Henry VI Part 2

Gloucester:

Brave peers of England, pillars of the state,

To you Duke Humphrey must unload his grief,

Your grief, the common grief of all the land.

Salisbury:

Pride went before; Ambition follows him.

While these do labor for their own preferment,

Behooves it us to labor for the realm.

York:

Then will I raise aloft the milk-white rose,

With whose sweet smell the air shall be perfumed,

And in my standard bear the arms of York,

To grapple with the house of Lancaster[.]

Gloucester:

Banish the canker of ambitious thoughts!

Suffolk:

[Taking a petition.] What’s here? [(Reads.)] Against the Duke of Suffolk for enclosing the commons of Melford.

York:

[(Reads.)] The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose,

But him outlive and die a violent death.

Wife:

Alas, sir, we did it for pure need.

York:

His eldest sister, Anne,

My mother, being heir unto the crown,

Married Richard, Earl of Cambridge, who was son

To Edmund Langley, Edward the Third’s fifth son.

By her I claim the kingdom. She was heir

To Roger, Earl of March, who was the son

Of Edward Mortimer, who married Philippa,

Sole daughter unto Lionel, Duke of Clarence.

So, if the issue of the elder son

Succeed before the younger, I am king.

Warwick:

What plain proceedings is more plain than this?

King Henry:

Go, take hence that traitor from our sight;

For by his death we do perceive his guilt.

And God in justice hath revealed to us

The truth and innocence of this poor fellow,

Which he had thought to have murdered wrongfully.

Duchess:

For whilst I think I am thy married wife

And thou a prince, Protector of this land,

Methinks I should not thus be led along,

Mailed up in shame, with papers on my back,

And followed with a rabble that rejoice

To see my tears and hear my deep-fet groans.

Duchess:

My joy is death—

Death, at whose name I oft have been afeard,

Because I wished this world’s eternity.

Gloucester:

And if my death might make this island happy

And prove the period of their tyranny,

I would expend it with all willingness.

But mine is made the prologue to their play;

For thousands more, that yet suspect no peril,

Will not conclude their plotted tragedy.

King Henry:

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.

Suffolk:

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-slip tree, whose fruit thou art

And never of the Nevilles’ noble race.

King Henry:

What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?

Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just,

And he but naked, though locked up in steel,

Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.

Warwick:

So bad a death argues a monstrous life.

King Henry:

Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.

Suffolk:

It is impossible that I should die

By such a lowly vassal as thyself.

Cade:

To equal him I will make myself a knight presently. [He kneels.] Rise up Sir John Mortimer. [He rises.]

Cade:

I feel remorse in myself with his words, but I’ll bridle it. He shall die, an it be but for pleading so well for his life. Away with him! He has a familiar under his tongue; he speaks not I’ God’s name.

Clifford:

Better ten thousand baseborn Cades miscarry

Than you should stoop unto a Frenchman’s mercy.

To France, to France, and get what you have lost!

Spare England, for it is your native coast.

Henry hath money; you are strong and manly.

King Henry:

Was ever king that joyed an earthly throne

And could command no more content than I?

No sooner was I crept out of my cradle

But I was made a king at nine months old.

Was never subject longed to be a king

As I do long and wish to be a subject!

Iden:

This small inheritance my father left me

Contenteth me, and worth a monarchy.

York:

That head of thine doth not become a crown;

Thy hand is made to grasp a palmer’s staff,

And not to grace an awful princely scepter.

[…]

Give place. By heaven, thou shalt rule no more

O’er him whom heaven created for thy ruler.

Enter the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury, wearing the white rose.

Warwick:

Saint Albans battle won by famous York

Shall be eternized in all age to come.