Act 3, Scene 2

Bury St. Edmund's. A Room of State.

[Enter certain Murderers, hastily.]
First Murderer
1563 Run to my Lord of Suffolk; let him know
1564 We have dispatch'd the duke, as he commanded.
Second Murderer
1565 O that it were to do! What have we done?
1566 Didst ever hear a man so penitent?
[Enter SUFFOLK.]
First Murderer
1567 Here comes my lord.
Duke of Suffolk
1568 Now, sirs, have you dispatch'd this thing?
First Murderer
1569 Ay, my good lord, he's dead.
Duke of Suffolk
1570 Why, that's well said. Go, get you to my house;
1571 I will reward you for this venturous deed.
1572 The king and all the peers are here at hand.
1573 Have you laid fair the bed? Is all things well,
1574 According as I gave directions?
First Murderer
1575 'T is, my good lord.
Duke of Suffolk
1576 Away! be gone.
[Exeunt Murderers.]
[Sound trumpets. Enter the KING, the QUEEN, CARDINAL BEAUFORT, SOMERSET, with attendants.]
King Henry VI
1577 Go, call our uncle to our presence straight;
1578 Say we intend to try his grace to-day,
1579 If he be guilty, as 't is published.
Duke of Suffolk
1580 I'll call him presently, my noble lord.
[Exit.]
King Henry VI
1581 Lords, take your places; and, I pray you all,
1582 Proceed no straiter 'gainst our uncle Gloster
1583 Than from true evidence of good esteem
1584 He be approv'd in practice culpable.
Queen Margaret
1585 God forbid any malice should prevail
1586 That faultless may condemn a nobleman!
1587 Pray God he may acquit him of suspicion!
King Henry VI
1588 I thank thee, Meg; these words content me much.—
[Re-enter SUFFOLK.]
King Henry VI
1589 How now! why look'st thou pale? why tremblest thou?
1590 Where is our uncle? what's the matter, Suffolk?
Duke of Suffolk
1591 Dead in his bed, my lord; Gloster is dead.
Queen Margaret
1592 Marry, God forfend!
Cardinal Beaufort
1593 God's secret judgment!—I did dream to-night
1594 The duke was dumb and could not speak a word.
[The King swoons.]
Queen Margaret
1595 How fares my lord?—Help, lords! the king is dead.
Duke of Somerset
1596 Rear up his body; wring him by the nose.
Queen Margaret
1597 Run, go, help, help!—O Henry, ope thine eyes!
Duke of Suffolk
1598 He doth revive again.—Madam, be patient.
King Henry VI
1599 O heavenly God!
Queen Margaret
1600 How fares my gracious lord?
Duke of Suffolk
1601 Comfort, my sovereign! gracious Henry, comfort!
King Henry VI
1602 What, doth my Lord of Suffolk comfort me?
1603 Came he right now to sing a raven's note
1604 Whose dismal tune bereft my vital powers,
1605 And thinks he that the chirping of a wren,
1606 By crying comfort from a hollow breast,
1607 Can chase away the first-conceived sound?
1608 Hide not thy poison with such sugar'd words;
1609 Lay not thy hands on me; forbear, I say!
1610 Their touch affrights me as a serpent's sting.
1611 Thou baleful messenger, out of my sight!
1612 Upon thy eye-balls murtherous tyranny
1613 Sits in grim majesty, to fright the world.
1614 Look not upon me, for thine eyes are wounding.
1615 Yet do not go away; come, basilisk,
1616 And kill the innocent gazer with thy sight,
1617 For in the shade of death I shall find joy,
1618 In life but double death, now Gloster's dead.
Queen Margaret
1619 Why do you rate my Lord of Suffolk thus?
1620 Although the duke was enemy to him,
1621 Yet he most Christian-like laments his death;
1622 And for myself, foe as he was to me,
1623 Might liquid tears or heart-offending groans
1624 Or blood-consuming sighs recall his life,
1625 I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans,
1626 Look pale as primrose with blood-drinking sighs,
1627 And all to have the noble duke alive.
1628 What know I how the world may deem of me?
1629 For it is known we were but hollow friends.
1630 It may be judg'd I made the duke away;
1631 So shall my name with slander's tongue be wounded
1632 And princes' courts be fill'd with my reproach.
1633 This get I by his death. Ay me, unhappy!
1634 To be a queen, and crown'd with infamy!
King Henry VI
1635 Ah, woe is me for Gloster, wretched man!
Queen Margaret
1636 Be woe for me, more wretched than he is.
1637 What, dost thou turn away and hide thy face?
1638 I am no loathsome leper; look on me.
1639 What! art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf?
1640 Be poisonous too and kill thy forlorn queen.
1641 Is all thy comfort shut in Gloster's tomb?
1642 Why, then, dame Margaret was ne'er thy joy.
1643 Erect his statue and worship it,
1644 And make my image but an alehouse sign.
1645 Was I for this nigh wrack'd upon the sea,
1646 And twice by awkward wind from England's bank
1647 Drove back again unto my native clime?
1648 What boded this but well forewarning wind
1649 Did seem to say 'Seek not a scorpion's nest,
1650 Nor set no footing on this unkind shore?'
1651 What did I then, but curs'd the gentle gusts
1652 And he that loos'd them forth their brazen caves,
1653 And bid them blow towards England's blessed shore,
1654 Or turn our stern upon a dreadful rock?
1655 Yet Aeolus would not be a murtherer,
1656 But left that hateful office unto thee.
1657 The pretty-vaulting sea refus'd to drown me,
1658 Knowing that thou wouldst have me drown'd on shore,
1659 With tears as salt as sea, through thy unkindness.
1660 The splitting rocks cower'd in the sinking sands
1661 And would not dash me with their ragged sides,
1662 Because thy flinty heart, more hard than they,
1663 Might in thy palace perish Margaret.
1664 As far as I could ken thy chalky cliffs,
1665 When from thy shore the tempest beat us back,
1666 I stood upon the hatches in the storm,
1667 And when the dusky sky began to rob
1668 My earnest-gaping sight of thy land's view,
1669 I took a costly jewel from my neck—
1670 A heart it was, bound in with diamonds—
1671 And threw it towards thy land; the sea receiv'd it,
1672 And so I wish'd thy body might my heart.
1673 And even with this I lost fair England's view,
1674 And bid mine eyes be packing with my heart,
1675 And call'd them blind and dusky spectacles,
1676 For losing ken of Albion's wished coast.
1677 How often have I tempted Suffolk's tongue,
1678 The agent of thy foul inconstancy,
1679 To sit and witch me, as Ascanius did
1680 When he to madding Dido would unfold
1681 His father's acts commenc'd in burning Troy!
1682 Am I not witch'd like her? or thou not false like him?
1683 Ay me, I can no more! die, Margaret!
1684 For Henry weeps that thou dost live so long.
[Noise within. Enter WARWICK, SALISBURY, and many Commons.]
Earl of Warwick
1685 It is reported, mighty sovereign,
1686 That good Duke Humphrey traitorously is murther'd
1687 By Suffolk and the Cardinal Beaufort's means.
1688 The commons, like an angry hive of bees
1689 That want their leader, scatter up and down
1690 And care not who they sting in his revenge.
1691 Myself have calm'd their spleenful mutiny
1692 Until they hear the order of his death.
King Henry VI
1693 That he is dead, good Warwick, 't is too true;
1694 But how he died God knows, not Henry.
1695 Enter his chamber, view his breathless corpse,
1696 And comment then upon his sudden death.
Earl of Warwick
1697 That shall I do, my liege.—Stay, Salisbury,
1698 With the rude multitude till I return.
[Exit.]
King Henry VI
1699 O Thou that judgest all things, stay my thoughts,
1700 My thoughts, that labour to persuade my soul
1701 Some violent hands were laid on Humphrey's life!
1702 If my suspect be false, forgive me, God,
1703 For judgment only doth belong to thee.
1704 Fain would I go to chafe his paly lips
1705 With twenty thousand kisses, and to drain
1706 Upon his face an ocean of salt tears
1707 To tell my love unto his dumb deaf trunk,
1708 And with my fingers feel his hand unfeeling;
1709 But all in vain are these mean obsequies;
1710 And to survey his dead and earthy image,
1711 What were it but to make my sorrow greater?
[Re-enter WARWICK and others, bearing GLOSTER's body on a bed.]
Earl of Warwick
1712 Come hither, gracious sovereign, view this body.
King Henry VI
1713 That is to see how deep my grave is made;
1714 For with his soul fled all my worldly solace,
1715 For seeing him I see my life in death.
Earl of Warwick
1716 As surely as my soul intends to live
1717 With that dread King that took our state upon him
1718 To free us from his father's wrathful curse,
1719 I do believe that violent hands were laid
1720 Upon the life of this thrice-famed duke.
Duke of Suffolk
1721 A dreadful oath, sworn with a solemn tongue!
1722 What instance gives Lord Warwick for his vow?
Earl of Warwick
1723 See how the blood is settled in his face.
1724 Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost,
1725 Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless,
1726 Being all descended to the labouring heart,
1727 Who, in the conflict that it holds with death,
1728 Attracts the same for aidance 'gainst the enemy,
1729 Which with the heart there cools and ne'er returneth
1730 To blush and beautify the cheek again.
1731 But see, his face is black and full of blood,
1732 His eyeballs further out than when he liv'd,
1733 Staring full ghastly like a strangled man;
1734 His hair uprear'd, his nostrils stretch'd with struggling,
1735 His hands abroad display'd, as one that grasp'd
1736 And tugg'd for life and was by strength subdu'd.
1737 Look, on the sheets his hair, you see, is sticking;
1738 His well-proportion'd beard made rough and rugged,
1739 Like to the summer's corn by tempest lodged.
1740 It cannot be but he was murther'd here;
1741 The least of all these signs were probable.
Duke of Suffolk
1742 Why, Warwick, who should do the duke to death?
1743 Myself and Beaufort had him in protection;
1744 And we, I hope, sir, are no murtherers.
Earl of Warwick
1745 But both of you were vow'd Duke Humphrey's foes,
1746 And you, forsooth, had the good duke to keep;
1747 'T is like you would not feast him like a friend,
1748 And 't is well seen he found an enemy.
Queen Margaret
1749 Then you, belike, suspect these noblemen
1750 As guilty of Duke Humphrey's timeless death.
Earl of Warwick
1751 Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh
1752 And sees fast by a butcher with an axe
1753 But will suspect 't was he that made the slaughter?
1754 Who finds the partridge in the puttock's nest
1755 But may imagine how the bird was dead,
1756 Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?
1757 Even so suspicious is this tragedy.
Queen Margaret
1758 Are you the butcher, Suffolk? Where's your knife?
1759 Is Beaufort term'd a kite? Where are his talons?
Duke of Suffolk
1760 I wear no knife to slaughter sleeping men;
1761 But here's a vengeful sword, rusted with ease,
1762 That shall be scoured in his rancorous heart
1763 That slanders me with murther's crimson badge.—
1764 Say, if thou dar'st, proud Lord of Warwickshire,
1765 That I am faulty in Duke Humphrey's death.
[Exeunt Cardinal, Somerset, and others.]
Earl of Warwick
1766 What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him?
Queen Margaret
1767 He dares not calm his contumelious spirit,
1768 Nor cease to be an arrogant controller,
1769 Though Suffolk dare him twenty thousand times.
Earl of Warwick
1770 Madam, be still,—with reverence may I say;
1771 For every word you speak in his behalf
1772 Is slander to your royal dignity.
Duke of Suffolk
1773 Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanour!
1774 If ever lady wrong'd her lord so much,
1775 Thy mother took into her blameful bed
1776 Some stern untutor'd churl, and noble stock
1777 Was graft with crab-tree slip, whose fruit thou art,
1778 And never of the Nevils' noble race.
Earl of Warwick
1779 But that the guilt of murther bucklers thee
1780 And I should rob the deathsman of his fee,
1781 Quitting thee thereby of ten thousand shames,
1782 And that my sovereign's presence makes me mild,
1783 I would, false murtherous coward, on thy knee
1784 Make thee beg pardon for thy passed speech
1785 And say it was thy mother that thou meant'st,
1786 That thou thyself was born in bastardy;
1787 And after all this fearful homage done,
1788 Give thee thy hire and send thy soul to hell,
1789 Pernicious blood-sucker of sleeping men!
Duke of Suffolk
1790 Thou shalt be waking while I shed thy blood,
1791 If from this presence thou dar'st go with me.
Earl of Warwick
1792 Away even now, or I will drag thee hence.
1793 Unworthy though thou art, I'll cope with thee
1794 And do some service to Duke Humphrey's ghost.
[Exeunt Suffolk and Warwick.]
King Henry VI
1795 What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted!
1796 Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel just,
1797 And he but naked, though lock'd up in steel,
1798 Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.
[A noise within.]
Queen Margaret
1799 What noise is this?
[Re-enter Suffolk and Warwick, with their weapons drawn.]
King Henry VI
1800 Why, how now, lords! your wrathful weapons drawn
1801 Here in our presence! dare you be so bold?
1802 Why, what tumultuous clamour have we here?
Duke of Suffolk
1803 The traitorous Warwick with the men of Bury
1804 Set all upon me, mighty sovereign.
[To the Commons, entering.]
Earl of Salisbury
1805 Sirs, stand apart;
1806 the king shall know your mind.—
1807 Dread lord, the commons send you word by me,
1808 Unless false Suffolk straight be done to death,
1809 Or banished fair England's territories,
1810 They will by violence tear him from your palace
1811 And torture him with grievous lingering death.
1812 They say, by him the good Duke Humphrey died;
1813 They say, in him they fear your highness' death;
1814 And mere instinct of love and loyalty,
1815 Free from a stubborn opposite intent,
1816 As being thought to contradict your liking,
1817 Makes them thus forward in his banishment.
1818 They say, in care of your most royal person,
1819 That if your highness should intend to sleep
1820 And charge that no man should disturb your rest
1821 In pain of your dislike or pain of death,
1822 Yet, notwithstanding such a strait edict,
1823 Were there a serpent seen, with forked tongue,
1824 That slily glided towards your majesty,
1825 It were but necessary you were wak'd,
1826 Lest, being suffer'd in that harmful slumber,
1827 The mortal worm might make the sleep eternal;
1828 And therefore do they cry, though you forbid,
1829 That they will guard you, whether you will or no,
1830 From such fell serpents as false Suffolk is,
1831 With whose envenomed and fatal sting,
1832 Your loving uncle, twenty times his worth,
1833 They say, is shamefully bereft of life.
[Within.]
The Commons
1834 An answer from the king, my Lord of Salisbury!
Duke of Suffolk
1835 'T is like the commons, rude unpolish'd hinds,
1836 Could send such message to their sovereign;
1837 But you, my lord, were glad to be employ'd,
1838 To show how quaint an orator you are.
1839 But all the honour Salisbury hath won
1840 Is that he was the lord ambassador
1841 Sent from a sort of tinkers to the king.
[Within.]
The Commons
1842 An answer from the king, or we will all break in!
King Henry VI
1843 Go, Salisbury, and tell them all from me,
1844 I thank them for their tender loving care,
1845 And had I not been cited so by them,
1846 Yet did I purpose as they do entreat,
1847 For, sure, my thoughts do hourly prophesy
1848 Mischance unto my state by Suffolk's means;
1849 And therefore, by His majesty I swear,
1850 Whose far unworthy deputy I am,
1851 He shall not breathe infection in this air
1852 But three days longer, on the pain of death.
[Exit Salisbury.]
Queen Margaret
1853 O Henry, let me plead for gentle Suffolk!
King Henry VI
1854 Ungentle queen, to call him gentle Suffolk!
1855 No more, I say; if thou dost plead for him,
1856 Thou wilt but add increase unto my wrath.
1857 Had I but said, I would have kept my word,
1858 But when I swear, it is irrevocable.—
1859 If, after three days' space, thou here be'st found
1860 On any ground that I am ruler of,
1861 The world shall not be ransom for thy life.—
1862 Come, Warwick, come, good Warwick, go with me;
1863 I have great matters to impart to thee.
[Exeunt all but Queen and Suffolk.]
Queen Margaret
1864 Mischance and sorrow go along with you!
1865 Heart's discontent and sour affliction
1866 Be playfellows to keep you company!
1867 There's two of you; the devil make a third!
1868 And threefold vengeance tend upon your steps!
Duke of Suffolk
1869 Cease, gentle queen, these execrations,
1870 And let thy Suffolk take his heavy leave.
Queen Margaret
1871 Fie, coward woman and soft-hearted wretch,
1872 Has thou not spirit to curse thine enemy?
Duke of Suffolk
1873 A plague upon them! wherefore should I curse them?
1874 Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,
1875 I would invent as bitter-searching terms,
1876 As curst, as harsh and horrible to hear,
1877 Deliver'd strongly through my fixed teeth,
1878 With full as many signs of deadly hate,
1879 As lean-fac'd Envy in her loathsome cave.
1880 My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words;
1881 Mine eyes should sparkle like the beaten flint;
1882 Mine hair be fix'd an end, as one distract;
1883 Ay, every joint should seem to curse and ban;
1884 And even now my burthen'd heart would break,
1885 Should I not curse them. Poison be their drink!
1886 Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest that they taste!
1887 Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress-trees!
1888 Their chiefest prospect murthering basilisks!
1889 Their softest touch as smart as lizards' stings!
1890 Their music frightful as the serpent's hiss,
1891 And boding screech-owls make the consort full!
1892 All the foul terrors in dark-seated hell—
Queen Margaret
1893 Enough, sweet Suffolk; thou torment'st thyself;
1894 And these dread curses, like the sun 'gainst glass,
1895 Or like an overcharged gun, recoil
1896 And turns the force of them upon thyself.
Duke of Suffolk
1897 You bade me ban, and will you bid me leave?
1898 Now, by the ground that I am banish'd from,
1899 Well could I curse away a winter's night,
1900 Though standing naked on a mountain top
1901 Where biting cold would never let grass grow,
1902 And think it but a minute spent in sport.
Queen Margaret
1903 O, let me entreat thee cease. Give me thy hand,
1904 That I may dew it with my mournful tears;
1905 Nor let the rain of heaven wet this place,
1906 To wash away my woeful monuments.
1907 O, could this kiss be printed in thy hand,
1908 That thou mightest think upon these by the seal,
1909 Through whom a thousand sighs are breath'd for thee!
1910 So, get thee gone, that I may know my grief;
1911 'T is but surmis'd whiles thou art standing by,
1912 As one that surfeits thinking on a want.
1913 I will repeal thee, or, be well assur'd,
1914 Adventure to be banished myself;
1915 And banished I am, if but from thee.
1916 Go; speak not to me, even now be gone.—
1917 O, go not yet!—Even thus two friends condemn'd
1918 Embrace and kiss and take ten thousand leaves,
1919 Loather a hundred times to part than die.
1920 Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee!
Duke of Suffolk
1921 Thus is poor Suffolk ten times banished;
1922 Once by the king, and three times thrice by thee.
1923 'T is not the land I care for, wert thou thence;
1924 A wilderness is populous enough,
1925 So Suffolk had thy heavenly company;
1926 For where thou art, there is the world itself,
1927 With every several pleasure in the world,
1928 And where thou art not, desolation.
1929 I can no more; live thou to joy thy life,
1930 Myself no joy in nought but that thou liv'st.
[Enter VAUX.]
Queen Margaret
1931 Whither goes Vaux so fast? what news, I prithee?
Vaux
1932 To signify unto his majesty
1933 That Cardinal Beaufort is at point of death;
1934 For suddenly a grievous sickness took him,
1935 That makes him gasp and stare and catch the air,
1936 Blaspheming God and cursing men on earth.
1937 Sometime he talks as if Duke Humphrey's ghost
1938 Were by his side, sometime he calls the king
1939 And whispers to his pillow as to him
1940 The secrets of his overcharged soul;
1941 And I am sent to tell his majesty
1942 That even now he cries aloud for him.
Queen Margaret
1943 Go tell this heavy message to the king.—
[Exit Vaux.]
Queen Margaret
1944 Ay me! what is this world! what news are these!
1945 But wherefore grieve I at an hour's poor loss,
1946 Omitting Suffolk's exile, my soul's treasure?
1947 Why only, Suffolk, mourn I not for thee,
1948 And with the southern clouds contend in tears,
1949 Theirs for the earth's increase, mine for my sorrows?
1950 Now get thee hence.
1951 The king, thou know'st, is coming;
1952 If thou be found by me; thou art but dead.
Duke of Suffolk
1953 If I depart from thee, I cannot live;
1954 And in thy sight to die, what were it else
1955 But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?
1956 Here could I breathe my soul into the air,
1957 As mild and gentle as the cradle-babe
1958 Dying with mother's dug between its lips;
1959 Where, from thy sight, I should be raging mad
1960 And cry out for thee to close up mine eyes,
1961 To have thee with thy lips to stop my mouth.
1962 So shouldst thou either turn my flying soul,
1963 Or I should breathe it so into thy body,
1964 And then it liv'd in sweet Elysium.
1965 To die by thee were but to die in jest;
1966 From thee to die were torture more than death.
1967 O, let me stay, befall what may befall!
Queen Margaret
1968 Away! though parting be a fretful corrosive,
1969 It is applied to a deathful wound.
1970 To France, sweet Suffolk; let me hear from thee,
1971 For whereso'er thou art in this world's globe
1972 I'll have an Iris that shall find thee out.
Duke of Suffolk
1973 I go.
Queen Margaret
1974 And take my heart with thee.
Duke of Suffolk
1975 A jewel, lock'd into the wofull'st cask
1976 That ever did contain a thing of worth.
1977 Even as a splitted bark, so sunder we;
1978 This way fall I to death.
Queen Margaret
1979 This way for me.
[Exeunt severally.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1564archaic vocab
“We have dispatch'd the duke, as he commanded”
'Dispatch'd' here means killed, not sent away. The First Murderer reports that Gloucester is dead on Suffolk's orders. The word carries its older meaning of 'to make an end of someone' — the same sense as 'dispatch him to his eternal rest.'
historical Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester ('Good Duke Humphrey')
TLN 1570archaic vocab
“Get you to my house; I will reward you for this venturous deed”
'Venturous' means bold or daring. Suffolk's praise of the murder as a 'venturous deed' is a chilling euphemism: he frames the hired killing of his political rival as a feat of bravery rather than a crime.
TLN 1582archaic vocab
“Proceed no straiter 'gainst our uncle Gloster Than from true evidence”
'Straiter' means more strictly or more harshly. Henry is cautioning the lords not to act more severely against Gloucester than the actual evidence of guilt warrants. The word comes from 'strait,' meaning narrow or confined, extended to mean rigorous or severe.
TLN 1583syntax grammar
“from true evidence of good esteem He be approv'd in practice culpable”
This clause means: unless he is proven by reliable evidence to be guilty in deed. 'Of good esteem' modifies 'evidence' (evidence that is well-regarded, i.e. credible); 'approv'd in practice culpable' = shown by his actions to be blameworthy. The word order is inverted from modern usage.
TLN 1592archaic vocab
“Marry, God forfend”
'Marry' is a mild oath derived from the Virgin Mary's name — used here as a filler exclamation like 'indeed' or 'why.' 'Forfend' means forbid. Margaret's 'Marry, God forfend!' = 'Why, God forbid!' The hypocrisy is pointed: she has just arranged the very death she pretends to be shocked by.
TLN 1593historical topical
“God's secret judgment!—I did dream to-night The duke was dumb”
Cardinal Beaufort's aside — attributing the death to 'God's secret judgment' — is deeply ironic, since he helped engineer the murder. His claim to have dreamed Gloucester was struck dumb is both a cover story and a glimpse of his guilty conscience: the Cardinal's own death scene later in this act shows him tormented by hallucinations of the duke's ghost.
historical Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester ('Good Duke Humphrey')
TLN 1603cultural context
“sing a raven's note Whose dismal tune bereft my vital powers”
The raven was the classical and popular emblem of ill-omen and death: its harsh croaking was believed to foretell disaster or a fatality. Henry casts Suffolk's announcement of Gloucester's death as the bird's death-cry — that raven's note 'bereft my vital powers,' robbing him of consciousness so that he swoons. Compare Othello's 'the raven o'er the infected house, / Boding to all' (4.1).
TLN 1615cultural context
“come, basilisk, And kill the innocent gazer with thy sight”
The basilisk was a legendary serpent or lizard whose very gaze was said to kill instantly. Henry, telling Suffolk to look at him, is saying: your eyes are so murderous that one glance will kill me — and since I want to die now that Gloucester is gone, go ahead and look. The basilisk image extends the serpent/poison imagery Henry has been using for Suffolk.
TLN 1623rhetorical device
“liquid tears or heart-offending groans Or blood-consuming sighs recall his life”
Margaret lists three things that tears, groans, and sighs would do to her body — each more extreme than the last: weeping makes her blind, groaning makes her sick, and sighing consumes her blood. This builds on the Elizabethan medical belief that each sigh expended a drop of blood from the heart. The catalogue is a set-piece rhetorical lament (the Latin tradition of the 'demonstratio' or display of grief), but its purpose is to cover the murder she arranged.
TLN 1639cultural context
“art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf”
Margaret invokes the belief that the adder (a venomous snake) was 'deaf' — it stopped its ear against the charmer's voice by pressing one ear to the ground and blocking the other with its tail. Psalm 58 uses the same image for those who will not hear reason. Margaret means: Henry turns away from her as if he cannot hear her, like a deliberately deaf viper.
TLN 1645historical topical
“nigh wrack'd upon the sea, And twice by awkward wind from England's bank Drove back again unto my native clime”
Margaret describes being nearly shipwrecked and driven back to France twice when sailing to England to marry Henry. This refers to a well-known episode from the historical record: her sea voyage to England in 1445 was indeed stormy and eventful. 'Wrack'd' means wrecked; 'awkward wind' means adverse or contrary wind; 'clime' means region or country.
TLN 1652classical allusion
“he that loos'd them forth their brazen caves”
Margaret addresses Aeolus, the god of winds, who according to Greek myth kept the winds imprisoned in caves or a bag until releasing them at the command of the gods. Here Margaret curses Aeolus for letting the winds blow her toward England when they should have blown her back. 'Brazen' means made of brass; the caves are the god's bronze-forged prison for the storm-winds.
TLN 1676archaic vocab
“ken of Albion's wished coast”
'Ken' means the range of vision, the distance one can see. 'Albion' is an archaic poetic name for Britain (from the Latin Albion, possibly from the white chalk cliffs of Dover). Margaret is saying she watched England's coastline until it disappeared from her sight. 'Wished coast' = the longed-for shore.
TLN 1679classical allusion
“sit and witch me, as Ascanius did When he to madding Dido would unfold His father's acts commenc'd in burning Troy”
Ascanius was the son of the Trojan hero Aeneas. In Virgil's Aeneid, the goddess Venus has Cupid take the shape of Ascanius at Queen Dido's feast, so that the boy's presence works a love-spell on the Carthaginian queen while Aeneas tells his story of the fall of Troy. Margaret says Suffolk 'witched' (enchanted) her the same way — through his words, as the false Ascanius bewitched Dido. 'Madding' means driven to madness by love.
TLN 1688rhetorical device
“commons, like an angry hive of bees That want their leader, scatter up and down”
Warwick uses an extended simile comparing the angry commons to a leaderless beehive scattering in all directions. The bee-state as a natural metaphor for political order was a Renaissance commonplace: a hive needed its queen or the swarm became dangerous and directionless. Gloucester was the commons' leader and protector; without him they are as purposeless and dangerous as bees without a queen.
TLN 1691archaic vocab
“calm'd their spleenful mutiny”
'Spleenful' means hot-tempered, furious. In Elizabethan anatomy the spleen was thought to be the seat of sudden passion, anger, and impulsiveness. Warwick has 'calmed their fiery riot' — held back the people's furious uprising until the King could hear the circumstances of Gloucester's death.
TLN 1717biblical allusion
“that dread King that took our state upon him To free us from his father's wrathful curse”
Warwick's oath invokes Christ: the 'dread King' who 'took our state upon him' is Jesus, who (in Christian theology) took on human form ('our state' = human nature) to free humanity from Adam's curse — the inherited punishment of sin brought on by the Fall. This is the doctrine of the Atonement, expressed in the language of the English church.
TLN 1724historical topical
“a timely-parted ghost, Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless, Being all descended to the labouring heart”
Warwick describes the normal appearance of a naturally dead corpse: 'timely-parted' means someone who died in the ordinary course of time, not by violence. The blood retreats to the heart as it labors its last — so the face goes ashen and bloodless. He is setting up the contrast: Gloucester's face is black and full of blood, the opposite of natural death, proving violence.
historical Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester ('Good Duke Humphrey')
TLN 1731historical topical
“his face is black and full of blood, His eyeballs further out than when he liv'd, Staring full ghastly like a strangled man”
Warwick describes what the corpse actually looks like: a face darkened by congested blood, bulging eyes, and signs of violent struggle — hair pulled loose, nostrils flared, hands spread as if grasping for life. These details are consistent with death by suffocation or strangulation. By cataloguing the physical evidence, Warwick turns the stage into a kind of inquest.
historical Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester ('Good Duke Humphrey')
TLN 1739rhetorical device
“Like to the summer's corn by tempest lodged”
Warwick compares Gloucester's disordered beard — rough and tangled — to a field of standing corn that has been beaten flat and tangled by a summer storm ('lodged'). 'Lodged' is an agricultural term: when rain and wind beat down grain that should stand upright. The simile makes Gloucester's disordered appearance a sign of violent external force, the same force that flattens growing things.
TLN 1751rhetorical device
“Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh And sees fast by a butcher with an axe But will suspect 't was he that made the slaughter”
Warwick argues from circumstantial evidence with two compressed analogies: a dead heifer beside a butcher with a bloody axe; a partridge dead in a kite's nest. In both cases, you do not need to witness the act to form a reasonable suspicion of guilt. 'Heifer' is a young cow; 'puttock' is an archaic word for a kite (a scavenging bird of prey).
TLN 1773rhetorical device
“Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanour! If ever lady wrong'd her lord so much, Thy mother took into her blameful bed Some stern untutor'd churl”
Suffolk attacks Warwick's legitimacy by insulting his mother: if any lady ever wronged her husband so much, then Warwick's mother must have slept with a low-born ruffian, which would make Warwick a bastard with no claim to noble blood. Accusing an opponent of bastardy was among the most serious personal insults a nobleman could receive, since it challenged not merely character but lineage and legal status.
TLN 1779archaic vocab
“the guilt of murther bucklers thee And I should rob the deathsman of his fee”
'Bucklers' means shields or protects; 'deathsman' means executioner. Warwick says: the only reason he will not beat Suffolk down himself is that it would spare him from the official execution he deserves — Warwick would be 'robbing the executioner of his fee' (his pay for carrying out the sentence). The 'fee' is the legal reward paid to the hangman for completing a lawful execution.
TLN 1795rhetorical device
“What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted! Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel just”
Henry delivers a sententious couplet — a moral maxim or 'sentence': a clear conscience is better armor than any breastplate; a man fighting in a just cause is three times as well-armed as one in steel with a guilty cause. The idea was proverbial in the period and draws on both classical Stoic thought and Christian teaching about the 'breastplate of righteousness' (from St Paul's armor of God).
TLN 1835archaic vocab
“rude unpolish'd hinds, Could send such message to their sovereign”
Suffolk contemptuously dismisses the commons as 'rude unpolish'd hinds' — ignorant, rough farm laborers. 'Hind' literally means a farm servant or rustic worker; 'rude' means crude and unrefined (not rude in the modern sense of impolite), and 'unpolish'd' underlines their lack of courtly learning. His contempt for the people exposes him further: the commons are demanding his death, and he responds with class disdain.
TLN 1841archaic vocab
“Sent from a sort of tinkers to the king”
'Sort' here means a group or company (not 'kind' or 'type'). A 'tinker' was an itinerant mender of pots and pans — one of the lowest-status trades in Elizabethan England, a byword for vagabond poverty. Suffolk is saying Salisbury is merely an ambassador from a rabble of social dregs — a deliberate insult designed to humiliate both Salisbury and the people who sent him.
TLN 1849historical topical
“by His majesty I swear, Whose far unworthy deputy I am”
Henry swears by God's majesty, calling himself God's 'far unworthy deputy' — a sincere expression of the divine-right doctrine that a king rules as God's earthly representative. Henry's self-deprecating 'far unworthy' signals his perpetual piety, but also the gap between the sacred office he holds and the helpless man he is. This is the doctrine that makes Suffolk's banishment solemn and irrevocable.
historical The king's two bodies
TLN 1851archaic vocab
“He shall not breathe infection in this air But three days longer”
Henry extends the metaphor of Suffolk as a disease: he 'breathes infection' into England the way a sick person spreads plague through the air. Medical theory in this period held that pestilential diseases spread through corrupt air ('miasma'). Banishment removes the source of infection — the same reasoning that calls plague-victims to be quarantined. Suffolk must leave within three days or be executed.
TLN 1874cultural context
“Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan”
The mandrake (mandragora) was a narcotic plant whose forked root resembled a human body; folklore held that it uttered a deadly shriek or groan when pulled from the earth, killing or maddening those who heard it. Suffolk invokes this legend to say: if curses killed as surely as the mandrake's deadly groan, he would unleash devastatingly lethal curses on his enemies.
historical The shrieking mandrake
TLN 1879classical allusion
“lean-fac'd Envy in her loathsome cave”
Envy is personified here as a gaunt, hollow-faced woman lurking in a cave — a standard Renaissance allegorical figure. Ovid's Metamorphoses (2.775-782) describes Envy as a grey, pale, hollow-eyed creature who feeds only on snake-flesh, living in a gloomy cavern. Suffolk says he would curse with every physical sign of 'deadly hate' that even Envy herself in her cave would display.
TLN 1887cultural context
“Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress-trees”
The cypress was the classical tree of mourning and death; groves of cypress were planted at cemeteries and were associated with funerals throughout classical antiquity and the Renaissance. To wish one's enemies shade only under cypress trees is to wish them in perpetual grief and proximity to death.
TLN 1891cultural context
“boding screech-owls make the consort full”
'Boding' means omen-bearing, foretelling evil. The screech-owl was widely taken in both classical and English folk belief as an omen of death and disaster — its cry near a house foretold a death within. 'Consort' means a company of musicians or a concert: Suffolk is completing a musical metaphor, so the screech-owls should fill out the ensemble of terrors. He wants his enemies surrounded by nothing but omens of ruin.
TLN 1913archaic vocab
“I will repeal thee, or, be well assur'd, Adventure to be banished myself”
'Repeal' here means to recall from exile (not to cancel a law). Margaret promises to have Suffolk's banishment reversed and him recalled to England, or else risk banishment herself by acting on his behalf. This usage — 'to repeal' meaning to call back — is now obsolete but was standard in Shakespeare's English.
TLN 1937historical topical
“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 overcharged soul”
Vaux describes Cardinal Beaufort on his deathbed: raving about Duke Humphrey's ghost, whispering confessions to his pillow. 'Overcharged soul' means a soul overburdened with sin — guilt has become a literal weight. This detail signals that Beaufort's guilty conscience (he arranged Gloucester's murder) is breaking through in his last hours.
historical Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester ('Good Duke Humphrey')historical The fall of princes (de casibus tragedy)
TLN 1964classical allusion
“it liv'd in sweet Elysium”
Elysium was the classical paradise — the 'blessed fields' of Greek and Roman mythology where the souls of the heroic and virtuous rested in perfect happiness after death. Suffolk says his soul breathed into Margaret's body would live in 'sweet Elysium' — her presence is paradise. The word was in common use in Elizabethan English as a generic word for bliss, but it retains its classical resonance.
TLN 1972classical allusion
“I'll have an Iris that shall find thee out”
Iris was the messenger goddess of the Olympians, personification of the rainbow, who carried divine messages between gods and mortals at speed. Margaret promises to send her own 'Iris' — a swift messenger — to find Suffolk wherever he goes in the world. The allusion dignifies her love-message as godlike in its urgency.
TLN 1977rhetorical device
“Even as a splitted bark, so sunder we; This way fall I to death”
Suffolk's last image: he and Margaret part like the two halves of a split ship's hull ('bark' = a small sailing vessel). The metaphor of a ship breaking apart runs through the scene's water and storm imagery. His final line — 'This way fall I to death' — is prophetically accurate: he will shortly be captured at sea and beheaded.