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Complete Plays, The

Page 211

by William Shakespeare


  Away! be gone.

  Exeunt Murderers

  Sound trumpets. Enter King Henry VI, Queen Margaret, Cardinal, Somerset, with Attendants

  King Henry VI

  Go, call our uncle to our presence straight;

  Say we intend to try his grace to-day.

  If he be guilty, as ’tis published.

  Suffolk

  I’ll call him presently, my noble lord.

  Exit

  King Henry VI

  Lords, take your places; and, I pray you all,

  Proceed no straiter ’gainst our uncle Gloucester

  Than from true evidence of good esteem

  He be approved in practise culpable.

  Queen Margaret

  God forbid any malice should prevail,

  That faultless may condemn a nobleman!

  Pray God he may acquit him of suspicion!

  King Henry VI

  I thank thee, Meg; these words content me much.

  Re-enter Suffolk

  How now! why look’st thou pale? why tremblest thou?

  Where is our uncle? what’s the matter, Suffolk?

  Suffolk

  Dead in his bed, my lord; Gloucester is dead.

  Queen Margaret

  Marry, God forfend!

  Cardinal

  God’s secret judgment: I did dream to-night

  The duke was dumb and could not speak a word.

  King Henry VI swoons

  Queen Margaret

  How fares my lord? Help, lords! the king is dead.

  Somerset

  Rear up his body; wring him by the nose.

  Queen Margaret

  Run, go, help, help! O Henry, ope thine eyes!

  Suffolk

  He doth revive again: madam, be patient.

  King Henry VI

  O heavenly God!

  Queen Margaret

  How fares my gracious lord?

  Suffolk

  Comfort, my sovereign! gracious Henry, comfort!

  King Henry VI

  What, doth my Lord of Suffolk comfort me?

  Came he right now to sing a raven’s note,

  Whose dismal tune bereft my vital powers;

  And thinks he that the chirping of a wren,

  By crying comfort from a hollow breast,

  Can chase away the first-conceived sound?

  Hide not thy poison with such sugar’d words;

  Lay not thy hands on me; forbear, I say;

  Their touch affrights me as a serpent’s sting.

  Thou baleful messenger, out of my sight!

  Upon thy eye-balls murderous tyranny

  Sits in grim majesty, to fright the world.

  Look not upon me, for thine eyes are wounding:

  Yet do not go away: come, basilisk,

  And kill the innocent gazer with thy sight;

  For in the shade of death I shall find joy;

  In life but double death, now Gloucester’s dead.

  Queen Margaret

  Why do you rate my Lord of Suffolk thus?

  Although the duke was enemy to him,

  Yet he most Christian-like laments his death:

  And for myself, foe as he was to me,

  Might liquid tears or heart-offending groans

  Or blood-consuming sighs recall his life,

  I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans,

  Look pale as primrose with blood-drinking sighs,

  And all to have the noble duke alive.

  What know I how the world may deem of me?

  For it is known we were but hollow friends:

  It may be judged I made the duke away;

  So shall my name with slander’s tongue be wounded,

  And princes’ courts be fill’d with my reproach.

  This get I by his death: ay me, unhappy!

  To be a queen, and crown’d with infamy!

  King Henry VI

  Ah, woe is me for Gloucester, wretched man!

  Queen Margaret

  Be woe for me, more wretched than he is.

  What, dost thou turn away and hide thy face?

  I am no loathsome leper; look on me.

  What! art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf?

  Be poisonous too and kill thy forlorn queen.

  Is all thy comfort shut in Gloucester’s tomb?

  Why, then, dame Margaret was ne’er thy joy.

  Erect his statue and worship it,

  And make my image but an alehouse sign.

  Was I for this nigh wreck’d upon the sea

  And twice by awkward wind from England’s bank

  Drove back again unto my native clime?

  What boded this, but well forewarning wind

  Did seem to say ‘seek not a scorpion’s nest,

  Nor set no footing on this unkind shore’?

  What did I then, but cursed the gentle gusts

  And he that loosed them forth their brazen caves:

  And bid them blow towards England’s blessed shore,

  Or turn our stern upon a dreadful rock

  Yet Aeolus would not be a murderer,

  But left that hateful office unto thee:

  The pretty-vaulting sea refused to drown me,

  Knowing that thou wouldst have me drown’d on shore,

  With tears as salt as sea, through thy unkindness:

  The splitting rocks cower’d in the sinking sands

  And would not dash me with their ragged sides,

  Because thy flinty heart, more hard than they,

  Might in thy palace perish Margaret.

  As far as I could ken thy chalky cliffs,

  When from thy shore the tempest beat us back,

  I stood upon the hatches in the storm,

  And when the dusky sky began to rob

  My earnest-gaping sight of thy land’s view,

  I took a costly jewel from my neck,

  A heart it was, bound in with diamonds,

  And threw it towards thy land: the sea received it,

  And so I wish’d thy body might my heart:

  And even with this I lost fair England’s view

  And bid mine eyes be packing with my heart

  And call’d them blind and dusky spectacles,

  For losing ken of Albion’s wished coast.

  How often have I tempted Suffolk’s tongue,

  The agent of thy foul inconstancy,

  To sit and witch me, as Ascanius did

  When he to madding Dido would unfold

  His father’s acts commenced in burning Troy!

  Am I not witch’d like her? or thou not false like him?

  Ay me, I can no more! die, Margaret!

  For Henry weeps that thou dost live so long.

  Noise within. Enter Warwick, Salisbury, and many Commons

  Warwick

  It is reported, mighty sovereign,

  That good Duke Humphrey traitorously is murder’d

  By Suffolk and the Cardinal Beaufort’s means.

  The commons, like an angry hive of bees

  That want their leader, scatter up and down

  And care not who they sting in his revenge.

  Myself have calm’d their spleenful mutiny,

  Until they hear the order of his death.

  King Henry VI

  That he is dead, good Warwick, ’tis too true;

  But how he died God knows, not Henry:

  Enter his chamber, view his breathless corpse,

  And comment then upon his sudden death.

  Warwick

  That shall I do, my liege. Stay, Salisbury,

  With the rude multitude till I return.

  Exit

  King Henry VI

  O Thou that judgest all things, stay my thoughts,

  My thoughts, that labour to persuade my soul

  Some violent hands were laid on Humphrey’s life!

  If my suspect be false, forgive me, God,

  For judgment only doth belong to thee.

&
nbsp; Fain would I go to chafe his paly lips

  With twenty thousand kisses, and to drain

  Upon his face an ocean of salt tears,

  To tell my love unto his dumb deaf trunk,

  And with my fingers feel his hand unfeeling:

  But all in vain are these mean obsequies;

  And to survey his dead and earthly image,

  What were it but to make my sorrow greater?

  Re-enter Warwick and others, bearing Gloucester’s body on a bed

  Warwick

  Come hither, gracious sovereign, view this body.

  King Henry VI

  That is to see how deep my grave is made;

  For with his soul fled all my worldly solace,

  For seeing him I see my life in death.

  Warwick

  As surely as my soul intends to live

  With that dread King that took our state upon him

  To free us from his father’s wrathful curse,

  I do believe that violent hands were laid

  Upon the life of this thrice-famed duke.

  Suffolk

  A dreadful oath, sworn with a solemn tongue!

  What instance gives Lord Warwick for his vow?

  Warwick

  See how the blood is settled in his face.

  Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost,

  Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale and bloodless,

  Being all descended to the labouring heart;

  Who, in the conflict that it holds with death,

  Attracts the same for aidance ’gainst the enemy;

  Which with the heart there cools and ne’er returneth

  To blush and beautify the cheek again.

  But see, his face is black and full of blood,

  His eye-balls further out than when he lived,

  Staring full ghastly like a strangled man;

  His hair uprear’d, his nostrils stretched with struggling;

  His hands abroad display’d, as one that grasp’d

  And tugg’d for life and was by strength subdued:

  Look, on the sheets his hair you see, is sticking;

  His well-proportion’d beard made rough and rugged,

  Like to the summer’s corn by tempest lodged.

  It cannot be but he was murder’d here;

  The least of all these signs were probable.

  Suffolk

  Why, Warwick, who should do the duke to death?

  Myself and Beaufort had him in protection;

  And we, I hope, sir, are no murderers.

  Warwick

  But both of you were vow’d Duke Humphrey’s foes,

  And you, forsooth, had the good duke to keep:

  ’Tis like you would not feast him like a friend;

  And ’tis well seen he found an enemy.

  Queen Margaret

  Then you, belike, suspect these noblemen

  As guilty of Duke Humphrey’s timeless death.

  Warwick

  Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh

  And sees fast by a butcher with an axe,

  But will suspect ’twas he that made the slaughter?

  Who finds the partridge in the puttock’s nest,

  But may imagine how the bird was dead,

  Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?

  Even so suspicious is this tragedy.

  Queen Margaret

  Are you the butcher, Suffolk? Where’s your knife?

  Is Beaufort term’d a kite? Where are his talons?

  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.

  Say, if thou darest, proud Lord of Warwick-shire,

  That I am faulty in Duke Humphrey’s death.

  Exeunt Cardinal, Somerset, and others

  Warwick

  What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him?

  Queen Margaret

  He dares not calm his contumelious spirit

  Nor cease to be an arrogant controller,

  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 demeanor!

  If ever lady wrong’d her lord so much,

  Thy mother took into her blameful bed

  Some stern untutor’d churl, and noble stock

  Was graft with crab-tree slip; whose fruit thou art,

  And never of the Nevils’ noble race.

  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

  Make thee beg pardon for thy passed speech,

  And say it was thy mother that thou meant’st

  That thou thyself was born in bastardy;

  And after all this fearful homage done,

  Give thee thy hire and send thy soul to hell,

  Pernicious blood-sucker of sleeping men!

  Suffolk

  Thou shall be waking well I shed thy blood,

  If from this presence thou darest go with me.

  Warwick

  Away even now, or I will drag thee hence:

  Unworthy though thou art, I’ll cope with thee

  And do some service to Duke Humphrey’s ghost.

  Exeunt Suffolk and Warwick

  King Henry VI

  What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted!

  Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just,

  And he but naked, though lock’d up in steel

  Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.

  A noise within

  Queen Margaret

  What noise is this?

  Re-enter Suffolk and Warwick, with their weapons drawn

  King Henry VI

  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

  Set all upon me, mighty sovereign.

  Salisbury

  [To the Commons, entering] 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,

  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,

  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

  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 slily glided towards your majesty,

  It were but necessary you were waked,

  Lest, being suffer’d 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, whether you will or no,

  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!

  Suffolk

  ’Tis like the commons, rude unpolish’d hinds,

  Could send such message to their sovereign:

  But you, my lord, were glad to be employ’d,

  To show how quaint an orator you are:

  But all the honour Salisbury hath won

  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 Henry VI

  Go, Salisbury, and tell them all from me.

  I thank them for their tender loving care;

  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,

  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 Margaret

  O Henry, let me plead for gentle Suffolk!

  King Henry VI

  Ungentle queen, to call him gentle Suffolk!

  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

  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 Margaret and Suffolk

  Queen Margaret

  Mischance and sorrow go along with you!

  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,

  And let thy Suffolk take his heavy leave.

  Queen Margaret

  Fie, coward woman and soft-hearted wretch!

  Hast thou not spirit to curse thine enemy?

  Suffolk

  A plague upon them! wherefore should I curse them?

  Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake’s groan,

  I would invent as bitter-searching terms,

  As curst, as harsh and horrible to hear,

  Deliver’d strongly through my fixed teeth,

  With full as many signs of deadly hate,

  As lean-faced Envy in her loathsome cave:

  My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words;

 

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