Тамара Казавчинская - Беспокойное бессмертие: 450 лет со дня рождения Уильяма Шекспира

Set down, set down your honourable load,
If honour may be shrouded in a hearse,
Whilst I awhile obsequiously lament
Th’untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster.

Poor key-cold figure of a holy king,
Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster,
Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood,
Be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost
To hear the lamentations of poor Anne,
Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughtered son,
Stabbed by the selfsame hand that made these wounds.
Lo, in these windows that let forth thy life,
I pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes.
Oh, cursèd be the hand that made these holes,
Cursed the heart that had the heart to do it,
Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence.
More direful hap betide that hated wretch
That makes us wretched by the death of thee
Than I can wish to wolves, to spiders, toads,
Or any creeping venomed thing that lives.
If ever he have child, abortive be it,
Prodigious, and untimely brought to light,
Whose ugly and unnatural aspèct
May fright the hopeful mother at the view,
And that be heir to his unhappiness.
If ever he have wife, let her be made
More miserable by the death of him
Than I am made by my young lord and thee.
Come now towards Chertsey with your holy load,
Taken from Paul’s to be interrèd there.
And still as you are weary of this weight,
Rest you while I lament King Henry’s corpse.

What black magician conjures up this fiend
To stop devoted charitable deeds?

Villains, set down the corpse, or by Saint Paul,
I’ll make a corpse of him that disobeys.

Unmannered dog, stand thou when I command.
Advance thy halberd higher than my breast,
Or by Saint Paul, I’ll strike thee to my foot
And spurn upon thee, beggar, for thy boldness.

What, do you tremble? Are you all afraid?
Alas, I blame you not, for you are mortal,
And mortal eyes cannot endure the devil.
Avaunt, thou dreadful minister of hell.
Thou hadst but power over his mortal body;
His soul thou canst not have. Therefore be gone.

Foul devil, for God’s sake hence, and trouble us not,
For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell,
Filled it with cursing cries and deep exclaims.
If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds,
Behold this pattern of thy butcheries.
O gentlemen, see, see, dead Henry’s wounds
Open their còngealed mouths and bleed afresh.
Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity,
For ʼtis thy presence that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins where no blood dwells.
Thy deeds inhuman and unnatural
Provokes this deluge most unnatural.
O God, which this blood madʼst, revenge his death.
O earth, which this blood drinkʼstʼrevenge his death.
Either heavʼn with lightning strike the murdʼrer dead,
Or earth gape open wide and eat him quick,
As thou dost swallow up this good king’s blood,
Which his hell-governed arm hath butcherèd.

Lady, you know no rules of charity,
Which renders good for bad, blessings for curses.

Villain, thou knowʼst no law of God nor man.
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.

More wonderful, when angels are so angry.
Vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman,
Of these supposèd crimes to give me leave
By circumstance but to acquit myself.

Vouchsafe, defused infection of a man,
Of these known evils but to give me leave
By circumstance to curse thy cursèd self.

Fairer than tongue can name thee, let me have
Some patient leisure to excuse myself.

Fouler than heart can think thee, thou canst make
No èxcuse current but to hang thyself.

And by despairing, shalst thou stand excused
For doing worthy vengeance on thyself,
Which didst unworthy slaughter upon others.

Then say they were not slain.
But dead they are, and, devilish slave, by thee.

In thy foul throat thou liest. Queen Margaret saw
Thy murd’rous falchion smoking in his blood,
The which thou once didst bend against her breast,
But that thy brothers beat aside the point.

I was provokèd by her sland’rous tongue,
That laid their guilt upon my guiltless shoulders.

Thou wast provokèd by thy bloody mind,
Which never dream’st on aught but butcheries.
Didst thou not kill this king?

Dost grant me, hedgehog? Then God grant me too
Thou mayst be damnèd for that wicked deed.
Oh, he was gentle, mild, and virtuous.

Let him thank me, that holp to send him thither,
For he was fitter for that place than earth.

I know so. But gentle Lady Anne,
To leave this keen encounter of our wits
And fall something into a slower method,
Is not the causer of the timeless deaths
Of these Plantagenets, Henry and Edward,
As blameful as the executioner?

Your beauty was the cause of that effect:
Your beauty, that did haunt me in my sleep
To undertake the death of all the world,
So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom.

If I thought that, I tell thee, homicide,
These nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks.

These eyes could never endure sweet beauty’s wreck.
You should not blemish it if I stood by.
As all the world is cheered by the sun,
So I by that. It is my day, my life.

It is a quarrel most unnatural
To be revenged on him that loveth you.

It is a quarrel just and reasonable
To be revenged on him that killed my husband.

He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband
Did it to help thee to a better husband.

                                        Plantagenet.

                                    Why, that was he.

                                   Here.

                                 Why dost thou spit at me?

Never hung poison on a fouler toad.
Out of my sight. Thou dost infect mine eyes.

I would they were, that I might die at once,
For now they kill me with a living death.
Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears,
Shamed their aspècts with store of childish drops.
These eyes, that never shed remorseful tear,
No, when my father York and Edward wept
To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made
When black-faced Clifford shook his sword at him,
Nor when thy warlike father, like a child,
Told the sad story of my father’s death
And twenty times made pause to sob and weep,
That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks
Like trees bedashed with rain. In that sad time
My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear.
And what these sorrows could not thence exhale
Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping.
I never sued to friend nor enemy.
My tongue could never learn sweet smoothing word.
But now thy beauty is proposed my fee,
My proud heart sues and prompts my tongue to speak.

Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made
For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.
If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive,
Lo, here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword,
Which if thou please to hide in this true breast
And let the soul forth that adoreth thee,
I lay it naked to the deadly stroke
And humbly beg the death upon my knee.