The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 223
Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?
Even so suspicious is this tragedy.
QUEEN
Are you the butcher, Suffolk? Where’s your knife?
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Is Beaufort termed a kite? Where are his talons?
[The bed is withdrawn.]
Exeunt Cardinal, Somerset and others.
SUFFOLK I wear no knife to slaughter sleeping men,
But here’s a vengeful sword, rusted with ease,
That shall be scoured in his rancorous heart
That slanders me with murder’s crimson badge.
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Say, if thou dar’st, proud Lord of Warwickshire,
That I am faulty in Duke Humphrey’s death.
WARWICK
What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him?
QUEEN He dares not calm his contumelious spirit,
Nor cease to be an arrogant controller,
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Though Suffolk dare him twenty thousand times.
WARWICK Madam, be still, with reverence may I say;
For every word you speak in his behalf
Is slander to your royal dignity.
SUFFOLK Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanour!
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If ever lady wronged her lord so much,
Thy mother took into her blameful bed
Some stern untutored churl, and noble stock
Was graft with crab-tree slip, whose fruit thou art,
And never of the Nevilles’ noble race.
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WARWICK But that the guilt of murder bucklers thee,
And I should rob the deathsman of his fee,
Quitting thee thereby of ten thousand shames,
And that my sovereign’s presence makes me mild,
I would, false murderous coward, on thy knee
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Make thee beg pardon for thy passed speech,
And say it was thy mother that thou meant’st,
That thou thyself wast born in bastardy;
And after all this fearful homage done,
Give thee thy hire and send thy soul to hell,
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Pernicious blood-sucker of sleeping men!
SUFFOLK Thou shalt be waking while I shed thy blood,
If from this presence thou dar’st go with me.
WARWICK Away even now, or I will drag thee hence.
Unworthy though thou art, I’ll cope with thee
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And do some service to Duke Humphrey’s ghost.
Exeunt Suffolk and Warwick.
KING What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?
Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just,
And he but naked, though locked up in steel,
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.
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[A noise within. The commons cry, ‘ Down with Suffolk!’]
QUEEN What noise is this?
Enter SUFFOLK and WARWICK with their weapons drawn.
KING
Why, how now, lords? Your wrathful weapons drawn
Here in our presence? Dare you be so bold?
Why, what tumultuous clamour have we here?
SUFFOLK The traitorous Warwick with the men of Bury
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Set all upon me, mighty sovereign.
Enter SALISBURY from the commons, again crying, ‘ Down with Suffolk! Down with Suffolk!’
SALISBURY [to the commons, who try to enter]
Sirs, stand apart; the King shall know your mind. –
Dread lord, the commons send you word by me,
Unless Lord Suffolk straight be done to death,
Or banished fair England’s territories,
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They will by violence tear him from your palace
And torture him with grievous lingering death.
They say, by him the good Duke Humphrey died;
They say, in him they fear your highness’ death;
And mere instinct of love and loyalty,
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Free from a stubborn opposite intent,
As being thought to contradict your liking,
Makes them thus forward in his banishment.
They say, in care of your most royal person,
That if your highness should intend to sleep
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And charge that no man should disturb your rest,
In pain of your dislike, or pain of death,
Yet notwithstanding such a strait edict,
Were there a serpent seen, with forked tongue,
That slyly glided towards your majesty,
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It were but necessary you were waked,
Lest, being suffered in that harmful slumber,
The mortal worm might make the sleep eternal.
And therefore do they cry, though you forbid,
That they will guard you, whe’er you will or no,
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From such fell serpents as false Suffolk is,
With whose envenomed and fatal sting
Your loving uncle, twenty times his worth,
They say is shamefully bereft of life.
COMMONS [within]
An answer from the King, my Lord of Salisbury!
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SUFFOLK
’Tis like the commons, rude unpolished hinds,
Could send such message to their sovereign.
But you, my lord, were glad to be employed
To show how quaint an orator you are.
But all the honour Salisbury hath won
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Is that he was the lord ambassador
Sent from a sort of tinkers to the King.
COMMONS [within]
An answer from the King or we will all break in!
KING Go, Salisbury, and tell them all from me
I thank them for their tender loving care;
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And had I not been cited so by them,
Yet did I purpose as they do entreat.
For sure, my thoughts do hourly prophesy
Mischance unto my state by Suffolk’s means.
And therefore by His majesty I swear,
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Whose far unworthy deputy I am,
He shall not breathe infection in this air
But three days longer, on the pain of death.
Exit Salisbury.
QUEEN O Henry, let me plead for gentle Suffolk!
KING Ungentle Queen, to call him gentle Suffolk!
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No more, I say; if thou dost plead for him
Thou wilt but add increase unto my wrath.
Had I but said, I would have kept my word;
But when I swear, it is irrevocable.
If after three days’ space thou here be’st found
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On any ground that I am ruler of,
The world shall not be ransom for thy life.
Come, Warwick, come; good Warwick, go with me;
I have great matters to impart to thee.
Exeunt all but Queen and Suffolk.
QUEEN Mischance and sorrow go along with you!
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Heart’s discontent and sour affliction
Be playfellows to keep you company!
There’s two of you, the devil make a third,
And threefold vengeance tend upon your steps.
SUFFOLK Cease, gentle Queen, these execrations,
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And let thy Suffolk take his heavy leave.
QUEEN Fie, coward woman and soft-hearted wretch!
Hast thou not spirit to curse thine enemies?
SUFFOLK
A plague upon them! Wherefore should I curse them?
Could curses kill, as doth the mandrake’s groan,
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I would invent as bitter searching terms,
As curst, as harsh and horrible to hear,
Delivered strongly through my fixed teeth,
> With full as many signs of deadly hate,
As lean-faced Envy in her loathsome cave.
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My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words,
Mine eyes should sparkle like the beaten flint,
My hair be fixed on end, as one distract;
Ay, every joint should seem to curse and ban.
And even now my burdened heart would break
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Should I not curse them. Poison be their drink!
Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest that they taste!
Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress trees;
Their chiefest prospect murdering basilisks;
Their softest touch as smart as lizards’ stings;
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Their music frightful as the serpent’s hiss,
And boding screech-owls make the consort full!
All the foul terrors in dark-seated hell –
QUEEN Enough, sweet Suffolk; thou torment’st thyself,
And these dread curses, like the sun ’gainst glass,
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Or like an overcharged gun, recoil
And turns the force of them upon thyself.
SUFFOLK You bade me ban, and will you bid me leave?
Now, by the ground that I am banished from,
Well could I curse away a winter’s night
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Though standing naked on a mountain top,
Where biting cold would never let grass grow,
And think it but a minute spent in sport.
QUEEN O, let me entreat thee cease. Give me thy hand,
That I may dew it with my mournful tears;
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[Kisses his hand.]
Nor let the rain of heaven wet this place
To wash away my woeful monuments.
O, could this kiss be printed in thy hand,
That thou mightst think upon these by the seal,
Through whom a thousand sighs are breathed for thee.
So, get thee gone that I may know my grief;
’Tis but surmised whiles thou art standing by,
As one that surfeits thinking on a want.
I will repeal thee or, be well assured,
Adventure to be banished myself.
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And banished I am, if but from thee.
Go; speak not to me; even now be gone!
O, go not yet. Even thus, two friends condemned
Embrace, and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves,
Loather a hundred times to part than die.
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Yet now farewell, and farewell life with thee.
SUFFOLK Thus is poor Suffolk ten times banished,
Once by the King, and three times thrice by thee.
’Tis not the land I care for, wert thou thence:
A wilderness is populous enough,
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So Suffolk had thy heavenly company.
For where thou art, there is the world itself,
With every several pleasure in the world;
And where thou art not, desolation.
I can no more. Live thou to joy thy life,
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Myself no joy in naught but that thou liv’st.
Enter VAUX.
QUEEN
Whither goes Vaux so fast? What news, I prithee?
VAUX To signify unto his majesty
That Cardinal Beaufort is at point of death;
For suddenly a grievous sickness took him,
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That makes him gasp, and stare, and catch the air,
Blaspheming God and cursing men on earth.
Sometime he talks as if Duke Humphrey’s ghost
Were by his side; sometime he calls the King
And whispers to his pillow, as to him,
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The secrets of his overcharged soul.
And I am sent to tell his majesty
That even now he cries aloud for him.
QUEEN Go, tell this heavy message to the King. –
Exit Vaux.
Ay me! What is this world? What news are these?
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But wherefore grieve I at an hour’s poor loss,
Omitting Suffolk’s exile, my soul’s treasure?
Why only, Suffolk, mourn I not for thee
And with the southern clouds contend in tears,
Theirs for the earth’s increase, mine for my sorrow’s?
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Now get thee hence; the King, thou knowst, is coming.
If thou be found by me thou art but dead.
SUFFOLK If I depart from thee I cannot live,
And in thy sight to die, what were it else
But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?
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Here could I breathe my soul into the air,
As mild and gentle as the cradle-babe
Dying with mother’s dug between its lips;
Where, from thy sight, I should be raging mad