William Shakespeare: King Henry VI, Second Part

ACT III. 2. SCENE II. Bury St. Edmund's. A Room of State. (continued)

[Exeunt Cardinal, Somerset, and others.]

WARWICK.
What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him?

QUEEN.
He dares not calm his contumelious spirit,
Nor cease to be an arrogant controller,
Though Suffolk dare him twenty thousand times.

WARWICK.
Madam, be still,--with reverence may I say;
For every word you speak in his behalf
Is slander to your royal dignity.

SUFFOLK.
Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanour!
If ever lady wrong'd her lord so much,
Thy mother took into her blameful bed
Some stern untutor'd churl, and noble stock
Was graft with crab-tree slip, whose fruit thou art,
And never of the Nevils' noble race.

WARWICK.
But that the guilt of murther bucklers thee
And I should rob the deathsman of his fee,
Quitting thee thereby of ten thousand shames,
And that my sovereign's presence makes me mild,
I would, false murtherous coward, on thy knee
Make thee beg pardon for thy passed speech
And say it was thy mother that thou meant'st,
That thou thyself was born in bastardy;
And after all this fearful homage done,
Give thee thy hire and send thy soul to hell,
Pernicious blood-sucker of sleeping men!

SUFFOLK.
Thou shalt be waking while I shed thy blood,
If from this presence thou dar'st go with me.

WARWICK.
Away even now, or I will drag thee hence.
Unworthy though thou art, I'll cope with thee
And do some service to Duke Humphrey's ghost.

[Exeunt Suffolk and Warwick.]

KING.
What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted!
Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel just,
And he but naked, though lock'd up in steel,
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.

[A noise within.]

QUEEN.
What noise is this?

[Re-enter Suffolk and Warwick, with their weapons drawn.]