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Henry VI, Pt. 1: Act III, Scene 1

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Henry VI, Pt. 1
Act III, Scene 1

Scene 1

London. The Parliament House.

  1. Flourish. Enter King, Exeter, Gloucester, Winchester,
  2. Warwick, Somerset, Suffolk, Richard Plantagenet, and others.
  1. Gloucester offers to put up a bill; Winchester snatches it,
  2. tears it.

Bishop of Winchester

1 - 7
  1. Com’st thou with deep premeditated lines,
  2. With written pamphlets studiously devis’d?
  3. Humphrey of Gloucester, if thou canst accuse,
  4. Or aught intend’st to lay unto my charge,
  5. Do it without invention, suddenly,
  6. As I with sudden and extemporal speech
  7. Purpose to answer what thou canst object.

Duke of Gloucester

8 - 26
  1. Presumptuous priest, this place commands my patience,
  2. Or thou shouldst find thou hast dishonor’d me.
  3. Think not, although in writing I preferr’d
  4. The manner of thy vile outrageous crimes,
  5. That therefore I have forg’d, or am not able
  6. Verbatim to rehearse the method of my pen.
  7. No, prelate, such is thy audacious wickedness,
  8. Thy lewd, pestiferous, and dissentious pranks,
  9. As very infants prattle of thy pride.
  10. Thou art a most pernicious usurer,
  11. Froward by nature, enemy to peace,
  12. Lascivious, wanton, more than well beseems
  13. A man of thy profession and degree;
  14. And for thy treachery, what’s more manifest?
  15. In that thou laidst a trap to take my life,
  16. As well at London Bridge as at the Tower.
  17. Beside, I fear me, if thy thoughts were sifted,
  18. The King, thy sovereign, is not quite exempt
  19. From envious malice of thy swelling heart.

Bishop of Winchester

27 - 41
  1. Gloucester, I do defy thee. Lords, vouchsafe
  2. To give me hearing what I shall reply.
  3. If I were covetous, ambitious, or perverse,
  4. As he will have me, how am I so poor?
  5. Or how haps it I seek not to advance
  6. Or raise myself, but keep my wonted calling?
  7. And for dissension, who preferreth peace
  8. More than I do, except I be provok’d?
  9. No, my good lords, it is not that offends,
  10. It is not that that hath incens’d the Duke:
  11. It is because no one should sway but he,
  12. No one, but he, should be about the King;
  13. And that engenders thunder in his breast,
  14. And makes him roar these accusations forth.
  15. But he shall know I am as good—

Duke of Gloucester

42 - 43
  1.                                 As good?
  2. Thou bastard of my grandfather!

Bishop of Winchester

44 - 45
  1. Ay, lordly sir; for what are you, I pray,
  2. But one imperious in another’s throne?

Duke of Gloucester

46
  1. Am I not Protector, saucy priest?

Bishop of Winchester

47
  1. And am not I a prelate of the Church?

Duke of Gloucester

48 - 49
  1. Yes, as an outlaw in a castle keeps
  2. And useth it to patronage his theft.

Bishop of Winchester

50
  1. Unreverent Gloucester!

Duke of Gloucester

51 - 52
  1.                        Thou art reverent
  2. Touching thy spiritual function, not thy life.

Bishop of Winchester

53
  1. Rome shall remedy this.

Duke of Gloucester

54
  1.                         Roam thither then.

Earl of Warwick

55
  1. To Winchester
  2. My lord, it were your duty to forbear.

Duke of Somerset

56 - 58
  1. Ay, so the Bishop be not overborne.
  2. Methinks my lord should be religious,
  3. And know the office that belongs to such.

Earl of Warwick

59 - 60
  1. Methinks his lordship should be humbler,
  2. It fitteth not a prelate so to plead.

Duke of Somerset

61
  1. Yes, when his holy state is touch’d so near.

Earl of Warwick

62 - 63
  1. State holy or unhallow’d, what of that?
  2. Is not his Grace Protector to the King?

Richard Plantagenet

64 - 67
  1. Aside.
  2. Plantagenet, I see, must hold his tongue,
  3. Lest it be said, “Speak, sirrah, when you should;
  4. Must your bold verdict enter talk with lords?”
  5. Else would I have a fling at Winchester.

King Henry the Sixth

68 - 78
  1. Uncles of Gloucester and of Winchester,
  2. The special watchmen of our English weal,
  3. I would prevail, if prayers might prevail,
  4. To join your hearts in love and amity.
  5. O, what a scandal is it to our crown
  6. That two such noble peers as ye should jar!
  7. Believe me, lords, my tender years can tell,
  8. Civil dissension is a viperous worm
  9. That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth.
  10. A noise within.
  11. “Down with the tawny-coats!”
  12. What tumult’s this?

Com’st thou with deep premeditated lines, with written pamphlets studiously devis’d?

Byam Shaw, 1901

Earl of Warwick

79 - 81
  1.                     An uproar, I dare warrant,
  2. Begun through malice of the Bishop’s men.
  3. A noise again.
  4.                                           “Stones! Stones!”
  1. Enter Mayor of London, attended.

Mayor

82 - 91
  1. O my good lords, and virtuous Henry,
  2. Pity the city of London, pity us!
  3. The Bishop and the Duke of Gloucester’s men,
  4. Forbidden late to carry any weapon,
  5. Have fill’d their pockets full of pebble stones;
  6. And, banding themselves in contrary parts,
  7. Do pelt so fast at one another’s pate
  8. That many have their giddy brains knock’d out;
  9. Our windows are broke down in every street,
  10. And we, for fear, compell’d to shut our shops.
  1. Enter Servingmen of both parties, in skirmish, with bloody
  2. pates.

King Henry the Sixth

92 - 94
  1. We charge you, on allegiance to ourself,
  2. To hold your slaught’ring hands and keep the peace.
  3. Pray, uncle Gloucester, mitigate this strife.

Winchester’s Serving Attendant

95
  1. Nay, if we be forbidden stones, we’ll fall to it with our teeth.

Gloucester’s First Serving Attendant

96
  1. Do what ye dare, we are as resolute.
  1. Skirmish again.

Duke of Gloucester

97 - 98
  1. You of my household, leave this peevish broil,
  2. And set this unaccustom’d fight aside.

Gloucester’s Second Serving Attendant

99 - 106
  1. My lord, we know your Grace to be a man
  2. Just and upright; and, for your royal birth,
  3. Inferior to none but to his Majesty;
  4. And ere that we will suffer such a prince,
  5. So kind a father of the commonweal,
  6. To be disgraced by an inkhorn mate,
  7. We and our wives and children all will fight,
  8. And have our bodies slaught’red by thy foes.

Winchester’s Serving Attendant

107 - 108
  1. Ay, and the very parings of our nails
  2. Shall pitch a field when we are dead.
  1. Begin again.

Duke of Gloucester

109 - 111
  1.                                       Stay, stay, I say!
  2. And if you love me, as you say you do,
  3. Let me persuade you to forbear a while.

King Henry the Sixth

112 - 117
  1. O, how this discord doth afflict my soul!
  2. Can you, my Lord of Winchester, behold
  3. My sighs and tears, and will not once relent?
  4. Who should be pitiful, if you be not?
  5. Or who should study to prefer a peace,
  6. If holy churchmen take delight in broils?

Earl of Warwick

118 - 123
  1. Yield, my Lord Protector, yield, Winchester,
  2. Except you mean with obstinate repulse
  3. To slay your sovereign and destroy the realm.
  4. You see what mischief, and what murder too,
  5. Hath been enacted through your enmity.
  6. Then be at peace, except ye thirst for blood.

Bishop of Winchester

124
  1. He shall submit, or I will never yield.

Duke of Gloucester

125 - 127
  1. Compassion on the King commands me stoop,
  2. Or I would see his heart out ere the priest
  3. Should ever get that privilege of me.

Earl of Warwick

128 - 131
  1. Behold, my Lord of Winchester, the Duke
  2. Hath banish’d moody discontented fury,
  3. As by his smoothed brows it doth appear.
  4. Why look you still so stern and tragical?

Duke of Gloucester

132
  1. Here, Winchester, I offer thee my hand.

King Henry the Sixth

133 - 136
  1. Fie, uncle Beauford, I have heard you preach
  2. That malice was a great and grievous sin;
  3. And will not you maintain the thing you teach,
  4. But prove a chief offender in the same?

Earl of Warwick

137 - 139
  1. Sweet King! The Bishop hath a kindly gird.
  2. For shame, my Lord of Winchester, relent!
  3. What, shall a child instruct you what to do?

Bishop of Winchester

140 - 141
  1. Well, Duke of Gloucester, I will yield to thee;
  2. Love for thy love and hand for hand I give.

Duke of Gloucester

142 - 146
  1. Aside.
  2. Ay, but, I fear me, with a hollow heart.—
  3. See here, my friends and loving countrymen,
  4. This token serveth for a flag of truce
  5. Betwixt ourselves and all our followers.
  6. So help me God, as I dissemble not!

Bishop of Winchester

147
  1. Aside.
  2. So help me God, as I intend it not!

King Henry the Sixth

148 - 151
  1. O loving uncle, kind Duke of Gloucester,
  2. How joyful am I made by this contract!
  3. Away, my masters, trouble us no more,
  4. But join in friendship, as your lords have done.
Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare

Stoop then and set your knee against my foot, and in reguerdon of that duty done, I girt thee with the valiant sword of York

From: Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare

Mary Cowden Clarke, Charles Cowden Clarke, 1870

Winchester’s Serving Attendant

152
  1. Content, I’ll to the surgeon’s.

Gloucester’s First Serving Attendant

153
  1.                                 And so will I.

Gloucester’s Second Serving Attendant

154
  1. And I will see what physic the tavern affords.
  1. Exeunt Servingmen, Mayor, etc.

Earl of Warwick

155 - 157
  1. Accept this scroll, most gracious sovereign,
  2. Which in the right of Richard Plantagenet
  3. We do exhibit to your Majesty.

Duke of Gloucester

158 - 162
  1. Well urg’d, my Lord of Warwick; for, sweet prince,
  2. And if your Grace mark every circumstance,
  3. You have great reason to do Richard right,
  4. Especially for those occasions
  5. At Eltam Place I told your Majesty.

King Henry the Sixth

163 - 165
  1. And those occasions, uncle, were of force:
  2. Therefore, my loving lords, our pleasure is
  3. That Richard be restored to his blood.

Earl of Warwick

166 - 167
  1. Let Richard be restored to his blood,
  2. So shall his father’s wrongs be recompens’d.

Bishop of Winchester

168
  1. As will the rest, so willeth Winchester.

King Henry the Sixth

169 - 172
  1. If Richard will be true, not that alone
  2. But all the whole inheritance I give
  3. That doth belong unto the house of York,
  4. From whence you spring by lineal descent.

Richard Plantagenet

173 - 174
  1. Thy humble servant vows obedience
  2. And humble service till the point of death.

King Henry the Sixth

175 - 179
  1. Stoop then and set your knee against my foot,
  2. And in reguerdon of that duty done,
  3. I girt thee with the valiant sword of York:
  4. Rise, Richard, like a true Plantagenet,
  5. And rise created princely Duke of York.

Richard Plantagenet

180 - 182
  1. And so thrive Richard as thy foes may fall!
  2. And as my duty springs, so perish they
  3. That grudge one thought against your Majesty!

All

183
  1. Welcome, high prince, the mighty Duke of York!

Duke of Somerset

184
  1. Aside.
  2. Perish, base prince, ignoble Duke of York!

Duke of Gloucester

185 - 189
  1. Now will it best avail your Majesty
  2. To cross the seas and to be crown’d in France.
  3. The presence of a king engenders love
  4. Amongst his subjects and his loyal friends,
  5. As it disanimates his enemies.

King Henry the Sixth

190 - 191
  1. When Gloucester says the word, King Henry goes,
  2. For friendly counsel cuts off many foes.

Duke of Gloucester

192
  1. Your ships already are in readiness.
  1. Sennet. Flourish.
  1. Exeunt. Manet Exeter.

Duke of Exeter

193 - 207
  1. Ay, we may march in England, or in France,
  2. Not seeing what is likely to ensue.
  3. This late dissension grown betwixt the peers
  4. Burns under feigned ashes of forg’d love,
  5. And will at last break out into a flame:
  6. As fest’red members rot but by degree,
  7. Till bones and flesh and sinews fall away,
  8. So will this base and envious discord breed.
  9. And now I fear that fatal prophecy
  10. Which in the time of Henry nam’d the Fifth
  11. Was in the mouth of every sucking babe,
  12. That Henry born at Monmouth should win all,
  13. And Henry born at Windsor lose all:
  14. Which is so plain that Exeter doth wish
  15. His days may finish ere that hapless time.
  1. Exit.
Coronation of King Henry VI of England

Coronation of King Henry VI of England

Charles Grignion, printmaker; Samuel Wale; late 18th century?

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