I rather do beseech you pardon me,Who, earnest in the service of my God,
Deferr’d the visitation of my friends.
But, leaving this, what is your grace’s pleasure?
BUCKINGHAM
Even that, I hope, which pleaseth God above,
And all good men of this ungovern’d isle.
GLOSTER
I do suspect I have done some offence
That seems disgracious in the city’s eye;
And that you come to reprehend my ignorance.
BUCKINGHAM
You have, my lord: would it might please your grace,
On our entreaties, to amend your fault!
GLOSTER
Else wherefore breathe I in a Christian land?
BUCKINGHAM
Know then, it is your fault that you resign
The supreme seat, the throne majestical,
The scepter’d office of your ancestors,
Your state of fortune and your due of birth,
The lineal glory of your royal house,
To the corruption of a blemish’d stock:
Whilst, in the mildness of your sleepy thoughts,—
Which here we waken to our country’s good,—
The noble isle doth want her proper limbs;
Her face defac’d with scars of infamy,
Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants,
And almost shoulder’d in the swallowing gulf
Of dark forgetfulness and deep oblivion.
Which to recure, we heartily solicit
Your gracious self to take on you the charge
And kingly government of this your land;—
Not as protector, steward, substitute,
Or lowly factor for another’s gain;
But as successively, from blood to blood,
Your right of birth, your empery, your own.
For this, consorted with the citizens,
Your very worshipful and loving friends,
And, by their vehement instigation,
In this just cause come I to move your grace.
GLOSTER
I cannot tell if to depart in silence
Or bitterly to speak in your reproof
Best fitteth my degree or your condition:
If not to answer, you might haply think
Tongue-tied ambition, not replying, yielded
To bear the golden yoke of sovereignty,
Which fondly you would here impose on me;
If to reprove you for this suit of yours,
So season’d with your faithful love to me,
Then, on the other side, I check’d my friends.
Therefore,—to speak, and to avoid the first,
And then, in speaking, not to incur the last,—
Definitively thus I answer you.
Your love deserves my thanks; but my desert
Unmeritable shuns your high request.
First, if all obstacles were cut away,
And that my path were even to the crown,
As the ripe revenue and due of birth,
Yet so much is my poverty of spirit,
So mighty and so many my defects,
That I would rather hide me from my greatness,—
Being a bark to brook no mighty sea,—
Than in my greatness covet to be hid,
And in the vapour of my glory smother’d.
But, God be thank’d, there is no need of me,—
And much I need to help you, were there need;—
The royal tree hath left us royal fruit,
Which, mellow’d by the stealing hours of time,
Will well become the seat of majesty,
And make, no doubt, us happy by his reign.
On him I lay that you would lay on me,—
The right and fortune of his happy stars;
Which God defend that I should wring from him!
BUCKINGHAM
My lord, this argues conscience in your grace;
But the respects thereof are nice and trivial,
All circumstances well considered.
You say that Edward is your brother’s son:
So say we too, but not by Edward’s wife;
For first was he contráct to Lady Lucy,—
Your mother lives a witness to his vow,—
And afterward by substitute betroth’d
To Bona, sister to the King of France.
These both put off, a poor petitioner,
A care-craz’d mother to a many sons,
A beauty-waning and distressèd widow,
Even in the afternoon of her best days,
Made prize and purchase of his wanton eye,
Seduc’d the pitch and height of his degree
To base declension and loath’d bigamy:
By her, in his unlawful
