!

• 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! * Suf. Cease, gentle queen, these execrations, * And let thy Suffolk take his heavy leave.

Q. Mar. Fye, coward woman, and soft-hearted wretch!

'Hast thou not spirit to curse thine enemies? Suf. A plague upon them! wherefore should I

curse them?

Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,* "I would invent as bitter-searching terms,

As curst, as harsh, and horrible to hear, Deliver'd strongly through my fixed teeth, 'With full as many signs of deadly hate, As lean-fac'd Envy in her loathsome cave: My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words: Mine eyes should sparkle like the beaten flint; My hair be fix'd on end, as one distract; Ay, every joint should seem to curse and ban: And even now my burden'd 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, murdering basilisks! Their softest touch, as smart as lizards' stings!5 Their musick, frightful as the serpent's hiss;

Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,] The fabulous accounts of the plant called a mandrake give it an inferior degree of animal life, and relate, that when it is torn from the ground it groans, and that this groan being certainly fatal to him that is offering such unwelcome violence, the practice of those who gather mandrakes is to tie one end of a string to the plant, and the other to a dog, upon whom the fatal groan discharges its malignity.

5 murdering basilisks!- -lizard's stings!] It has been said of the basilisk that it has the power of destroying by a single glance of the eye. A lizard has no sting, but is quite inoffensive.

And boding screech-owls make the concert full!
All the foul terrors in dark-seated hell-

Q. Mar. Enough, sweet Suffolk; thou torment'st
thyself;

*And these dread curses-like the sun 'gainst glass, * Or like an overcharged gun,-recoil,

* And turn the force of them upon thyself.

Suf. You bade me ban, and will you bid me leave?" Now, by the ground that I am banish'd 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.

* Q. Mar. 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. 'O, could this kiss be printed in thy hand; [Kisses his hand. * That thou might'st think upon these by the seal, "Through whom a thousand sighs are breath'd for

thee!"

So, get thee gone, that I may know my grief; "Tis but surmis'd whilst thou art standing by, * As one that surfeits thinking on a want. 'I will repeal thee, or be well assured, 'Adventure to be banished myself:

6 You bade me ban, and will you bid me leave?] This inconsistency is very common in real life. Those who are vexed to impa tience, are angry to see others less disturbed than themselves, but when others begin to rave, they immediately see in them what they could not find in themselves, the deformity and folly of useless rage. JOHNSON.

"That thou might'st think upon these by the seal,

Through whom a thousand sighs, &c.] That by the impression of my kiss for ever remaining on thy hand thou mightest think on those lips through which a thousand sighs will be breathed for thee,

And banished I am, if but from thee.

* Go, speak not to me; even now be gone.* O, go not yet!-Even thus two friends condemn'd

Embrace, and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves, * Loather a hundred times to part than die.. * Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee!

Suf. Thus is poor Suffolk ten times banished, Once by the king, and three times thrice by thee. * 'Tis not the land I care for, wert thou hence; * 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 nought, but that thou liv'st.

Enter VAUX.

'Q. Mar. Whither goes Vaux so fast? what news, I pr'ythee?

Vaux. To signify unto his majesty,

That Cardinal Beaufort is at point of death: "For suddenly a grievous sickness took him, That makes him gasp, and stare, and catch the

air,

Blaspheming God, and cursing men on earth. "Sometime, he talks as if duke Humphrey's ghost • Were by his side; sometime, he calls the king, And whispers to his pillow, as to him, *The secrets of his overcharged soul: And I am sent to tell his majesty, 'That even now he cries aloud for him.

'Q. Mar. Go, tell this heavy message to the king.

[Exit VAUX.

Ah me! what is this world? what news are these?

But wherefore grieve I at an hour's poor loss, 'Omitting Suffolk's exile, my soul's treasure? Why only, Suffolk, mourn I not for thee,

And with the southern clouds contend in tears; "Theirs for the earth's increase, mine for my sorrows? 'Now, get thee hence: The king, thou know'st, is coming?

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

6

Suf. 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 should'st thou either turn my flying soul,
Or I should breathe it so into thy body,
And then it liv'd 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.

'Q. Mar. Away! though parting be a fretful
corrosive,

'It is applied 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.

Suf. I go.

Q. Mar. And take my heart with thee. Suf. A jewel, lock'd into the woeful'st cask That ever did contain a thing of worth.

& Where,] In the preambles of almost all the statutes made during the first twenty years of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the word where is employed instead of whereas. It is so used here.

"I'll have an Iris -] Iris was the messenger of Juno.

Even as a splitted bark, so sunder we;

Enter King HENRY, SALISBURY, WARWICK, and Others. The Cardinal in bed; Attendants with him.

*K. Hen. How fares my lord? speak, Beaufort, to thy sovereign.

'Car. If thou be'st death, I'll give thee England's treasure,

Enough to purchase such another island, 'So thou wilt let me live, and feel no pain. *K. Hen. Ah, what a sign it is of evil life, * When death's approach is seen so terrible! * War. Beaufort, it is thy sovereign speaks to thee. *Car. Bring me unto my trial, when you will. • Died he not in his bed? where should he die ? Can I make men live, whe'r they will or no?— * O! torture me no more, I will confess.Alive again? then show me where he is; 'I'll give a thousand pound to look upon him.* He hath no eyes, the dust hath blinded them.— • Comb down his hair; look! look! it stands upright, 'Like lime-twigs set to catch my winged soul! 'Give me some drink; and bid the apothecary Bring the strong poison that I bought of him. *K. Hen. O thou eternal Mover of the heavens,

* Look with a gentle eye upon this wretch! * O, beat away the busy meddling fiend,

* That lays strong siege unto this wretch's soul, * And from his bosom

purge this black despair!