Richard III
Act III, Scene 3
Pomfret Castle.
Costume design for Earl Rivers
C. F. Tomkins, Colnaghi Son & Co., J. R. Planché, circa 1829
- Enter Sir Richard Ratcliffe with Halberds,
- carrying the nobles Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan
- to death at Pomfret.
Ratcliffe
1- Come, bring forth the prisoners.
Rivers
2 - 4- Sir Richard Ratcliffe, let me tell thee this:
- Today shalt thou behold a subject die
- For truth, for duty, and for loyalty.
Grey
5 - 6- God bless the Prince from all the pack of you!
- A knot you are of damned blood-suckers.
Vaughan
7- You live that shall cry woe for this hereafter.
Ratcliffe
8- Dispatch, the limit of your lives is out.
Rivers
9 - 14- O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison!
- Fatal and ominous to noble peers!
- Within the guilty closure of thy walls
- Richard the Second here was hack’d to death;
- And for more slander to thy dismal seat,
- We give to thee our guiltless blood to drink.
Grey
15 - 17- Now Margaret’s curse is fall’n upon our heads,
- When she exclaim’d on Hastings, you, and I,
- For standing by when Richard stabb’d her son.
Rivers
18 - 23- Then curs’d she Richard, then curs’d she Buckingham,
- Then curs’d she Hastings. O, remember, God,
- To hear her prayer for them, as now for us!
- And for my sister and her princely sons,
- Be satisfied, dear God, with our true blood,
- Which, as thou know’st, unjustly must be spilt.
Ratcliffe
24- Make haste, the hour of death is expiate.
Rivers
25 - 26- Come, Grey, come, Vaughan, let us here embrace.
- Farewell, until we meet again in heaven.
- Exeunt.
Study of halberdier
Edwin Austin Abbey, unknown date