The readiest way to make the wench amends
Is to become her husband and her father:
The which will I; not all so much for love 156
As for another secret close intent,
By marrying her, which I must reach unto.
But yet I run before my horse to market:
Clarence still breathes; Edward still lives and reigns: 160
When they are gone, then must I count my gains.
Scene Two
[London. Another Street]
Enter the corse of Henry the Sixth with Halberds to guard it, Lady Anne being the Mourner.
Anne. Set down, set down your honourable load,
If honour may be shrouded in a hearse,
Whilst I a while obsequiously lament
Th' untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster. 4
Poor key-cold figure of a holy king!
Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster!
Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood!
Be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost, 8
To hear the lamentations of poor Anne,
Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughter'd son,
Stabb'd by the self-same hand that made these wounds!
Lo, in these windows that let forth thy life, 12
I pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes.
O, cursed be the hand that made these holes!
Cursed the heart that had the heart to do it!
1 Anne; cf. n.
3 obsequiously: mournfully, as befits a funeral
5 key-cold: cold in death
8 invocate: invoke
12 windows: i.e. wounds
13 helpless: useless
