Start: Ah, gracious lord, these days are...

Start: Ah, gracious lord, these days are dangerous.

Virtue is choked with foul ambition,

And charity chased hence by rancor's hand;

Foul subornation is predominant,

And equity exiled your Highness' land.

I know their complot is to have my life;

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.

Beaufort's red sparkling eyes blab his heart's malice,

And Suffolk's cloudy brow his stormy hate;

Sharp Buckingham unburdens with his tongue

The envious load that lies upon his heart;

And dogged York, that reaches at the moon,

Whose overweening arm I have plucked back,

By false accuse doth level at my life.---

And you, my sovereign lady, with the rest,

Causeless have laid disgraces on my head

And with your best endeavor have stirred up

My liefest liege to be mine enemy.

Ay, all of you have laid your heads together---

Myself had notice of your conventicles---

And all to make away my guiltless life.

I shall not want false witness to condemn me

Nor store of treasons to augment my guilt.

The ancient proverb will be well effected:

"A staff is quickly found to beat a dog."

Shakespeare, William, Henry VI Part 2, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2255/pg2255.html, Act 3, Scene 1.