The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 229
175
The title of this most renowned duke,
And in my conscience do repute his grace
The rightful heir to England’s royal seat.
KING Hast thou not sworn allegiance unto me?
SALISBURY I have.
180
KING
Canst thou dispense with heaven for such an oath?
SALISBURY It is great sin to swear unto a sin,
But greater sin to keep a sinful oath.
Who can be bound by any solemn vow
To do a murderous deed, to rob a man,
185
To force a spotless virgin’s chastity,
To reave the orphan of his patrimony,
To wring the widow from her customed right,
And have no other reason for this wrong
But that he was bound by a solemn oath?
190
QUEEN A subtle traitor needs no sophister.
KING Call Buckingham, and bid him arm himself.
YORK Call Buckingham, and all the friends thou hast.
I am resolved for death or dignity.
OLD CLIFFORD
The first, I warrant thee, if dreams prove true.
195
WARWICK You were best to go to bed and dream again,
To keep thee from the tempest of the field.
OLD CLIFFORD I am resolved to bear a greater storm
Than any thou canst conjure up today;
And that I’ll write upon thy burgonet,
200
Might I but know thee by thy household badge.
WARWICK
Now by my father’s badge, old Neville’s crest,
The rampant bear chained to the ragged staff,
This day I’ll wear aloft my burgonet,
As on a mountain top the cedar shows
205
That keeps his leaves in spite of any storm,
Even to affright thee with the view thereof.
OLD CLIFFORD
And from thy burgonet I’ll rend thy bear
And tread it underfoot with all contempt,
Despite the bearherd that protects the bear.
210
YOUNG CLIFFORD And so to arms, victorious father,
To quell the rebels and their complices.
RICHARD Fie, charity for shame! Speak not in spite,
For you shall sup with Jesu Christ tonight.
YOUNG CLIFFORD
Foul stigmatic, that’s more than thou canst tell.
215
RICHARD If not in heaven, you’ll surely sup in hell.
Exeunt severally.
5.2 An inn-sign of the Castle is displayed. Alarums to the battle. Enter WARWICK.
WARWICK Clifford of Cumberland, ’tis Warwick calls;
An if thou dost not hide thee from the bear,
Now, when the angry trumpet sounds alarum,
And dead men’s cries do fill the empty air,
Clifford, I say, come forth and fight with me!
5
Proud northern lord, Clifford of Cumberland,
Warwick is hoarse with calling thee to arms.
Enter YORK.
How now, my noble lord! What, all afoot?
YORK The deadly-handed Clifford slew my steed;
But match to match I have encountered him
10
And made a prey for carrion kites and crows
Even of the bonny beast he loved so well.
Enter OLD CLIFFORD.
WARWICK Of one or both of us the time is come.
YORK Hold, Warwick, seek thee out some other chase,
For I myself must hunt this deer to death.
15
WARWICK
Then nobly, York; ’tis for a crown thou fight’st.
As I intend, Clifford, to thrive today,
It grieves my soul to leave thee unassailed. Exit.
OLD CLIFFORD
What seest thou in me, York? Why dost thou pause?
YORK With thy brave bearing should I be in love,
20
But that thou art so fast mine enemy.
OLD CLIFFORD
Nor should thy prowess want praise and esteem,
But that ’tis shown ignobly and in treason.
YORK So let it help me now against thy sword
As I in justice and true right express it.
25
OLD CLIFFORD My soul and body on the action both!
YORK A dreadful lay! Address thee instantly.
[They fight, and Old Clifford falls.]
OLD CLIFFORD La fin couronne les oeuvres. [Dies.]
YORK
Thus war hath given thee peace, for thou art still.
Peace with his soul, heaven, if it be thy will! Exit.
30
Enter YOUNG CLIFFORD.
YOUNG CLIFFORD
Shame and confusion! All is on the rout,
Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds
Where it should guard. O war, thou son of hell,
Whom angry heavens do make their minister,
Throw in the frozen bosoms of our part
35
Hot coals of vengeance! Let no soldier fly.
He that is truly dedicate to war
Hath no self-love; nor he that loves himself
Hath not essentially, but by circumstance,
The name of valour. [Sees his dead father.]
O, let the vile world end,
40
And the premised flames of the last day
Knit earth and heaven together!
Now let the general trumpet blow his blast,
Particularities and petty sounds
To cease! Wast thou ordained, dear father,
45
To lose thy youth in peace and to achieve
The silver livery of advised age,
And, in thy reverence and thy chair-days, thus
To die in ruffian battle? Even at this sight
My heart is turned to stone, and while ’tis mine
50
It shall be stony. York not our old men spares;
No more will I their babes; tears virginal
Shall be to me even as the dew to fire,
And beauty, that the tyrant oft reclaims,
Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax.
55
Henceforth I will not have to do with pity.
Meet I an infant of the house of York,
Into as many gobbets will I cut it
As wild Medea young Absyrtus did.
In cruelty will I seek out my fame.
60
Come, thou new ruin of old Clifford’s house;
[Takes him up on his back.]
As did Aeneas old Anchises bear,
So bear I thee upon my manly shoulders;
But then Aeneas bare a living load,
Nothing so heavy as these woes of mine.
65
Exit with the body.
Enter the Duke of SOMERSET and RICHARD fighting. Somerset is killed.
RICHARD So, lie thou there;
For underneath an alehouse’ paltry sign,
The Castle in Saint Albans, Somerset
Hath made the wizard famous in his death.
Sword, hold thy temper; heart, be wrathful still:
70
Priests pray for enemies, but princes kill.
Exit with the body.
Fight. Excursions. Enter KING, QUEEN and others.
QUEEN Away, my lord! You are slow, for shame, away!
KING Can we outrun the heavens? Good Margaret, stay.
QUEEN What are you made of? You’ll nor fight nor fly.
Now is it manhood, wisdom and defence
75
To give the enemy way and to secure us
By what we can, which can no more but fly.
[Alarum afar off.]
If you be ta’en we then should see the bottom
Of all our fortunes; but
if we haply scape –
As well we may, if not through your neglect –
80
We shall to London get, where you are loved
And where this breach now in our fortunes made
May readily be stopped.
Enter YOUNG CLIFFORD.
YOUNG CLIFFORD
But that my heart’s on future mischief set,
I would speak blasphemy ere bid you fly;
85
But fly you must; uncurable discomfit
Reigns in the hearts of all our present part.
Away for your relief! And we will live
To see their day and them our fortune give.
Away, my lord, away! Exeunt.
90
5.3 Alarum. Retreat. Enter YORK, RICHARD, EDWARD, WARWICK and soldiers with drum and colours.
YORK Old Salisbury, who can report of him,
That winter lion, who in rage forgets
Aged contusions and all brush of time,
And, like a gallant in the brow of youth,
Repairs him with occasion? This happy day
5
Is not itself, nor have we won one foot
If Salisbury be lost.
RICHARD My noble father,
Three times today I holp him to his horse,
Three times bestrid him; thrice I led him off,
Persuaded him from any further act;
10
But still where danger was, still there I met him,
And like rich hangings in a homely house,
So was his will in his old feeble body.
But, noble as he is, look where he comes.
Enter SALISBURY.
Now, by my sword, well hast thou fought today.
15
SALISBURY
By th’ mass, so did we all. I thank you, Richard.
God knows how long it is I have to live,
And it hath pleased him that three times today
You have defended me from imminent death.
Well, lords, we have not got that which we have:
20
’Tis not enough our foes are this time fled,
Being opposites of such repairing nature.
YORK I know our safety is to follow them,
For, as I hear, the King is fled to London
To call a present court of parliament.
25
Let us pursue him ere the writs go forth.
What says Lord Warwick? Shall we after them?
WARWICK After them? Nay, before them if we can!
Now by my faith, lords, ’twas a glorious day.
Saint Albans’ battle won by famous York
30
Shall be eternized in all age to come.
Sound drum and trumpets, and to London all,
And more such days as these to us befall! Exeunt.
King Henry VI, Part 3
The textual history of King Henry VI, Part 3, is much like that of Part 2, and indeed is intertwined with it. Part 3 also exists in two versions: it was published as the eighth of the histories in the Folio of 1623, though in 1595 a shorter version had appeared in an octavo printing, entitled The true Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, and the death of good King Henry the Sixth, with the whole contention between the two houses Lancaster and York. This was reprinted in 1600, and in 1619 Parts 2 and 3 were published together as The Whole Contention between the two Famous Houses, Lancaster and York. These early printings of Part 3 appear to be based on a memorial text, one reconstructed by actors, possibly those playing Warwick and Clifford. The Folio text is verbally superior and about a third as long again as the earlier printings.
The play must have been written about 1590. In a pamphlet published in September 1592, the dying Robert Greene parodied a line from it (1.4.137) in an attack on Shakespeare as an ‘upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his “tiger’s heart wrapp’d in a player’s hide”, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you’. Seemingly Greene objects that a mere actor and non-graduate like Shakespeare, who may well have performed in plays by Greene, would presume to compete with the dramatists, and he is bitter that Shakespeare has done so with such success. Whatever Greene’s intent, his allusion provides a later limit for dating the play of the summer of 1592, when A Groatsworth of Wit Purchased with a Million of Repentance was written.
The play seems to have succeeded on stage, though its early theatrical history is obscure. The 1595 octavo tells us on the title-page that the play ‘was sundry times acted by the Right Honourable the Earl of Pembroke his servants’, and the Folio has ‘Sinklo’ and ‘Humphrey’ as the speech prefixes for the two keepers in 3.1. Almost certainly these are the names of the actors who played the roles, John Sincler and Humphrey Jeffes, both members of Pembroke’s Men in the 1590s. Little is know of this company or of Shakespeare’s relation to it beyond the fact that it was active in London in 1592, was disbanded on tour in the provinces in the late summer of 1593 and apparently had a few of Shakespeare’s plays in its repertoire. Perhaps the shortened text of King Henry VI, Part 3 was even prepared for its tour in 1593.
The play itself continues the history of Henry’s reign from the very point where Part 2 ends, though like Parts 1 and 2 it stands as an independent play, with its own structure and thematic concerns. It picks up the action in the aftermath of the Lancastrian defeat at St Albans (1455) and continues the history to the death of Henry and the confirmation of Edward IV as King in 1471. As the seventeen-year scope demands, history is condensed, events omitted, rearranged or fused together. Still, the broad outline follows the pattern Shakespeare found in the historical accounts of Edward Hall’s Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1548).