By this I shall perceive the commons’ mind,
How they affect the house and claim of York.
Say he be taken, racked and tortured,
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I know no pain they can inflict upon him
Will make him say I moved him to those arms.
Say that he thrive, as ’tis great like he will,
Why then from Ireland come I with my strength
And reap the harvest which that rascal sowed.
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For Humphrey being dead, as he shall be,
And Henry put apart, the next for me.
Exit.
3.2 Enter two or three Murderers running over the stage, from the murder of Duke Humphrey.
1 MURDERER Run to my Lord of Suffolk; let him know
We have dispatched the Duke as he commanded.
2 MURDERER O that it were to do! What have we done?
Didst ever hear a man so penitent?
Enter SUFFOLK.
1 MURDERER Here comes my lord.
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SUFFOLK Now, sirs, have you dispatched this thing?
1 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.
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Have you laid fair the bed? Is all things well,
According as I gave directions?
1 MURDERER ’Tis, my good lord.
SUFFOLK Away, be gone! Exeunt Murderers.
Sound trumpets. Enter the KING, the QUEEN, CARDINAL, SOMERSET, with attendants.
KING Go, call our uncle to our presence straight;
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Say we intend to try his grace today
If he be guilty, as ’tis published.
SUFFOLK I’ll call him presently, my noble lord.
Exit.
KING Lords, take your places; and, I pray you all,
Proceed no straiter ’gainst our uncle Gloucester
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Than from true evidence, of good esteem,
He be approved in practice culpable.
QUEEN God forbid any malice should prevail
That faultless may condemn a noble man!
Pray God he may acquit him of suspicion!
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KING
I thank thee, Meg; these words content me much.
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 Marry, God forfend!
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CARDINAL God’s secret judgement. I did dream tonight
The Duke was dumb and could not speak a word.
[The King swoons.]
QUEEN
How fares my lord? Help, lords, the King is dead!
SOMERSET Rear up his body; wring him by the nose.
QUEEN Run, go, help, help! O, Henry, ope thine eyes!
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SUFFOLK He doth revive again; madam, be patient.
KING O heavenly God!
QUEEN How fares my gracious lord?
SUFFOLK
Comfort, my sovereign! Gracious Henry, comfort!
KING What, doth my Lord of Suffolk comfort me?
Came he right now to sing a raven’s note,
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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 sugared words;
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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 eyeballs murderous tyranny
Sits in grim majesty to fright the world.
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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.
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QUEEN 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,
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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?
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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 filled with my reproach.
This get I by his death. Ay me, unhappy!
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To be a queen, and crowned with infamy.
KING Ah, woe is me for Gloucester, wretched man!
QUEEN 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!
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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 Queen Margaret was ne’er thy joy.
Erect his statue and worship it,
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And make my image but an alehouse sign.
Was I for this nigh wrecked 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
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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
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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 drowned on shore
With tears as salt as sea through thy unkindness.
The splitting rocks cowered 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.
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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,
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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 wished thy body might my heart;
And even with this I lost fair England’s view,
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And bid mine eyes be packing with my heart,
And called 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 –
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To sit and witch me, as Ascanius did
Whe
n he to madding Dido would unfold
His father’s acts, commenced in burning Troy!
Am I not witched like her? Or thou not false like him?
Ay me, I can no more! Die, Margaret,
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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 murdered
By Suffolk and the Cardinal Beaufort’s means.
The commons, like an angry hive of bees
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That want their leader, scatter up and down
And care not who they sting in his revenge.
Myself have calmed their spleenful mutiny,
Until they hear the order of his death.
KING That he is dead, good Warwick, ’tis too true;
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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.
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Exeunt severally Warwick, and Salisbury with the commons.
KING 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 judgement only doth belong to thee.
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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;
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But all in vain are these mean obsequies.
And to survey his dead and earthy image,
What were it but to make my sorrow greater?
Bed put forth. Enter WARWICK.
WARWICK
Come hither, gracious sovereign, view this body.
[Draws the curtains, and shows Gloucester in his bed.]
KING That is to see how deep my grave is made,
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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,
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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.
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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,
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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 eyeballs further out than when he lived,
Staring full ghastly like a strangled man;
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His hair upreared, his nostrils stretched with struggling;
His hands abroad displayed, as one that grasped
And tugged for life and was by strength subdued.
Look, on the sheets his hair, you see, is sticking;
His well-proportioned beard made rough and rugged,
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Like to the summer’s corn by tempest lodged.
It cannot be but he was murdered here;
The least of all these signs were probable.
[Closes the curtains.]
SUFFOLK
Why, Warwick, who should do the Duke to death?
Myself and Beaufort had him in protection,
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And we, I hope, sir, are no murderers.
WARWICK
But both of you were vowed 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.
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QUEEN 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?
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Who finds the partridge in the puttock’s nest
But may imagine how the bird was dead,
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 222
