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 ;- [To GAUNT. Whose youthful spirit, in me regenerate, Gaunt. Heaven in thy good cause make thee prosperous ! Be swift like lightning in the execution; Fall like amazing thunder on the casque Of thy adverse, pernicious enemy. Rouse up thy youthful blood, be valiant and live. Boling. Mine innocency, and Saint George to thrive! [He takes his seat. Nor. [Rising.] However Heaven, or fortune, cast my lot, There lives or dies, true to king Richard's throne, Never did captive with a freer heart Cast off his chains of bondage, and embrace As gentle and as jocund as to jest,' 1 Go I to fight; truth hath a quiet breast. K. Rich. Farewell, my lord; securely I espy [The King and the Lords return to their seats. 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, On pain to be found false and recreant, Attending but the signal to begin. Mar. Sound, trumpets; and set forward, combat ants. [A charge sounded. Stay; the king hath thrown his warder 2 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, [A long flourish. 1 To jest in old language sometimes signified to play a part in a mask. 2 A warder was a kind of truncheon or staff carried by persons who presided at these single combats; the throwing down of which seems to have been a solemn act of prohibition to stay proceedings. A different movement of the warder had an opposite effect. Draw near, [To the Combatants. And list, what with our council we have done. For that our kingdom's earth should not be soiled Of civil1 wounds ploughed up with neighbors' swords; To wake our peace, which in our country's cradle 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; K. Rich. Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom, Which I with some unwillingness pronounce. The fly-slow3 hours shall not determinate 1 Capel's copy of the quarto edition of this play reads, “Of cruel wounds," &c. Malone's copy of the same edition, and all the other editions, read "Of civil wounds," &c. 2 The five lines in brackets are omitted in the folio. 3 The old copies read "sly-slow hours." Pope reads "fly-slow hours," which has been admitted into the text. It is, however, remarkable that Pope, in the fourth book of his Essay on Man, v. 226, has employed the epiphe: which, in the present instance, he has rejected. 4 Word, for sentence; any short phrase was called a word. Nor. A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege, As to be cast forth in the common air, That knows no touch to tune the harmony. Is made my jailer to attend on me. What is thy sentence, then, but speechless death, 2 K. Rich. It boots thee not to be compassionate; 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. [Retiring. K. Rich. Return again, and take an oath with thee. Lay on our royal sword your banished hands; Swear by the duty that you owe to Heaven (Our part therein we banish with yourselves) To keep the oath that we administer. You never shall (so help you truth and Heaven!) Nor never write, regreet, nor reconcile This lowering tempest of your home-bred hate; 1 Shakspeare uses merit, in this place, in the sense of reward. The word is used in the same sense by Prior. 2 Compassionate is apparently here used in the sense of complaining, plaintive; but no other instance of the word in this sense has occurred to the commentators. May it not be an error of the press, for "so passionate" "? Nor never by advised1 purpose meet, 'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land. Nor. And I, to keep all this. Boling. Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy.2- Nor. No, Bolingbroke; if ever I were traitor, And I from heaven banished, as from hence! But what thou art, Heaven, thou, and I do know ; * Farewell, my liege.-Now no way can I stray; Hath from the number of his banished years Return [To BOLING.] with welcome home from banish ment. Boling. How long a time lies in one little word! Gaunt. I thank my liege, that, in regard of me, For, ere the six years, that he hath to spend, Can change their moons, and bring their times about, My oil-dried lamp, and time-bewasted light, 1 Premeditated, deliberated. 2 The first folio reads "So fare." This line seems to be addressed by way of caution to Mowbray, lest he should think that Bolingbroke was about to conciliate him. 3 The duke of Norfolk went to Venice, "where for thought and melancholy he deceased."-Holinshed. |