YORK So shall my virtue be his vice’s bawd
And he shall spend mine honour with his shame,
As thriftless sons their scraping fathers’ gold.
Mine honour lives when his dishonour dies,
Or my shamed life in his dishonour lies.
Thou kill’st me in his life: giving him breath
The traitor lives, the true man’s put to death.
DUCHESS (within) What ho, my liege! For God’s sake let me in!
BOLINGBROKE What shrill-voiced suppliant makes this eager cry? (5.3.66-74)
Incredibly, York continues to argue for Aumerle to be punished, as a traitor, with the greatest severity. (Does Aumerle look up, incredulous, appalled?) His rigid moralising is emphasised by his falling into couplets, and part of what this speech is doing, perhaps, is setting up the terms of a vexed relationship between a long-suffering father and a profligate, prodigal son, Bolingbroke (as Henry IV) and his son Prince Hal, who’s already been invoked at the top of this scene. If Bolingbroke pardons Aumerle, York argues, then it’s as if my virtue is his vice’s bawd, being prostituted; York will be enabling Aumerle’s misdemeanours. He will be spending mine honour with his shame, using up my credit, squandering everything I’ve worked so hard for, everything I’ve tried to do and be. It’ll be like a spendthrift son unthinkingly frittering away (or worse) the wealth that his father has painstakingly acquired, hard-earned, hard-won, scrapedtogether. It’s a straightforward choice, York says (and the chiastic structure underlines it): either mine honour lives when his dishonour dies, I keep my own personal honour when (and because) his dishonourable behaviour is punished (even with death, quite literally) or else I will forever be shamed by that dishonour; I will lose my honour, and my self-respect, because of him. And then, even more emphatically and uncompromisingly: if you let him live, you’re killing me. Thou kill’st me in his life. If you give him breath, if you allow the traitor to live, then you put the true man—me, York, your uncle, his father—to death.
Bolingbroke doesn’t get a chance to respond to this somewhat extreme example of paternal tough love, never mind Aumerle, because there’s more noises off… In the intense, tense, tangled emotion of this scene we might momentarily have forgotten that the Duchess of York also promised to follow Aumerle, and her husband, to the court. We might not even recognise her voice. But she’s at the door, locked out, and determined. And it’s Bolingbroke’s turn to be amazed: he might well have expected York to follow Aumerle, but now, what shrill-voiced suppliant makes this eager cry? (and presumably furious hammering too…)
