The poetry of the two completed acts is often noble. The long speech of York, in Act I, coming, as it does, after a clash of minds turbid with passion, is most noble. It gives a terror to what follows. The calm mind makes no mistake. The judgment of a man without heart seems as infallible as fate, as beautiful, and as ghastly. All happens as he foresees. All the cruelty and bloodiness of the latter half of the play come from that man's beautifully clear, cool brain. He stands detached. One little glimmer of heart in him would alter everything. The glimmer never comes. Humphrey is poisoned, Suffolk is beheaded, the Cardinal dies. Cade, in that most awful scene of the mob in power, looks at two heads on pikes with the remark-- "Is not this braver? Let them kiss one another, for they loved well when they were alive.... Now part them again." These are some of the results of the working of a fine intellect in which-- "Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought, And not a thought but thinks on dignity." There is a terrible scene at the Cardinal's death-bed. The Cardinal is discovered in bed "raving and staring as if he were madde." He has poisoned his old enemy, the Duke Humphrey. Now he is dying; the murder is on his soul, and nothing has been gained by it. The path is made clearer for his enemies perhaps. That is the only result. Now he is dying, the waste of mind is at an end, and the figure of the victim is at the foot of the bed. "Bring me unto my trial when you will. Died he not in his bed? where should he die? Can I make men live, whe'r they will or no? O, torture me no more, I will confess. Alive again? then show me where he is: I'll give a thousand pound to look upon him. He hath no eyes, the dust hath blinded them. Comb down his hair: Look! look! it stands upright. Like lime-twigs set to catch my winged soul. Give me some drink." Some people find humour in the Simpcox and Cade scenes. There is more sadness and horror of heart than humour. The minds of the two great poets were brooding together on life. They saw man working with intellect to bring ruin, and working without intellect to bring something beastlier than man should know. In its unfinished state the play is without the exaltation of great tragedy. It would be one of the hopeless plays, were it not for the passionate energy of mind with which the nobles alter life. There is little human feeling in the play. Warwick by Gloucester's corpse shows the sense of rectitude of a police inspector. At the death-bed of the Cardinal, he makes the remark of a fiend-- "See how the pangs of death do make him grin." The one human, tender figure is that of the King, who betrays his friend, his only true friend-- "With sad unhelpful tears; and with dimm'd eyes Looks after him, and cannot do him good."