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,