Start: QUEEN MARGARET *(calling after K...

Start: QUEEN MARGARET

(calling after King Henry and Warwick)

Mischance and sorrow go along with you!

Heart's discontent and sour affliction

Be playfellows to keep you company!

There's two of you; the devil make a third,

And threefold vengeance tend upon your steps!

SUFFOLK

Cease, gentle queen, these execrations,

And let thy Suffolk take his heavy leave.

QUEEN MARGARET

Fie, coward woman and soft-hearted wretch!

Hast thou not spirit to curse thine enemies?

SUFFOLK

A plague upon them! Wherefore should I curse them?

Could curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,

I would invent as bitter searching terms,

As curst, as harsh, and horrible to hear,

Delivered strongly through my fixèd teeth,

With full as many signs of deadly hate,

As lean-faced Envy in her loathsome cave.

My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words;

Mine eyes should sparkle like the beaten flint;

Mine hair be fixed on end, as one distract;

Ay, every joint should seem to curse and ban;

And even now my burdened heart would break

Should I not curse them. Poison be their drink!

Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest that they taste;

Their sweetest shade, a grove of cypress trees;

Their chiefest prospect, murd'ring basilisks;

Their softest touch, as smart as lizards' stings!

Their music, frightful as the serpent's hiss,

And boding screech owls make the consort full!

All the foul terrors in dark-seated hell---

QUEEN MARGARET

Enough, sweet Suffolk, thou torment'st thyself,

And these dread curses, like the sun 'gainst glass,

Or like an over-chargèd gun, recoil

And turn the force of them upon thyself.

SUFFOLK

You bade me ban, and will you bid me leave?

Now, by the ground that I am banished from,

Well could I curse away a winter's night,

Though standing naked on a mountain top

Where biting cold would never let grass grow,

And think it but a minute spent in sport.

QUEEN MARGARET

O, let me entreat thee cease! Give me thy hand,

That I may dew it with my mournful tears;

Nor let the rain of heaven wet this place

To wash away my woeful monuments.

(She kisses his hand.)

O, could this kiss be printed in thy hand,

That thou mightst think upon these by the seal,

Through whom a thousand sighs are breathed for thee!

So, get thee gone, that I may know my grief;

'Tis but surmised whiles thou art standing by,

As one that surfeits thinking on a want.

I will repeal thee, or, be well assured,

Adventure to be banishèd myself;

And banishèd I am, if but from thee.

Go, speak not to me. Even now be gone!

O, go not yet! Even thus two friends condemned

Embrace and kiss and take ten thousand leaves,

Loather a hundred times to part than die.

(They embrace.)

Yet now farewell, and farewell life with thee.

SUFFOLK

Thus is poor Suffolk ten times banishèd,

Once by the King, and three times thrice by thee.

'Tis not the land I care for, wert thou thence.

A wilderness is populous enough,

So Suffolk had thy heavenly company;

For where thou art, there is the world itself,

With every several pleasure in the world;

And where thou art not, desolation.

I can no more. Live thou to joy thy life;

Myself no joy in naught but that thou liv'st.

QUEEN MARGARET

Now get thee hence. The King, thou know'st, is coming;

If thou be found by me, thou art but dead.

SUFFOLK

If I depart from thee, I cannot live;

And in thy sight to die, what were it else

But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?

Here could I breathe my soul into the air,

As mild and gentle as the cradle babe

Dying with mother's dug between its lips;

Where, from thy sight, I should be raging mad

And cry out for thee to close up mine eyes,

To have thee with thy lips to stop my mouth.

So shouldst thou either turn my flying soul,

Or I should breathe it so into thy body,

And then it lived in sweet Elysium.

To die by thee were but to die in jest;

From thee to die were torture more than death.

O, let me stay, befall what may befall!

QUEEN MARGARET

Away! Though parting be a fretful corrosive,

It is applièd to a deathful wound.

To France, sweet Suffolk. Let me hear from thee,

For wheresoe'er thou art in this world's globe,

I'll have an Iris that shall find thee out.

SUFFOLK

I go.

QUEEN MARGARET

And take my heart with thee.

SUFFOLK

A jewel locked into the woefull'st cask

That ever did contain a thing of worth!

Even as a splitted bark, so sunder we.

This way fall I to death.

QUEEN MARGARET

This way for me.

(They exit through different doors.)

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

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