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Set Down Your Load

A drama monologue from Richard III by William Shakespeare. About 2 min.

Lady Anne mourns over the body of King Henry and curses the man who killed him and her husband.

Lady Anne
20s to 30s. A young widow following her father-in-law’s coffin

  1. A London street. King Henry’s coffin is carried in, and she follows it.

  2. Set down, set down your honourable load, If honour may be shrouded in a hearse,

  3. Whilst I awhile obsequiously lament Th’ untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster.

  4. Poor key-cold figure of a holy king, Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster.

  5. Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood, Be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost

  6. To hear the lamentations of poor Anne, Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughtered son, Stabbed by the selfsame hand that made these wounds.

  7. Lo, in these windows that let forth thy life I pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes.

  8. O, cursed be the hand that made these holes;

  9. Cursed the heart that had the heart to do it;

  10. Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence.

  11. More direful hap betide that hated wretch That makes us wretched by the death of thee

  12. Than I can wish to adders, spiders, toads, Or any creeping venomed thing that lives.

  13. If ever he have child, abortive be it, Prodigious, and untimely brought to light,

  14. Whose ugly and unnatural aspect May fright the hopeful mother at the view, And that be heir to his unhappiness.

  15. 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.

  16. Come now towards Chertsey with your holy load, Taken from Paul’s to be interred there;

  17. And still, as you are weary of this weight, Rest you, whiles I lament King Henry’s corse.

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Public domain, William Shakespeare, 1597. Text from Project Gutenberg #1503.

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