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,