Unknown artist, “King Richard III” (late 16th century). Oil on panel, 25 1/8 in. x 18 1/2 inches. National Portrait Gallery, London. Given by James Thomson Gibson-Craig, 1862. (click to enlarge) (image via National Portrait Gallery, London)
With this week’s discovery of the bones of King Richard III, Weekend Words takes a break from its usual format to present some favorite lines from one of Shakespeare’s most demonic plays:
Either heaven with lightning strike the murderer dead,
Or earth, gape open wide and eat him quick,
As thou dost swallow up this good king’s blood
Which his hell-govern’d arm hath butchered!—Lady Anne, cursing Richard for the deaths of her husband and father-in-law.
Was ever woman in this humour woo’d?
Was ever woman in this humour won?
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 her hatred by;
Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me,
And I nothing to back my suit at all,
But the plain devil and dissembling looks,
And yet to win her, all the world to nothing!
Ha!—Richard, after winning the heart of Lady Anne a few moments later.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no! alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself!
I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not.—Richard, upon waking from a nightmare filled with his victims’ ghosts.
