURDERER
Relent! ‘tis cowardly and womanish.
CLARENCE
Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish.
Which of you, if you were a prince’s son,
Being pent from liberty, as I am now,—
If two such murderers as yourselves came to you,—
Would not entreat for life?—
My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks;
O, if thine eye be not a flatterer,
Come thou on my side, and entreat for me,
As you would beg, were you in my distress:
A begging prince what beggar pities not?
SECOND MURDERER
Look behind you, my lord.
FIRST MURDERER.
[Stabs him.]
Take that, and that: if all this will not do,
I’ll drown you in the malmsey-butt within.
[Exit with the body.]
SECOND MURDERER
A bloody deed, and desperately dispatch’d!
How fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands
Of this most grievous murder!
[Re-enter FIRST MURDERER.]
FIRST MURDERER
How now, what mean’st thou that thou help’st me not?
By heavens, the duke shall know how slack you have been!
SECOND MURDERER
I would he knew that I had sav’d his brother!
Take thou the fee, and tell him what I say;
For I repent me that the duke is slain.
[Exit.]
FIRST MURDERER
So do not I: go, coward as thou art.—
Well, I’ll go hide the body in some hole,
Till that the duke give order for his burial:
And when I have my meed, I will away;
For this will out, and then I must not stay.
