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Having heard this, the King addresses the Cardinal, asking him ‘Lord Cardinal, if thou think’st of heavenly bliss,
/ Hold up thy hand, make signal of thy hope’ (ll. 27f). Beaufort, however, dies without making a sign. Herbert
Geisen stresses that the Cardinal’s mode of dying and his failure to ask God for forgiveness underline the work
of conscience, which in his case, however, does not awake repentance but rather the desperation of the guilty
person and serves the purposes of divine retribution. 22 Beaufort’s last moments summarise his past evil deeds
and confirm his severance from God, upon which the Earl of Warwick’s judgment follows: ‘So bad a death
argues a monstrous life’ (l. 30).
Instead of the rather crude visual attempt to connect the two events by staging them in the same bed, as seen in
the Quarto, the Folio text uses a different dramaturgical strategy. Partly by means of a verbal description, partly
by means of actual scenic presentation, the Folio juxtaposes two very different deaths of characters who are
presented, not only as arch-enemies from the very first scene of the first part of the trilogy, 23 but also
representatives of two opposite political camps. Duke Humphrey had always been loyal to the King and had
several times proved his virtuousness, whereas Cardinal Beaufort, one of the chief machinators against the
King’s authority, had betrayed the fundamentals of his post. Although the first of the deaths is not directly
staged in F1, its circumstances and the impression conveyed by one of the murderers’ words are powerful
enough to prompt the theatre attendees to create a mental image of a peacefully sleeping figure, oblivious to
any danger, being approached by a pair of cut-throats and, despite the reluctance of at least one of them,
subsequently smothered. Moreover, unlike the Quarto version, F1 offers a posthumous image of the Duke of
Gloucester as a pure character, making the commons’ riot at the end of the scene – provoked by the good duke’s
death – more understandable. In contrast, the Cardinal’s waking nightmares – at first only reported, but shortly
after shown on the stage – clearly bear witness to his crimes and are presented as a rightful punishment. Since
both events are introduced within a short period of playing time, it seems dramatically more sensitive to stage
only the second one, especially when the Cardinal’s death marks the climactic scene at the end of the third act,
dividing the play into two distinct movements. 24
From the present analysis, we might draw several conclusions. First, both versions of Duke Humphrey’s murder
can be considered as authentic, in the sense that neither of them contradicts the author’s dramaturgical plan,
being a hasty, occasional or popular revision. The Quarto represents an older form of the scene, making use of a
scenographic device which became obsolete in the mid-1590s and abandoned by Elizabethan playwrights.
When adapting the play for new staging conditions, the dramatist, however, decided not only to discard the old
scenography, but also add an emotional element to the dramatic situation, which provokes a strong response
on the part of the audience and which became the focus of Shakespeare’s later works. In this respect, we might
consider the Folio reading as dramatically superior, written by a more mature hand, with a clear dramaturgical
plan in mind. In the light of the revised version’s use of motifs and techniques which are consistent with later
plays by Shakespeare, we might also be reasonably sure that, unlike the revision of the staging of King Henry
VI’s death in the third part of the trilogy, the later version of Duke Humphrey’s murder was most probably
begotten by the original play’s author himself.
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