Act 2, Scene 6

Another Part of the Field

[A loud alarum. Enter CLIFFORD, wounded.]
Lord Clifford
1183 Here burns my candle out; ay, here it dies,
1184 Which whiles it lasted gave King Henry light.
1185 O Lancaster! I fear thy overthrow
1186 More than my body's parting with my soul!
1187 My love and fear glued many friends to thee;
1188 And, now I fall, thy tough commixtures melt,
1189 Impairing Henry, strengthening mis-proud York.
1190 The common people swarm like summer flies;
1191 And whither fly the gnats but to the sun?
1192 And who shines now but Henry's enemies?
1193 O Phoebus, hadst thou never given consent
1194 That Phaethon should check thy fiery steeds,
1195 Thy burning car never had scorch'd the earth!
1196 And, Henry, hadst thou sway'd as kings should do,
1197 Or as thy father and his father did,
1198 Giving no ground unto the house of York,
1199 They never then had sprung like summer flies;
1200 I, and ten thousand in this luckless realm,
1201 Had left no mourning widows for our death,
1202 And thou this day hadst kept thy chair in peace.
1203 For what doth cherish weeds but gentle air?
1204 And what makes robbers bold but too much lenity?
1205 Bootless are plaints, and cureless are my wounds;
1206 No way to fly, nor strength to hold out flight.
1207 The foe is merciless and will not pity,
1208 For at their hands I have deserv'd no pity.
1209 The air hath got into my deadly wounds,
1210 And much effuse of blood doth make me faint.—
1211 Come, York and Richard, Warwick, and the rest;
1212 I stabb'd your fathers' bosoms, split my breast.
[He faints.]
[Alarum and retreat. Enter EDWARD, GEORGE, RICHARD, MONTAGUE, WARWICK, and Soldiers.]
Edward IV
1213 Now breathe we, lords; good fortune bids us pause,
1214 And smooth the frowns of war with peaceful looks.—
1215 Some troops pursue the bloody-minded queen
1216 That led calm Henry, though he were a king,
1217 As doth a sail, fill'd with a fretting gust,
1218 Command an argosy to stem the waves.
1219 But think you, lords, that Clifford fled with them?
Earl of Warwick
1220 No, 't is impossible he should escape;
1221 For, though before his face I speak the words,
1222 Your brother Richard mark'd him for the grave,
1223 And whereso'er he is he's surely dead.
[Clifford groans and dies.]
Edward IV
1224 Whose soul is that which takes her heavy leave?
Richard Plantagenet (Gloucester)
1225 A deadly groan, like life and death's departing.
Edward IV
1226 See who it is; and, now the battle's ended,
1227 If friend or foe, let him be gently us'd.
Richard Plantagenet (Gloucester)
1228 Revoke that doom of mercy, for 't is Clifford,
1229 Who, not contented that he lopp'd the branch,
1230 In hewing Rutland when his leaves put forth,
1231 But set his murthering knife unto the root
1232 From whence that tender spray did sweetly spring;
1233 I mean our princely father, Duke of York.
Earl of Warwick
1234 From off the gates of York fetch down the head,
1235 Your father's head, which Clifford placed there;
1236 Instead whereof, let this supply the room.
1237 Measure for measure must be answered.
Edward IV
1238 Bring forth that fatal screech-owl to our house,
1239 That nothing sung but death to us and ours;
1240 Now death shall stop his dismal threatening sound,
1241 And his ill-boding tongue no more shall speak.
[Soldiers bring the body forward.]
Earl of Warwick
1242 I think his understanding is bereft.—
1243 Speak, Clifford, dost thou know who speaks to thee?—
1244 Dark cloudy death o'ershades his beams of life,
1245 And he nor sees nor hears us, what we say.
Richard Plantagenet (Gloucester)
1246 O, would he did! and so, perhaps, he doth;
1247 'T is but his policy to counterfeit,
1248 Because he would avoid such bitter taunts
1249 Which in the time of death he gave our father.
George, Duke of Clarence
1250 If so thou think'st, vex him with eager words.
Richard Plantagenet (Gloucester)
1251 Clifford, ask mercy, and obtain no grace.
Edward IV
1252 Clifford, repent in bootless penitence.
Earl of Warwick
1253 Clifford, devise excuses for thy faults.
George, Duke of Clarence
1254 While we devise fell tortures for thy faults.
Richard Plantagenet (Gloucester)
1255 Thou didst love York, and I am son to York.
Edward IV
1256 Thou pitiedst Rutland, I will pity thee.
George, Duke of Clarence
1257 Where's Captain Margaret to fence you now?
Earl of Warwick
1258 They mock thee, Clifford; swear as thou wast wont.
Richard Plantagenet (Gloucester)
1259 What! not an oath? nay then, the world goes hard
1260 When Clifford cannot spare his friends an oath.—
1261 I know by that he's dead; and, by my soul,
1262 If this right hand would buy two hours' life,
1263 That I in all despite might rail at him,
1264 This hand should chop it off, and with the issuing blood
1265 Stifle the villain whose unstanched thirst
1266 York and young Rutland could not satisfy.
Earl of Warwick
1267 Ay, but he's dead. Off with the traitor's head,
1268 And rear it in the place your father's stands.—
1269 And now to London with triumphant march,
1270 There to be crowned England's royal king;
1271 From whence shall Warwick cut the sea to France,
1272 And ask the Lady Bona for thy queen.
1273 So shalt thou sinew both these lands together,
1274 And, having France thy friend, thou shalt not dread
1275 The scatt'red foe that hopes to rise again;
1276 For though they cannot greatly sting to hurt,
1277 Yet look to have them buzz to offend thine ears.
1278 First will I see the coronation,
1279 And then to Brittany I'll cross the sea
1280 To effect this marriage, so it please my lord.
Edward IV
1281 Even as thou wilt, sweet Warwick, let it be;
1282 For in thy shoulder do I build my seat,
1283 And never will I undertake the thing
1284 Wherein thy counsel and consent is wanting.—
1285 Richard, I will create thee Duke of Gloster;—
1286 And George, of Clarence.—Warwick, as ourself,
1287 Shall do and undo as him pleaseth best.
Richard Plantagenet (Gloucester)
1288 Let me be Duke of Clarence, George of Gloster,
1289 For Gloster's dukedom is too ominous.
Earl of Warwick
1290 Tut! that's a foolish observation;
1291 Richard, be Duke of Gloster. Now to London,
1292 To see these honours in possession.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 1183rhetorical device
“Here burns my candle out; ay, here it dies”
Clifford's dying speech opens with a candle metaphor: his life is a candle he has burned in Henry's service, and its extinction signals Lancaster's fall. The conceit runs through the next lines — the light Clifford gave the king, the friends ('tough commixtures') who will now melt away like wax.
TLN 1193classical allusion
“Phoebus, hadst thou never given consent That Phaethon should check thy fiery steeds”
Clifford blames Henry for letting the realm spin out of control, just as the sun-god Phoebus erred in letting his son Phaethon try to drive the sun's chariot. Phaethon could not control the horses and scorched the earth until Zeus had to strike him down. The implication: Henry, like Phoebus, indulged a situation he should have mastered, and England has been 'scorch'd' as a result.
classical Phaethon and the chariot of the sun
TLN 1203rhetorical device
“what doth cherish weeds but gentle air? And what makes robbers bold but too much lenity”
Clifford ends his speech with two parallel rhetorical questions: gentle air nurtures weeds; too much leniency emboldens thieves. Both assert that Henry's kindness — his defining virtue and his political failure — is what allowed the Yorkist 'weeds' to grow and the 'robbers' (the rebels) to grow bold. The figure is anaphora: the same grammatical structure repeated to drive a point home.
TLN 1205archaic vocab
“Bootless are plaints, and cureless are my wounds”
'Bootless' means useless or without profit — from the Old English word 'bot,' meaning remedy or benefit; something bootless brings no benefit ('no boot'). 'Plaints' are laments or complaints. So: 'Lamentations are useless, and my wounds cannot be healed.' Clifford accepts that prayer and complaint are equally futile; he is a dying man trapped between the enemy and the inevitability of death.
TLN 1217rhetorical device
“as doth a sail, fill'd with a fretting gust, Command an argosy to stem the waves”
Edward compares Margaret to a wind-filled sail that drives a great merchant ship despite the ship having no will of its own: she propelled the passive Henry like a wind propels a vessel. An 'argosy' is a large merchant ship; a 'fretting gust' is a chafing, driving wind. The metaphor captures both Margaret's forcefulness and Henry's passivity — he was steered by her, not the other way around.
TLN 1229rhetorical device
“not contented that he lopp'd the branch, In hewing Rutland when his leaves put forth”
Richard of Gloucester charges Clifford in arboreal metaphor: Clifford was not satisfied with cutting off a branch (murdering the child Rutland) but also attacked the root — their father, the Duke of York. 'When his leaves put forth' means Rutland was just beginning to grow, a boy in the first spring of his life. The tree metaphor for dynastic lineage was conventional in heraldic and political writing, but the detail 'leaves put forth' sharpens it into grief: Clifford killed a child.
TLN 1237biblical allusion
“Measure for measure must be answered”
Warwick declares that the Yorkists will put Clifford's head on the very gates where Clifford had placed York's head: an eye for an eye, a head for a head. 'Measure for measure' echoes the biblical principle of proportional justice — the same punishment returned in the same quantity as the original wrong.
TLN 1238cultural context
“Bring forth that fatal screech-owl to our house, That nothing sung but death to us and ours”
Edward calls Clifford a 'screech-owl' — a bird whose cry was a common omen of imminent death in Elizabethan popular belief. By calling him 'fatal' (death-bringing) and saying he 'sung but death,' Edward frames Clifford as a supernatural herald of doom for the house of York, recalling Clifford's murders of Rutland and York.
TLN 1271historical topical
“Warwick cut the sea to France, And ask the Lady Bona for thy queen. So shalt thou sinew both these lands together”
Warwick plans to cross to France and negotiate a marriage between the new King Edward IV and Lady Bona, the sister-in-law of King Lewis XI of France. 'Sinew' here means to bind together as sinews (tendons) bind muscle to bone: the marriage would create an alliance that would neutralize the threat of French support for the exiled Lancastrians.
historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 1289historical topical
“For Gloster's dukedom is too ominous”
Richard jokes — half-seriously — that the title Duke of Gloucester is unlucky: both previous holders died violently. Thomas of Woodstock, the first Duke of Gloucester (Edward III's son), was murdered on Richard II's orders; Humphrey, the second Duke (Henry V's brother and the 'good Duke Humphrey' of Henry VI Part 2), was murdered in custody in 1447. Richard is cheerfully acknowledging that the title has a bad track record — and accepting it anyway.
historical Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester ('Good Duke Humphrey')