GLOUCESTER.
Far truer spoke than meant. I lose, indeed.
Beshrew the winners, for they played me false!
And well such losers may have leave to speak.
BUCKINGHAM.
He’ll wrest the sense and hold us here all day.
Lord Cardinal, he is your prisoner.
CARDINAL.
Sirs, take away the Duke, and guard him sure.
GLOUCESTER.
Ah, thus King Henry throws away his crutch
Before his legs be firm to bear his body.
Thus is the shepherd beaten from thy side,
And wolves are gnarling who shall gnaw thee first.
Ah, that my fear were false; ah, that it were!
For, good King Henry, thy decay I fear.
[Exit Gloucester, guarded.]
KING HENRY.
My lords, what to your wisdoms seemeth best
Do, or undo, as if ourself were here.
QUEEN MARGARET.
What, will your highness leave the parliament?
KING HENRY.
Ay, Margaret; my heart is drowned with grief,
Whose flood begins to flow within mine eyes,
My body round engirt with misery;
For what’s more miserable than discontent?
Ah, uncle Humphrey, in thy face I see
The map of honour, truth, and loyalty;
And yet, good Humphrey, is the hour to come
That e’er I proved thee false or feared thy faith.
What louring star now envies thy estate
That these great lords and Margaret our Queen
Do seek subversion of thy harmless life?
Thou never didst them wrong nor no man wrong.
And as the butcher takes away the calf
And binds the wretch and beats it when it strains,
Bearing it to the bloody slaughterhouse,
Even so remorseless have they borne him hence;
And as the dam runs lowing up and down,
Looking the way her harmless young one went,
And can do naught but wail her darling’s loss,
Even so myself bewails good Gloucester’s case
With sad unhelpful tears, and with dimmed eyes
Look after him, and cannot do him good,
So mighty are his vowed enemies.
His fortunes I will weep and ’twixt each groan
Say “Who’s a traitor? Gloucester he is none.”
[Exeunt all but Queen, Cardinal Beaufort, Suffolk and York; Somerset remains apart.]
QUEEN MARGARET.
Free lords, cold snow melts with the sun’s hot beams.
Henry my lord is cold in great affairs,
Too full of foolish pity; and Gloucester’s show
Beguiles him, as the mournful crocodile
With sorrow snares relenting passengers,
Or as the snake, rolled in a flowering bank,
With shining checkered slough, doth sting a child
That for the beauty thinks it excellent.
Believe me, lords, were none more wise than I—
And yet herein I judge mine own wit good—
This Gloucester should be quickly rid the world,
To rid us from the fear we have of him.