YORK              Give me my boots, I say.

DUCHESS       Why, York, what wilt thou do?

Wilt thou not hide the trespass of thine own?

Have we more sons or are we like to have?

Is not my teeming date drunk up with time,

And wilt thou pluck my fair son from mine age

And rob me of a happy mother’s name?

Is he not like thee, is he not thine own?      (5.2.87-94)

Ample scope here for comedy, as York is physically prevented from getting his hands on his boots, by the Duchess. (She has been known to throw them into the audience, who have been known to throw them even further away; see here, and thanks to the faithful reader who reminded me of this!) But the Duchess still doesn’t know what’s at stake, what Aumerle’s meant to have done, and why York is so enraged and terrified. She thinks he’s overreacting in relation to some fault which is not necessarily minor, but which a father might be expected to indulge, if not entirely overlook; she expects York to be on his son’s side, to advocate for him, above all else. Wilt thou not hide the trespass of thine own? That’s what parents do, clean up and cover up when their children mess up. Because he’s our only son. Have we more sons or are we like to have? The answer to this is no, because my teeming date, that is, my childbearing years, is drunk up with time. I’m past it; we can’t have any more children, it’s too late, those days have gone. (Perhaps real fear creeping in now, as well as the fury?) And wilt thou pluck my fair son from mine age and rob me of a happy mother’s name? Are you going to condemn my son, my comfort, the joy of my life, my world? So that I am no longer a mother? Look, he’s so like you; he’s your son…

Mothers pleading for and lamenting sons recur in the first tetralogy of the histories, and King John too. (And Titus Andronicus.) The Duchess isn’t quite a Hecuba, or a Virgin Mary, and this scene mostly stays in comic territory, but those archetypes are available, and tragedy is never far away.