SCENE II1. Bury. A Room in the Palace. Enter certain Murderers, hastily. 1 Mur. Run to my lord of Suffolk; let him know, * We have despatch'd the duke, as he commanded. * 2 Mur. O, that it were to do!-What have we done? * Didst ever hear a man so penitent? Despatch'd this thing? 1 Mur. Now, sirs, have you Ay, my good lord, he's dead. Suf. Why, that's well said. Go, get you to my house; I will reward you for this venturous deed. The king and all the peers are here at hand :— Have you laid fair the bed? are all things well, According as I gave directions? 1 Mur. "Tis, my good lord. Suf. Away, be gone! [Exeunt Murderers. Enter KING HENRY, QUEEN MARGARET, CARDINAL BEAUFORT, SOMERSET, Lords, and Others. 6 • K. Hen. Go, call our uncle to our presence straight: Say, we intend to try his grace to-day, If he be guilty, as 'tis published. Suf. I'll call him presently, my noble lord. [Exit. 1 The directions concerning this scene stand thus in the quarto copy::- Then the curtains being drawne, Duke Humphrey is discovered in his bed, and two men lying on his breast, and smothering him in his bed. And then enter the Duke of Suffolk to them.' 6 K. Hen. Lords, take your places;—And, I pray you all, Proceed no straiter 'gainst our uncle Gloster, He be approv'd in practice culpable. * Q. Mar. God forbid any malice should prevail, *That faultless may condemn a nobleman! * Pray God, he may acquit him of suspicion! * K. Hen. I thank thee, Margaret; these words content me much. Re-enter SUFFOLK. How now? why look'st thou pale? why tremblest thou? 'Where is our uncle? what is the matter, Suffolk ? Suf. Dead in his bed, my lord; Gloster is dead. * Q. Mar. Marry, God forefend! * Car. God's secret judgment:-I did dream to night, * The duke was dumb, and could not speak a word, [The King swoons. Q. Mar. How fares my lord?-Help, lords! the king is dead. Som. Rear up his body; wring him by the nose. * Q. Mar. Run, go, help, help!—O, Henry, ope thine eyes! *Suf. He doth revive again;-Madam, be pa tient. * K. Hen. O heavenly God! * Q. Mar. How fares my gracious lord? 2 As nothing further is spoken either by Somerset or the cardinal, or by any one else, to show that they continue in the presence, it is to be presumed that they take advantage of the confusion occasioned by the king's swooning, and slip out unobserved. The next news we hear of the cardinal, he is at the point of death. Suf. Comfort, my sovereign! gracious Henry, comfort! K. Hen. What, doth my lord of Suffolk com- Came he right now3 to sing a raven's note, 6 * By crying comfort from a hollow breast, Can chase away the first-conceived sound? * Hide not thy poison with such sugar'd words, Upon thy eyeballs murderous tyranny Sits in grim majesty, to fright the world. Look not upon me, for thine eyes are wounding :'Yet do not go away;-Come, basilisk, And kill the innocent gazer with thy sight*: * For in the shade of death I shall find joy: * In life, but double death, now Gloster's dead! Q. Mar. Why do you rate my lord of Suffolk thus? Although the duke was enemy to him, * Yet he, most christianlike, laments his death: * And for myself,-foe as he was to me, Might liquid tears, or heart-offending groans, * Or blood-consuming sighs recall his life, * I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans, * Look pale as primrose, with blood-drinking sighs", * And all to have the noble duke alive. • What know I how the world may deem of me? 3 Just now. 4 5 As Esculap an herdsman did espie, That did with easy sight enforce a basilisk to flie, Albeit naturally that beast doth murther with the eye.' Albion's England, b. i. c, iii. And stop the rising of blood-sucking sighs.' For it is known we were but hollow friends; 'It may be judg'd, I made the duke away: * So shall my name with slander's tongue be wounded, *And princes' courts be fill'd with my reproach. *This get I by his death: Ah me, unhappy! * To be a queen, and crown'd with infamy! · K. Hen. Ah, woe is me for Gloster, wretched man! Q. Mar. Be woe for me 6, more wretched than he is. What, dost thou turn away, and hide thy face? I am no loathsome leper, look on me. * What, art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf"? * Be poisonous too, and kill thy forlorn queen. *Is all thy comfort shut in Gloster's tomb? * Why, then dame Margaret was ne'er thy joy: * Erect his statue then, and worship it, * And make my image but an alehouse sign. Was I, for this, nigh wreck'd upon the sea; And twice by awkward wind from England's bank • Drove back again unto my native clime? What boded this, but well forewarning wind Did seem to say, -Seek not a scorpion's nest, * Nor set no footing on this unkind shore? *What did I then, but curs'd the gentle gusts, *And he that loos'd them from their brazen caves; 6 i. e. let not woe be to thee for Gloster, but for me. 7 This allusion, which has been borrowed from the Proverbs of Solomon, and Psalm lviii. by many writers, is oddly illustrated in a passage of Gower's Confessio Amantis, b. i. fo. x. ed. 1532. Shakspeare has the same allusion in Troilus and Cressida :— 'Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any true decision.' 8 The same uncommon epithet is applied to the wind by Marlowe in his Edward II.: With awkward winds, and with sore tempests driven And by Drayton, Epistle from Richard II. to Queen Isabell :- * And bid them blow towards England's blessed shore, * Or turn our stern upon a dreadful rock? * Yet Eolus would not be a murderer, * But left that hateful office unto thee: * * The pretty vaulting sea refus'd to drown me; Knowing, that thou would'st have me drown'd on shore, * With tears as salt as sea through thy unkindness: * The splitting rocks cower'd in the sinking sands, * And would not dash me with their ragged sides; * Because thy flinty heart, more hard than they, Might in thy palace perish9 Margaret. * *As far as I could ken thy chalky cliffs, * When from the shore the tempest beat us back, * I stood upon the hatches in the storm: * And when the dusky sky began to rob * A heart it was, bound in with diamonds,- * And so, I wish'd, thy body might my heart: * And even with this, I lost fair England's view, * And bid mine eyes be packing with my heart; * And call'd them blind and dusky spectacles, * For losing ken of Albion's wished coast. * How often have I tempted Suffolk's tongue *(The agent of thy foul inconstancy) *To sit and witch 10 me, as Ascanius did, 9 The verb perish is here used actively. Thus in Beaumont and Fletcher's Maids Tragedy: : let not my sins Perish your noble youth.' 10 The old copy reads 'watch me :' the emendation is Theobald's, who observes that it was Cupid in the semblance of Ascanius who bewitched Dido.' She, taking him for Ascanius, |