Page:Richard III (1927) Yale.djvu/30

16 I'll have her; but I will not keep her long.

What! I, that kill'd her husband, and his father,

To take her in her heart's extremest hate;

With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,

The bleeding witness of my hatred by;

Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me,

And I no friends to back my suit withal

But the plain devil and dissembling looks,

And yet to win her, all the world to nothing!

Ha!

Hath she forgot already that brave prince,

Edward, her lord, whom I, some three months since,

Stabb'd in my angry mood at Tewkesbury?

A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman,

Fram'd in the prodigality of nature,

Young, valiant, wise, and, no doubt, right royal,

The spacious world cannot again afford:

And will she yet abase her eyes on me,

That cropp'd the golden prime of this sweet prince,

And made her widow to a woeful bed?

On me, whose all not equals Edward's moiety?

On me, that halts and am misshapen thus?

My dukedom to a beggarly denier

I do mistake my person all this while:

Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot,

Myself to be a marvellous proper man.

I'll be at charges for a looking-glass,

And entertain a score or two of tailors,

To study fashions to adorn my body:

 242 three months; cf. n.

245 prodigality of nature: nature's most prodigal mood

253 denier: a small copper coin

256 proper: handsome

257 be for: buy

258 entertain: take into service

