For soldiers’ stomachs always serve them well.
COUNTESS
With all my heart; and think me honoured
To feast so great a warrior in my house. Exeunt
2.4 A rose brier. Enter Richard Plantagenet, the Earl of Warwick, the Duke of Somerset, William de la Pole (the Earl of Suffolk), Vernon, and a Lawyer
RICHARD PLANTAGENET
Great lords and gentlemen, what means this silence?
Dare no man answer in a case of truth?
SUFFOLK
Within the Temple hall we were too loud.
The garden here is more convenient.
RICHARD PLANTAGENET
Then say at once if I maintained the truth;
Or else was wrangling Somerset in th’error?
SUFFOLK
Faith, I have been a truant in the law,
And never yet could frame my will to it,
And therefore frame the law unto my will.
SOMERSET
Judge you, my lord of Warwick, then between us.
WARWICK
Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch,
Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth,
Between two blades, which bears the better temper,
Between two horses, which doth bear him best,
Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye,
I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgement;
But in these nice sharp quillets of the law,
Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.
RICHARD PLANTAGENET
Tut, tut, here is a mannerly forbearance.
The truth appears so naked on my side
That any purblind eye may find it out.
SOMERSET
And on my side it is so well apparelled,
So clear, so shining, and so evident,
That it will glimmer through a blind man’s eye.
RICHARD PLANTAGENET
Since you are tongue-tied and so loath to speak,
In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts.
Let him that is a true-born gentleman
And stands upon the honour of his birth,
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,
From off this briar pluck a white rose with me.
He plucks a white rose
SOMERSET
Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.
He plucks a red rose
WARWICK
I love no colours, and without all colour
Of base insinuating flattery
I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.
SUFFOLK
I pluck this red rose with young Somerset,
And say withal I think he held the right.
VERNON
Stay, lords and gentlemen, and pluck no more
Till you conclude that he upon whose side
The fewest roses from the tree are cropped
Shall yield the other in the right opinion.
SOMERSET
Good Master Vernon, it is well objected.
If I have fewest, I subscribe in silence.
RICHARD PLANTAGENET And I.
VERNON
Then for the truth and plainness of the case
I pluck this pale and maiden blossom here,
Giving my verdict on the white rose’ side.
SOMERSET
Prick not your finger as you pluck it off,
Lest, bleeding, you do paint the white rose red,
And fall on my side so against your will.
VERNON
If I, my lord, for my opinion bleed,
Opinion shall be surgeon to my hurt
And keep me on the side where still I am.
SOMERSET Well, well, come on! Who else?
LAWYER
Unless my study and my books be false,
The argument you held was wrong in law;
In sign whereof I pluck a white rose too.
RICHARD PLANTAGENET
Now Somerset, where is your argument?
SOMERSET
Here in my scabbard, meditating that
Shall dye your white rose in a bloody red.
RICHARD PLANTAGENET
Meantime your cheeks do counterfeit our roses,
For pale they look with fear, as witnessing
The truth on our side.
SOMERSET No, Plantagenet,
‘Tis not for fear, but anger, that thy cheeks
Blush for pure shame to counterfeit our roses,
And yet thy tongue will not confess thy error.
RICHARD PLANTAGENET
Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset?
SOMERSET
Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?
RICHARD PLANTAGENET
Ay, sharp and piercing, to maintain his truth,
Whiles thy consuming canker eats his falsehood.
SOMERSET
Well, I’ll find friends to wear my bleeding roses,
That shall maintain what I have said is true,
Where false Plantagenet dare not be seen.
RICHARD PLANTAGENET
Now, by this maiden blossom in my hand,
I scorn thee and thy fashion, peevish boy.
SUFFOLK
Turn not thy scorns this way, Plantagenet.
RICHARD PLANTAGENET
Proud Pole, I will, and scorn both him and thee.
SUFFOLK
I’ll turn my part thereof into thy throat.
SOMERSET
Away, away, good William de la Pole.
We grace the yeoman by conversing with him.
WARWICK
Now, by God’s will, thou wrong’st him, Somerset.
His grandfather was Lionel Duke of Clarence,
Third son to the third Edward, King of England.
Spring crestless yeomen from so deep a root?
RICHARD PLANTAGENET
He bears him on the place’s privilege,
Or durst not for his craven heart say thus.
SOMERSET
By him that made me, I’ll maintain my words
On any plot of ground in Christendom.
Was not thy father, Richard Earl of Cambridge,
For treason executed in our late king’s days?
And by his treason stand’st not thou attainted,
Corrupted, and exempt from ancient gentry?
His trespass yet lives guilty in thy blood,
And till thou be restored thou art a yeoman.
RICHARD PLANTAGENET
My father was attached, not attainted;
Condemned to die for treason, but no traitor—
And that I’ll prove on better men than Somerset,