King Henry VI, Part II
ACT III SCENE II | Bury St. Edmund’s. A room of state. | |
[Enter certain Murderers, hastily] | ||
First Murderer | Run to my Lord of Suffolk; let him know | |
We have dispatch’d the duke, as he commanded. | ||
Second Murderer | O that it were to do! What have we done? | |
Didst ever hear a man so penitent? | ||
[Enter SUFFOLK] | ||
First Murder | Here comes my lord. | 5 |
SUFFOLK | Now, sirs, have you dispatch’d this thing? | |
First Murderer | Ay, my good lord, he’s dead. | |
SUFFOLK | Why, that’s well said. Go, get you to my house; | |
I will reward you for this venturous deed. | ||
The king and all the peers are here at hand. | 10 | |
Have you laid fair the bed? Is all things well, | ||
According as I gave directions? | ||
First Murderer | ‘Tis, my good lord. | |
SUFFOLK | 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; | 15 |
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 | 20 | |
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! | 25 | |
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! | 30 |
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! | 35 |
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? | 40 |
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? | 45 | |
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 | 50 | |
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; | 55 | |
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, | 60 | |
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. | 65 | |
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. | 70 | |
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? | 75 | |
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. | 80 | |
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? | 85 | |
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: | 90 | |
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, | 95 | |
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, | 100 | |
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 | 105 | |
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: | 110 | |
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, | 115 | |
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? | 120 | |
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. | 125 | |
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. | 130 | |
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, | 135 |
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, | 140 | |
For judgment only doth belong to thee. | ||
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, | 145 | |
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. | 150 |
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 | 155 | |
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? | 160 | |
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, | 165 | |
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, | 170 | |
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; | 175 | |
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? | 180 |
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; | 185 | |
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, | 190 | |
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. | 195 | |
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 | 200 | |
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 | 205 |
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. | 210 | |
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, | 215 | |
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, | 220 | |
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, | 225 | |
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: | 230 |
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 | 235 | |
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? | 240 | |
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, | 245 | |
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; | 250 | |
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. | 255 | |
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, | 260 | |
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; | 265 | |
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, | 270 | |
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: | 275 | |
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. | 280 | |
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; | 285 | |
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 | 290 | |
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. | 295 | |
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. | 300 | |
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! | 305 | |
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! | 310 |
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, | 315 | |
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; | ||
Mine eyes should sparkle like the beaten flint; | 320 | |
Mine hair be fixed on end, as one distract; | ||
Ay, every joint should seem to curse and ban: | ||
And even now my burthen’d heart would break, | ||
Should I not curse them. Poison be their drink! | ||
Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest that they taste! | 325 | |
Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress trees! | ||
Their chiefest prospect murdering basilisks! | ||
Their softest touch as smart as lizards’ sting! | ||
Their music frightful as the serpent’s hiss, | ||
And boding screech-owls make the concert full! | 330 | |
All the foul terrors in dark-seated hell– | ||
QUEEN MARGARET | Enough, sweet Suffolk; thou torment’st thyself; | |
And these dread curses, like the sun ‘gainst glass, | ||
Or like an overcharged gun, recoil, | ||
And turn the force of them upon thyself. | 335 | |
SUFFOLK | You bade me ban, and will you bid me leave? | |
Now, by the ground that I am banish’d from, | ||
Well could I curse away a winter’s night, | ||
Though standing naked on a mountain top, | ||
Where biting cold would never let grass grow, | 340 | |
And think it but a minute spent in sport. | ||
QUEEN MARGARET | O, let me entreat thee cease. Give me thy hand, | |
That I may dew it with my mournful tears; | ||
Nor let the rain of heaven wet this place, | ||
To wash away my woful monuments. | 345 | |
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, | 350 | |
As one that surfeits thinking on a want. | ||
I will repeal thee, or, be well assured, | ||
Adventure to be banished myself: | ||
And banished I am, if but from thee. | ||
Go; speak not to me; even now be gone. | 355 | |
O, go not yet! Even thus two friends condemn’d | ||
Embrace and kiss and take ten thousand leaves, | ||
Loather a hundred times to part than die. | ||
Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee! | ||
SUFFOLK | Thus is poor Suffolk ten times banished; | 360 |
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, | ||
So Suffolk had thy heavenly company: | ||
For where thou art, there is the world itself, | 365 | |
With every several pleasure in the world, | ||
And where thou art not, desolation. | ||
I can no more: live thou to joy thy life; | ||
Myself no joy in nought but that thou livest. | ||
[Enter VAUX] | ||
QUEEN MARGARET | Wither goes Vaux so fast? what news, I prithee? | 370 |
VAUX | To signify unto his majesty | |
That Cardinal Beaufort is at point of death; | ||
For suddenly a grievous sickness took him, | ||
That makes him gasp and stare and catch the air, | ||
Blaspheming God and cursing men on earth. | 375 | |
Sometimes 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, | ||
The secrets of his overcharged soul; | ||
And I am sent to tell his majesty | 380 | |
That even now he cries aloud for him. | ||
QUEEN MARGARET | Go tell this heavy message to the king. | |
[Exit VAUX] | ||
Ay me! what is this world! what news are these! | ||
But wherefore grieve I at an hour’s poor loss, | ||
Omitting Suffolk’s exile, my soul’s treasure? | 385 | |
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 sorrows? | ||
Now get thee hence: the king, thou know’st, is coming; | ||
If thou be found by me, thou art but dead. | 390 | |
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? | ||
Here could I breathe my soul into the air, | ||
As mild and gentle as the cradle-babe | 395 | |
Dying with mother’s dug between its lips: | ||
Where, from thy sight, I should be raging mad, | ||
And cry out for thee to close up mine eyes, | ||
To have thee with thy lips to stop my mouth; | ||
So shouldst thou either turn my flying soul, | 400 | |
Or I should breathe it so into thy body, | ||
And then it lived in sweet Elysium. | ||
To die by thee were but to die in jest; | ||
From thee to die were torture more than death: | ||
O, let me stay, befall what may befall! | 405 | |
QUEEN MARGARET | Away! though parting be a fretful corrosive, | |
It is applied to a deathful wound. | ||
To France, sweet Suffolk: let me hear from thee; | ||
For wheresoe’er thou art in this world’s globe, | ||
I’ll have an Iris that shall find thee out. | 410 | |
SUFFOLK | I go. | |
QUEEN MARGARET | And take my heart with thee. | |
SUFFOLK | A jewel, lock’d into the wofull’st cask | |
That ever did contain a thing of worth. | ||
Even as a splitted bark, so sunder we | 415 | |
This way fall I to death. | ||
QUEEN MARGARET | This way for me. | |
[Exeunt severally] |
Continue to 2 Henry VI, Act 3, Scene 3