“Why come you not? what! multitudes, and fear?
Clif. So cowards fight, when they can fly no further.
So doves do peck the falcon’s piercing talons.”
The queen entreats Clifford, “for a thousand causes,” to withhold his arm, and Northumberland joins in the entreaty,—
“North. Hold, Clifford! do not honour him so much,
To prick thy finger, though to wound his heart:
What valour were it, when a cur doth grin,
For one to thrust his hand between his teeth,
When he might spurn him with his foot away?”
Clifford and Northumberland seize York, who struggles against them (l. 61),—