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To prove him, in defending of myself,
A traitor to my God, my king, and me:

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
Thus plated in habiliments of war;

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?
Speak like a true knight, so defend thee heaven!
BOLING. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,
Am I; who ready here do stand in arms,

To prove, by heaven's grace, and my body's valour,
In lists, on Thomas Mowbray duke of Norfolk,
That he's a traitor, foul and dangerous,

To God of heaven, king Richard, and to me;
And, as I truly fight, defend me heaven!
MAR. On pain of death, no person be so bold,
Or daring-hardy, as to touch the lists,
Except the marshal, and such officers
Appointed to direct these fair designs.

BOLING. Lord marshal, let me kiss my sovereign's hand,
And bow my knee before his majesty:

For Mowbray and myself are like two men
That vow a long and weary pilgrimage;

Then let us take a ceremonious leave,
And loving farewell, of our several friends.

MAR. The appellant in all duty greets your highness,
And craves to kiss your hand, and take his leave.
K. RICH. We will descend, and fold him in our arms.
Cousin of Hereford, as thy cause is right,

So be thy fortune in this royal fight!

Farewell, my blood; which if to-day thou shed.
Lament we may, but not revenge thee dead.

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;
Of you, my noble cousin, lord Aumerle :-

Not sick, although I have to do with death;
But lusty, young, and cheerly drawing breath.
Lo, as at English feasts, so I regreet

The daintiest last, to make the end most sweet :
O thou, the earthly a author of my blood,—
Whose youthful spirit, in me regenerate,
Doth with a two-fold vigour lift me up
To reach at victory above my head,-

Add proof unto mine armour with thy prayers;
And with thy blessings steel my lance's point,
That it may enter Mowbray's waxen coat,

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,
Fall like amazing thunder on the casque

Of thy adversed pernicious enemy:

Rouse up thy youthful blood, be valiant and live.
BOLING. My innocency, and saint George to thrive.

NOR. [Rising.] However heaven, or fortune, cast my lot,
There lives, or dies, true to king Richard's throne,
A loyal, just, and upright gentleman :

Never did captive with a freer heart

Cast off his chains of bondage, and embrace
His golden uncontroll'd enfranchisement,
More than my dancing soul doth celebrate
This feast of battle with mine adversary.
Most mighty liege, and my companion peers,
Take from my mouth the wish of happy years:
As gentle and as jocund, as to jeste,
Go I to fight; Truth hath a quiet breast.
K. RICH. Farewell, my lord: securely I espy
Virtue with valour couched in thine eye.

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[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.

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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,
A traitor to his God, his king, and him,

And dares him to set forward to the fight.

2 HER. Here standeth Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk,
On pain to be found false and recreant,
Both to defend himself, and to approve
Henry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,
To God, his sovereign, and to him, disloyal;
Courageously, and with a free desire,
Attending but the signal to begin.

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 both return back to their chairs again :
Withdraw with us: and let the trumpets sound,
While we return these dukes what we decree.—
Draw near,

And list, what with our council we have done.

For that our kingdom's earth should not be soil'd
With that dear blood which it hath fostered;

And for our eyes do hate the dire aspect

Of civil wounds plough'd up with neighbours' swords;
[And for we think the eagle-winged pride

Of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts,
With rival-hating envy, set on you b

To wake our peace, which in our country's cradle
Draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep ;]*
Which so rous'd up with boisterous untun'd drums,
With harsh resounding trumpets' dreadful bray,
And grating shock of wrathful iron arms,
Might from our quiet confines fright fair peace,
And make us wade even in our kindred's blood;-
Therefore we banish you our territories:

⚫ 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,
Shall not regreet our fair dominions,

But tread the stranger paths of banishment.
BOLING. Your will be done: This must my comfort be,
That sun, that warms you here, shall shine on me;
And those his golden beams, to you here lent,
Shall point on me, and gild my banishment.
K. RICH. Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom,
Which I with some unwillingness pronounce :
The sly-slow hours shall not determinate
The dateless limit of thy dear exile ;—
The hopeless word of, never to return,
Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life.
NOR. A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege,
And all unlook'd for from your highness' mouth.
A dearer meritd, not so deep a maim

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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,
Which thou from Mahomet didst greatly gain."

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Within my mouth you have engaol'd my tongue,
Doubly portcullis'd with my teeth and lips;
And dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance

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,
Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?
K. RICH. It boots thee not to be compassionate a;
After our sentence plaining comes too late.
NOR. Then thus I turn me from my country's light,
To dwell in solemn shades of endless night.
K. RICH. Return again, and take an oath with thee.
Lay on our royal sword your banish'd hands;
Swear by the duty that you owe to heaven,
(Our part therein we banish 12 with yourselves,)
To keep the oath that we administer :-
You never shall (so help you truth and heaven!)
Embrace each other's love in banishment;

Nor ever look upon each other's face;

Nor ever write, regreet, or reconcile

This lowering tempest of your home-bred hate;
Nor ever by advised purpose meet

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,
One of our souls had wander'd in the air,
Banish'd this frail sepulchre of our flesh,
As now our flesh is banish'd from this land:
Confess thy treasons ere thou fly this realm;
Since thou hast far to go, bear not along
The clogging burthen of a guilty soul.
NOR. No, Bolingbroke; if ever I were traitor,
My name be blotted from the book of life,
And I from heaven banish'd as from hence!

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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."

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