Page:Henry VI Part 3 (1923) Yale.djvu/147

King Henry the Sixth

Oh monstrous man, to harbour such a thought!

Why loue did scorne me in my mothers wombe.

And for I should not deale in hir affaires,

Shee did corrupt fraile nature in the flesh,

And plaste an enuious mountaine on my backe,

Where sits deformity to mocke my bodie,

To drie mine arme vp like a withered shrimpe.

To make my legges of an vnequall size,

And am I then a man to be belou'd?

Easier for me to compasse twentie crownes.

Tut I can smile, and murder when I smile,

I crie content, to that that greeues me most.

I can adde colours to the Camelion,

And for a need change shapes with Protheus,

And set the aspiring Catalin to schoole.

Can I doe this, and cannot get the crowne?

Tush were it ten times higher, Ile put it downe.'

The finest individual scene in either version of the play, that of the Duke of York's death (I. iv), has been treated by the reviser with marked respect. Here 165 lines in the True Tragedy version are altered into 180 lines of 3 Henry VI with only a conservative minimum of amplification or incidental correction.

 

The earliest allusion to any part of 3 Henry VI is found in Robert Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (1592), where one line is parodied in a connection which shows that Shakespeare had already been employed in revising the drama. The Shakespearean text was not printed till the appearance of the Shakespeare Folio 