A monologue from the play by William ShakespeareCLARENCE: O, I have passed a miserable night,So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,That, as I am a Christian faithful man,I would not spend another such nightThough ’twere to buy a world of happy days–So full of dismal terror was the time. Methoughts that I had broken from the TowerAnd was embarked to cross the Bergundy,And in my company my brother Gloucester,Who from my cabin tempted me to walkUpon the hatches: thence we looked toward EnglandAnd cited up a thousand heavy times,During the wars of York and Lancaster,That had befall’n us.
As we paced alongUpon the giddy footing of the hatches,Methought that Gloucester stumbled, and in fallingStruck me (that thought to stay him) overboardInto the tumbling billows of the main. O Lord! methought what pain it was to drown!What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!Methoughts I saw a thousand fearful wracks;A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon;Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,All scatt’red in the bottom of the sea:Some lay in dead men’s skulls, and in the holesWhere eyes did once inhabit, there were crept(As ’twere in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems,That wooed the slimy bottom of the deepAnd mocked the dead bones that lay scatt’red by. I passed (methought) the melancholy flood,With that sour ferryman which poets write of,Unto the kingdom of perpetual night. The first that there did greet my stranger soulWas my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick,Who spake aloud, ‘What scourge for perjuryCan this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?’And so he vanished. Then came wand’ring byA shadow like an angel, with bright hairDabbled in blood, and he shrieked aloud,’Clarence is come — false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,That stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury:Seize on him, Furies, take him unto torment!’With that (methoughts) a legion of foul fiendsEnvironed me, and howled in mine earsSuch hideous cries that with the very noiseI, trembling, waked, and for a season afterCould not believe but that I was in hell,Such terrible impression made my dream.
