QUEEN MARGARET.
Run, go, help, help! O Henry, ope thine eyes!
SUFFOLK.
He doth revive again. Madam, be patient.
KING HENRY.
O heavenly God!
QUEEN MARGARET.
How fares my gracious lord?
SUFFOLK.
Comfort, my sovereign! Gracious Henry, comfort!
KING HENRY.
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 Gloucester’s dead.
QUEEN MARGARET.
Why do you rate my Lord of Suffolk thus?
Although the Duke was enemy to him,
Yet he most Christian-like 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. Ay me, unhappy!
To be a queen, and crowned with infamy!
KING HENRY.
Ah, woe is me for Gloucester, wretched man!
QUEEN MARGARET.
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 Gloucester’s tomb?
Why, then, Dame Margaret was ne’er thy joy.
Erect his statue and worship it,
And make my image but an alehouse sign.
Was I for this nigh wracked 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 forth their brazen caves
And bid them blow towards England’s blessed shore
Or turn our stern upon a dreadful rock?
Yet Aeolus 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 thy 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 unfold
His father’s acts commenced in burning Troy!
Am I not witched like her? Or thou not false like him?
Ay me, I can no more! Die, Margaret,
For Henry weeps that thou dost live so long.
Noise within. Enter Warwick, Salisbury and many Commons.