University of Virginia Library

SCENE I London: a Street.

Enter Gloster (reading The Historical Review)
Gloster.
I am a very personable man,
And did not cut my teeth ere I was born,
Still less may be described as ‘half made up’.
My humpback is a myth: mine evil deeds
Were falsehoods of Archbishop Morton coined,
Paid for by Richmond, put in currency
By that detested caitiff, Thomas More.

Enter Clarence.
Gloster.
Brother, good day! Thou canst not say I did it!

Clarence.
There is a certain buzzing in my wits:
The new historians distract my mind,
Yet was I Clarence once, and bore a brain.

Gloster
(aside).
Wiser, perchance, if thou hadst brained a Boar!
But, hist! I am a moral character.
I ask thee, who was guilty?

Clarence.
I know not, but—

Gloster.
But me no buts! That butt of Malmsey wine
Is an exploded fable.

Clarence.
Certainly.
Yet, somehow, I was foully done to death
Unhouseled, unanointed, unannealed.

Gloster.
'Twas Richmond, 'twas false, fleeting, perjured Richmond!

[Exit Clarence.