Noise within. Enter the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury with many commons

WARWICK (to King Henry)

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

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 HENRY

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.

⌈Exeunt Warwick at one door, Salisbury and

commons at another⌉

KING HENRY

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.

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,

⌈Enter Warwick who draws apart the curtains and

shows⌉ Gloucester dead in his bed. Bed put forth

And to survey his dead and earthy image,

What were it but to make my sorrow greater?

WARWICK

Come hither, gracious sovereign, view this body.

KING HENRY

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 eyeballs further out than when he lived,

Staring full ghastly like a strangled man;

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,

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.

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 vowed Duke Humphrey’s foes,

(To Cardinal Beaufort)

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 termed 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 dar’st, proud Lord of Warwickshire,

That I am faulty in Duke Humphrey’s death.

⌈Exit Cardinal Beaufort assisted by Somerset⌉

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 demeanour!

If ever lady wronged her lord so much,

Thy mother took into her blameful bed

Some stern untutored churl, and noble stock

Was graffed with crabtree slip, whose fruit thou art,