Page 498 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

[Tears the supplication.]
Away, base cullions! - Suffolk, let them go.

ALL [PETITIONERS]

Come, let’s be gone.

Exeunt.

MARGARET

My Lord of Suffolk, say, is this the guise, [40]
Is this the fashions in the court of England?
Is this the government of Britain’s isle?
And this the royalty of Albion’s king?
What, shall King Henry be a pupil still
Under the surly Gloucester’s governance? [45]
Am I a queen in title and in style
And must be made a subject to a duke?
I tell thee, Pole, when in the city Tours
Thou ran’st a-tilt in honour of my love
And stol’st away the ladies’ hearts of France, [50]
I thought King Henry had resembled thee
In courage, courtship, and proportion.
But all his mind is bent to holiness,
To number Ave-Maries on his beads;
His champions are the prophets and apostles, [55]
His weapons holy saws of sacred writ,
His study is his tilt-yard, and his loves
Are brazen images of canonised saints.
I would the College of the Cardinals
Would choose him Pope and carry him to Rome [60]
And set the triple crown upon his head:
That were a state fit for his holiness.

SUFFOLK

Madam, be patient: as I was cause
Your highness came to England, so will I
In England work your grace’s full content. [65]

MARGARET

Beside the haught Protector, have we Beaufort
The imperious churchman; Somerset, Buckingham,