Page 229 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

ACT III IT

Scene I IT

Flourish. Enter King [Henry], Exeter, Gloucester, Winchester, Warwick,
Somerset, Suffolk, Richard Plantagenet [and others]. Gloucester offers to

put up a bill; Winchester snatches it, tears it.

WINCHEST ER

Com’st thou with deep premeditated lines,
With written pamphlets studiously devised?
Humphrey of Gloucester, if thou canst accuse
Or aught intend’st to lay unto my charge,
Do it without invention, suddenly; [5]
As I with sudden and extemporal speech
Purpose to answer what thou canst object.

GLOUCEST ER

Presumptuous priest, this place commands my patience,
Or thou shouldst find thou hast dishonoured me.
Think not, although in writing I preferred [10]
The manner of thy vile outrageous crimes,
That therefore I have forged, or am not able
Verbatim to rehearse the method of my pen.
No, prelate: such is thy audacious wickedness,
Thy lewd, pestiferous, and dissentious pranks, [15]
As very infants prattle of thy pride.
Thou art a most pernicious usurer,
Froward by nature, enemy to peace,
Lascivious, wanton, more than well beseems
A man of thy profession and degree. [20]
And for thy treachery, what’s more manifest,
In that thou laid’st a trap to take my life
As well at London Bridge as at the Tower?
Beside, I fear me, if thy thoughts were sifted,
The king, thy sovereign, is not quite exempt [25]