Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3 (Vol. 74) | George F. Butler (essay date spring 2000)
George F. Butler (essay date spring 2000)
SOURCE: Butler, George F. “Frozen with Fear: Virgil's Aeneid and Act 4, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's The Second Part of King Henry VI.” Philological Quarterly 79, no. 2 (spring 2000): 145-52.
[In the following essay, Butler asserts that Shakespeare relied on Virgil's Aeneid and its depiction of the dying Turnus in his portrayal of Suffolk's death in Henry VI, Part 2.]
In Act 4 of Shakespeare's The Second Part of King Henry VI, the Duke of Suffolk is captured after a battle at sea. The Captain of the ship plans to execute him. As Suffolk prepares to die, he says to Walter Whitmore, “Pene gelidus timor occupat artus: / 'Tis thee I fear” (2 Hen. VI 4.1.116-17); or, “Frozen fear seizes my joints almost entirely.”1 In a study of the classical background of Shakespeare's plays, J. A. K. Thomson has commented on Suffolk's exclamation:
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