1 Mur.

Ay, my good lord; he's dead. Suff. 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.

Suff. Away, be gone!

[Exeunt Murderers.

Enter KING HENRY, QUEEN MARGARET, CARDINAL BEAUFORT, SOMERSET, Lords, and others.

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.

Suff. I'll call him presently, my noble lord.

[Exit.

K. Hen. Lords, take your places;-and, I pray you all, Proceed no straiter 'gainst our uncle Gloster,

Than from true evidence, of good esteem,

He be approved 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 troublest thou? Where is our uncle? what is the matter, Suffolk? Suff. Dead in his bed, my lord; Gloster is doad. 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!-0 Henry, ope thine eyes!
Suff. He doth revive again;-madam, be patient.
K. Hen. O heavenly God!

Q. Mar. How fares my gracious lord?

Suff. Comfort, my sovereign! gracious Henry, comfort! K. Hen. What, doth my lord of Suffolk comfort me? Came he right now to sing a raven's note, Whose dismal tune bereft my vital powers; And thinks he, that the chirping of a wren, By crying comfort from a hollow breast,

Can chase away the first-conceived sound?
Hide not thy poison with such sugared words;
Lay not thy hands on me; forbear, I say;
Their touch affrights me, as a serpent's sting.
Thou baleful messenger, out of my sight!
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?
For it is known we were but hollow friends.
It may be judged I made the duke away;

So shall my name with slander's tongue be wounded,
And princes' courts be filled with my reproach.
This get I by his death. Ah me, unhappy!
To be a queen, and crowned with infamy!

K. Ilen. Ah, woe is me for Gloster, wretched man!
Q. Mar. Be woe for me, 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 wrecked 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 cursed the gentle gusts,

And he that loosed them from their brazen caves;

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 refused to drown me;
Knowing that thou wouldst have me drowned on shore,
With tears as salt as sea, through thy unkindness.
The splitting rocks cowered 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 perish 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
My earnest-gaping sight of thy land's view,
I took a costly jewel from my neck,-
A heart it was, bound in with diamonds,-
And threw it towards thy land; the sea received it;
And so, I wished, 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 called 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 me, as Ascanius did,

When he to madding Dido would unfoll

His father's acts, commenced in burning Troy?

Am I not witched like her? or thou not false like hina?
Ah me, I can no more! Die, Margaret!

For lienry weeps that thou dost live so long.

Noise within.

Enter WARWICK and SALISBURY. The Commons press to the door.

War. 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.

K. Hen. 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.
War. That I shall do, my liege.-Stay, Salisbury,
With the rude multitude, till I return.

[WARWICK goes into an inner room, and

SALISBURY retires.

K. Hen. O Thou that judgest all things, stay my thoughts;

My thoughts, that labor to persuade my soul,

Some violent hands were laid on Humphrey's life!
If my suspect be false, forgive me, God;
For judgment 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;
And, to survey his dead and earthly image,
What were it but to make my sorrow greater?

The folding doors of an inner chamber are thrown open, and GLOSTER is discovered dead in his bed; WARWICK and others standing by it.

War. Come hither, gracious sovereign; view this body. K. Hen. 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.

War. As surely as my soul intends to live

With that dread King that took our state upon liza
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.

Suff. A dreadful oath, sworn with a solemn tongue! What instance gives lord Warwick for his vow?

War. 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 laboring 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.

Suff. Why, Warwick, who should do the duke to death? Myself, and Beaufort, had him in protection;

And we, I hope, sir, are no murderers.

War. But both of you were vowed duke Humphrey's foes; 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.

Q. Mar. Then you, belike, suspect these noblemen As guilty of duke Humphrey's timeless death.

War. 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.

Q. Mar. Are you the butcher, Suffolk; where's your knife?

Is Beaufort termed a kite? where are his talons?
Suff. 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.

[Exeunt Cardinal, Soм., and others. War. What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him? Q. Mar. He dares not calm his contumelious spirit, Nor cease to be an arrogant controller,

Though Suffolk dare him twenty thousand times.

War. Madam, be still; with reverence may I say;

For every word you speak in his behalf,

Is slander to your royal dignity.

Suff. Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanor!

If ever lady wronged her lord so much,

Thy mother took into her blameful bed

Some stern, untutored churl, and noble stock

Was graft with crab-tree slip; whose fruit thou art,
And never of the Nevils' noble race.