To prove him, in defending of myself, And, as I truly fight, defend me heaven! [He takes his seat. Trumpet sounds. Enter BOLINGBROKE, in armour, preceded by a Herald. K. RICH. Marshal, ask yonder knight in arms, Both who he is, and why he cometh hither And formally according to our law Depose him in the justice of his cause. MAR. What is thy name? and wherefore com'st thou hither, Before king Richard, in his royal lists? Against whom comest thou? and what 's thy quarrel? To prove, by heaven's grace, and my body's valour, To God of heaven, king Richard, and to me; BOLING. Lord marshal, let me kiss my sovereign's hand, For Mowbray and myself are like two men Then let us take a ceremonious leave, MAR. The appellant in all duty greets your highness, So be thy fortune in this royal fight! Farewell, my blood; which if to-day thou shed. BOLING. O, let no noble eye profane a tear For me, if I be gor'd with Mowbray's spear; As confident as is the falcon's flight Against a bird do I with Mowbray fight. My loving lord [to LORD MARSHAL], I take my leave of you; Not sick, although I have to do with death; The daintiest last, to make the end most sweet : Add proof unto mine armour with thy prayers; c And furnish new the name of John of Gaunt, Even in the lusty 'haviour of his son. GAUNT. Heaven in thy good cause make thee prosperous! Be swift like lightning in the execution; And let thy blows, doubly redoubled, Of thy adversed pernicious enemy: Rouse up thy youthful blood, be valiant and live. NOR. [Rising.] However heaven, or fortune, cast my lot, Never did captive with a freer heart Cast off his chains of bondage, and embrace [To GAUNT. [He takes his seat. Waxen coat. The original meaning of the noun wax is that of something pliable, yielding. Weak and wax have the same root. Mowbray's waxen coat, into which Bolingbroke's lance's point may enter, is his frail and penetrable coat, or armour. • Furnish is the reading of the folio; furbish of the quarto of 1597. To furbish is to polish; to furnish, to dress. a Adverse, in the quarto; the folio, amaz'd. To jest. A jest was sometimes used to signify a mask, or pageant. Thus, in the old play of 'Hieronymo:' "He promis'd us, in honour of our guest, To grace our banquet with some pompous jest." To jest, therefore, in the sense in which Mowbray here uses it, is to play a part in a mask. Order the trial, marshal, and begin. [The KING and the Lords return to their seats. MAR. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby, Receive thy lance; and God defend thy right! BOLING. [Rising.] Strong as a tower in hope, I cry—amen. MAR. Go bear this lance [to an Officer] to Thomas, duke of Norfolk. 1 HER. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby, Stands here for God, his sovereign, and himself, On pain to be found false and recreant, To prove the duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray, And dares him to set forward to the fight. 2 HER. Here standeth Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, MAR. Sound, trumpets; and set forward, combatants. Stay, the king hath thrown his warder down. K. RICH. Let them lay by their helmets and their spears, And list, what with our council we have done. For that our kingdom's earth should not be soil'd And for our eyes do hate the dire aspect Of civil wounds plough'd up with neighbours' swords; Of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts, To wake our peace, which in our country's cradle ⚫ Warder the truncheon, or staff of command. [A charge sounded. [A long flourish. [To the Combatants. On you. So the old copies. Pope and subsequent editors read you on. • These five lines, enclosed in brackets, are omitted in the folio. You, cousin Hereford, upon pain of life", Till twice five summers have enrich'd our fields, But tread the stranger paths of banishment. As to be cast forth in the common air, Have I deserved at your highness' hands. The language I have learn'd these forty years, My native English, now I must forego: And now my tongue's use is to me no more Than an unstringed viol, or a harp; Or like a cunning instrument cas'd up, Or, being open, put into his hands That knows no touch to tune the harmony. • Life. The folio has death; but subsequently, in the King's speech to Norfolk, it has life, in the same sense. The quartos have life. Mr. Collier justly observes that one or the other word should be retained. b Sly-slow hours. So the old copies. Pope would read fly-slow. Chapman, in his translation of the ‘Odyssey,' has “those sly hours." It would hardly be fair to think that Pope changed the text that he might have the credit of originality in the following line: "All sly slow things, with circumspective eye." • Dear exile. The manner in which Shakspere uses the word dear often presents a difficulty to the modern reader. Twenty-five lines before this we have the "dear blood" of the kingdom-the valued blood. We have now the "dear exile" of Norfolk-the harmful exile. The apparent contradiction is immediately reconciled by looking at the etymology of the word. To dere, the old English verb, from the Anglo Saxon der-ian, is to hurt,—to do mischief; and thence dearth, meaning, which hurteth, dereth, or maketh dear. In the expression dear exile we have the primitive meaning of to dere. But in the other expression, dear blood, we have the secondary meaning. One of the most painful consequences of mischief on a large scale, such as the mischief of a bad season, was dearth-the barrenness, the scarcity, produced by the hurtful agent. What was spared was thence called dear-precious-costly-greatly coveted-highly prized. A dearer merit. A more valued reward. Johnson says to deserve a merit is a phrase of which he knows not any example. Shakspere here distinctly means to deserve a reward; for merit is strictly the part or share earned or gained. Prior, who wrote a century after Shakspere, uses the word in the same sense: HISTORIES.-VOL. I. "Those laurel-groves, the merits of thy youth, I Within my mouth you have engaol'd my tongue, Is made my gaoler to attend on me. I am too old to fawn upon a nurse, Too far in years to be a pupil now; What is thy sentence, then, but speechless death, Nor ever look upon each other's face; Nor ever write, regreet, or reconcile This lowering tempest of your home-bred hate; To plot, contrive, or complot any ill 'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land. BOLING. I swear. NOR. And I, to keep all this. BOLING. Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy b By this time, had the king permitted us, But what thou art, heaven, thou, and I do know; And all too soon, I fear, the king shall rue. [Retiring. Compassionate. This is the only instance in which Shakspere uses compassionate in the sense of complaining. b So far. The earlier editions read so fare; the second folio, so farre. Johnson's interpretation of this passage seems to be just: “Norfolk, so far I have addressed myself to thee as to mine enemy; I now utter my last words with kindness and tenderness; confess thy treasons." |