Page 554 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

That I am faulty in Duke Humphrey’s death.
[Exeunt Cardinal, Somerset, and others.]

WARWICK

What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him?

MARGARET

He dares not calm his contumelious spirit
Nor cease to be an arrogant controller, [205]
Though Suffolk dare him twenty thousand times.

WARWICK

Madam, be still, with reverence may I say;
For every word you speak in his behalf
Is slander to your royal dignity.

SUFFOLK

Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanour, [210]
If ever lady wronged her lord so much,
Thy mother took into her blameful bed
Some stern untutored churl, and noble stock
Was graft with crab-tree slip, whose fruit thou art
And never of the Nevilles’ noble race. [215]

WARWICK

But that the guilt of murder bucklers thee,
And I should rob the deathsman of his fee,
Quitting thee thereby of ten thousand shames,
And that my sovereign’s presence makes me mild,
I would, false murderous coward, on thy knee [220]
Make thee beg pardon for thy passèd speech,
And say it was thy mother that thou meant’st,
That thou thyself wast born in bastardy;
And, after all this fearful homage done,
Give thee thy hire and send thy soul to hell, [225]
Pernicious blood-sucker of sleeping men!

SUFFOLK

Thou shalt be waking while I shed thy blood,
If from this presence thou dar’st go with me.