And let thy Suffolk take his heavy leave.

QUEEN MARGARET

Fie, coward woman and soft-hearted wretch!

Hast thou not spirit to curse thine enemies?

SUFFOLK

A plague upon them! Wherefore should I curse them?

Could curses kill, as doth the mandrake’s groan,

I would invent as bitter searching terms,

As curst, as harsh, and horrible to hear,

Delivered strongly through my fixed teeth,

With full as many signs of deadly hate,

As lean-faced envy in her loathsome cave.

My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words;

Mine eyes should sparkle like the beaten flint;

My hair be fixed on end, as one distraught;

Ay, every joint should seem to curse and ban.

And, even now, my burdened heart would break

Should I not curse them. Poison be their drink!

Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest that they taste!

Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress trees!

Their chiefest prospect murd’ring basilisks!

Their softest touch as smart as lizards’ stings!

Their music frightful as the serpent’s hiss,

And boding screech-owls make the consort full!

All the foul terrors in dark-seated hell—

QUEEN MARGARET

Enough, sweet Suffolk, thou torment‘st thyself,

And these dread curses, like the sun ’gainst glass,

Or like an overcharged gun, recoil

And turn the force of them upon thyself.

SUFFOLK

You bade me ban, and will you bid me leave?

Now by this ground that I am banished from,

Well could I curse away a winter’s night,

Though standing naked on a mountain top,

Where biting cold would never let grass grow,

And think it but a minute spent in sport.

QUEEN MARGARET

O let me entreat thee cease. Give me thy hand,

That I may dew it with my mournful tears;

Nor let the rain of heaven wet this place

To wash away my woeful monuments.

⌈She kisses his palm⌉

O, could this kiss be printed in thy hand

That thou mightst think upon these lips by the seal,

Through whom a thousand sighs are breathed for

thee!

So get thee gone, that I may know my grief.

’Tis but surmised whiles thou art standing by,

As one that surfeits thinking on a want.

I will repeal thee, or, be well assured,

Adventure to be banished myself.

And banished I am, if but from thee.

Go, speak not to me; even now be gone!

O, go not yet. Even thus two friends condemned

Embrace, and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves,

Loather a hundred times to part than die.

Yet now farewell, and farewell life with thee.

SUFFOLK

Thus is poor Suffolk ten times banishèd—

Once by the King, and three times thrice by thee.

’Tis not the land I care for, wert thou thence,

A wilderness is populous enough,

So Suffolk had thy heavenly company.

For where thou art, there is the world itself,

With every several pleasure in the world;

And where thou art not, desolation.

I can no more. Live thou to joy thy life;

Myself no joy in naught but that thou liv’st.

Enter Vaux

QUEEN MARGARET

Whither goes Vaux so fast? What news, I prithee?

VAUX

To signify unto his majesty

That Cardinal Beaufort is at point of death.

For suddenly a grievous sickness took him

That makes him gasp, and stare, and catch the air,

Blaspheming God and cursing men on earth.

Sometime he talks as if Duke Humphrey’s ghost

Were by his side; sometime he calls the King,

And whispers to his pillow as to him

The secrets of his over-charged soul;

And I am sent to tell his majesty

That even now he cries aloud for him.

QUEEN MARGARET

Go tell this heavy message to the King. Exit Vaux

Ay me! What is this world? What news are these?

But wherefore grieve I at an hour’s poor loss

Omitting Suffolk’s exile, my soul’s treasure?

Why only, Suffolk, mourn I not for thee,

And with the southern clouds contend in tears—

Theirs for the earth’s increase, mine for my sorrow’s?

Now get thee hence. The King, thou know’st, is

coming. 390

If thou be found by me, thou art but dead.

SUFFOLK

If I depart from thee, I cannot live.

And in thy sight to die, what were it else

But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?

Here could I breathe my soul into the air,

As mild and gentle as the cradle babe

Dying with mother’s dug between his lips;

Where, from thy sight, I should be raging mad,

And cry out for thee to close up mine eyes,

To have thee with thy lips to stop my mouth,

So shouldst thou either turn my flying soul

Or I should breathe it, so, into thy body—

⌈He kisseth her⌉

And then it lived in sweet Elysium.

By thee to die were but to die in jest;

From thee to die were torture more than death.