Suf. How canst thou tell, she will deny thy suit,
Before thou make a trial of her love? [Aside.
Mar. Why speak'st thou not ? what ransom must I pay?
Suf. She's beautiful ; and therefore to be woo'd :
She is a woman; therefore to be won." [1]
He at last finds it best to keep the prisoner, and, wedding her to his king, become at once her public subject and her private lover.
Has this connection of Margaret with Suffolk any historical basis? I do not know. But Shakespeare's eye of divination often sees things of which chronicles say nothing, yet are none the less true. He knows even those fleeting dreams of bygone days which Clio forgot to write. There lie perhaps upon the stage of events all kinds of varied images or forms, which do not flit as common shadows with the real shapes, but come like ghostly things upon the ground, unnoted by the busy world of men who, naught surmising, carry on their work. Yet they are often visible enough, as clear in colour as distinct in form unto the eyes of seers born on Sunday whom we call poets !
- ↑ First Part of King Henry VI, act v. sc. 3.
