No More Learning

WARWICK. But both of you were vow'd Duke Humphrey's foes;
And you, forsooth, had the good Duke to keep.
'Tis like you would not feast him like a friend;
And 'tis well seen he found an enemy.
QUEEN. Then you, belike, suspect these noblemen
As guilty of Duke Humphrey's timeless death.
WARWICK. Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh,
And sees fast by a butcher with an axe,
But will suspect 'twas he that made the slaughter?
Who finds the partridge in the puttock's nest
But may imagine how the bird was dead,
Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?
Even so suspicious is this tragedy.
QUEEN. Are you the butcher, Suffolk? Where's your knife?
Is Beaufort term'd a kite? Where are his talons?
SUFFOLK.
I wear no knife to slaughter sleeping men;
But here's a vengeful sword, rusted with ease,
That shall be scoured in his rancorous heart
That slanders me with murder's crimson badge.
Say if thou dar'st, proud Lord of Warwickshire,
That I am faulty in Duke Humphrey's death.
Exeunt CARDINAL, SOMERSET, and others
WARWICK. What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him?
QUEEN. He dares not calm his contumelious spirit,
Nor cease to be an arrogant controller,
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,
If ever lady wrong'd her lord so much,
Thy mother took into her blameful bed
Some stern untutor'd churl, and noble stock
Was graft with crab-tree slip, whose fruit thou art,
And never of the Nevils' noble race.
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 murd'rous coward, on thy knee
Make thee beg pardon for thy passed speech
And say it was thy mother that thou meant'st,
That thou thyself was born in bastardy;
And, after all this fearful homage done,
Give thee thy hire and send thy soul to hell,
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.
WARWICK. Away even now, or I will drag thee hence.