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He is our subject, Mowbray; so art thou;

Free speech, and fearless, I to thee allow.
NOR. Then, Bolingbroke3, as low as to thy heart,
Through the false passage of thy throat, thou liest!
Three parts of that receipt I had for Calais
Disburs'd I duly to his highness' soldiers:
The other part reserv'd I by consent;

For that my sovereign liege was in my debt,

Upon remainder of a dear account,

Since last I went to France to fetch his queen :

Now swallow down that lie.-For Gloster's death,-
I slew him not; but to my own disgrace,
Neglected my sworn duty in that case.
For you, my noble lord of Lancaster,
The honourable father to my foe,
Once I did lay an ambush for your life,
A trespass that doth vex my grieved soul:
But, ere I last receiv'd the sacrament,
I did confess it; and exactly begg'd
Your grace's pardon, and, I hope, I had it.
This is my fault: As for the rest appeal'd,
It issues from the rancour of a villain,
A recreant and most degenerate traitor:
Which in myself I boldly will defend;
And interchangeably hurl down my gage
Upon this overweening traitor's foot,

To prove myself a loyal gentleman

Even in the best blood chamber'd in his boscm:
In haste whereof, most heartily I pray

Your highness to assign our trial day.

K. RICH. Wrath-kindled gentlemen, be rul'd by me;
Let's purge this choler without letting blood:
This we prescribe, though no physician;
Deep malice makes too deep incision:

Forget, forgive; conclude, and be agreed;
Our doctors say, this is no month to bleed1.

Good uncle, let this end where it begun;
We'll calm the duke of Norfolk, you your son.
GAUNT. To be a make-peace shall become my age :-
Throw down, my son, the duke of Norfolk's gage.
K. RICH. And, Norfolk, throw down his.
GAUNT.

• Month in the quartos; in the folio, time.

When, Harry? when?

When, Harry? when? When, so used, is an expression of impatience, as in 'The Taming of the Shrew,'-"Why, when, I say?"

Obedience bids, I should not bid again.

K. RICH. Norfolk, throw down, we bid; there is no boota.
NOR. Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot:

My life thou shalt command, but not my shame :
The one my duty owes; but my fair name,
(Despite of death,) that lives upon my grave,
To dark dishonour's use thou shalt not have.
I am disgrac'd, impeach'd, and baffled here;
Pierc'd to the soul with slander's venom'd spear;
The which no balm can cure, but his heart-blood
Which breath'd this poison.

K. RICH.

Give me his gage :-Lions

Rage must be withstood: make leopards tame.

NOR. Yea, but not change his spots: take but my shame,
And I resign my gage. My dear dear lord,
The purest treasure mortal times afford

Is spotless reputation; that away,

Men are but gilded loam, or painted clay.
A jewel in a ten-times-barr'd-up chest
Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.

Mine honour is my life; both grow in one;
Take honour from me, and my life is done :
Then, dear my liege, mine honour let me try;
In that I live, and for that will I die.

K. RICH. Cousin, throw down your gage; do you begin.
BOLING. O, heaven defend my soul from such foul sin!
Shall I seem crest-fallen in my father's sight?
Or with pale beggar fear impeach my height
Before this outdar'd dastard? Ere my tongue
Shall wound mine honour with such feeble wrong,
Or sound so base a parle, my teeth shall tear
The slavish motive of recanting fear;

And spit it bleeding, in his high disgrace,

Where shame doth harbour, even in Mowbray's face. K. RICH. We were not born to sue, but to command: Which since we cannot do to make you friends,

[Exit GAUNT.

• No boot. Boot is here used in its original sense of compensation. There is no boot, no remedy, for what is past,-nothing to be added, or substituted.

Lions make leopards tame. The crest of Norfolk was a golden leopard.

His spots. So the old copies. According to the custom in Shakspere's time of changing from the singular to the plural number, or from the plural to the singular, the alteration to their in modern copies was scarcely called for. But in this case Mowbray quotes the very text of Scripture -Jer. xiii. 23.

Gilded loam. In 'England's Parnassus' (1600) these three lines are extracted, but the third line reads thus:

"Men are but gilded trunks, or painted clay."

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SCENE II.-London. A Room in the Duke of Lancaster's Palace3.

Enter GAUNT and DUCHESS OF GLOSTER®.

GAUNT. Alas! the partd I had in Gloster's blood

Doth more solicit me than your exclaims,

To stir against the butchers of his life.
But since correction lieth in those hands
Which made the fault that we cannot correct,
Put we our quarrel to the will of heaven;
Who, when he sees the hours ripe on earth,
Will rain hot vengeance on offenders' heads.
DUCH. Finds brotherhood in thee no sharper spur?
Hath love in thy old blood no living fire?
Edward's seven sons', whereof thyself art one,
Were as seven phials of his sacred blood,
Or seven fair branches springing from one root:
Some of those seven are dried by nature's course,
Some of those branches by the destinies cut:
But Thomas, my dear lord, my life, my Gloster,-
One phial full of Edward's sacred blood,
One flourishing branch of his most royal root,

Is crack'd, and all the precious liquor spilt;

Is hack'd down, and his summer leaves all vaded,

By envy's hand, and murther's bloody axe.

Ah, Gaunt! his blood was thine; that bed, that womb,

That mettle, that self-mould, that fashion'd thee,

Made him a man; and though thou liv'st and breath'st,

Yet art thou slain in him: thou dost consent

In some large measure to thy father's death,

"Atone you make you in concord-cause you to be at one.

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You shall see. All the old copies read you; except the first quarto, which has we.
Design-designate-point out-exhibit-show by a token.

1 The part I had, &c. My consanguinity to Gloster.

• He sees. All the old copies, they see. Heaven is often put as the impersonation of the Deity. Vaded. So the folio; the quartos, faded. To vade seems in some writers to have a stronger sense than to fade, although fade was often written vade. Doubtless they are the same words.

In that thou seest thy wretched brother die,
Who was the model of thy father's life.
Call it not patience, Gaunt, it is despair:
In suffering thus thy brother to be slaughter'd,
Thou show'st the naked pathway to thy life,
Teaching stern murther how to butcher thee:
That which in mean men we entitle patience
Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.
What shall I say? to safeguard thine own life,
The best way is to 'venge my Gloster's death.
GAUNT. Heaven's is the quarrel; for heaven's substitute,
His deputy anointed in his sight,

Hath caus'd his death: the which if wrongfully,

Let heaven revenge; for I may never lift

An angry arm against his minister.

DUCH. Where then, alas! may I complain myself"?

GAUNT. To heaven, the widow's champion and defence.

DUCH. Why then, I will. Farewell, old Gaunt.

Thou go'st to Coventry, there to behold

Our cousin Hereford and fell Mowbray fight:
O, sit my husband's wrongs on Hereford's spear,
That it may enter butcher Mowbray's breast!
Or, if misfortune miss the first career,

Be Mowbray's sins so heavy in his bosom3,

That they may break his foaming courser's back,
And throw the rider headlong in the lists,

A caitiff recreant to my cousin Hereford!

Farewell, old Gaunt; thy sometimes brother's wife
With her companion grief must end her life.

GAUNT. Sister, farewell: I must to Coventry:

As much good stay with thee, as go with me!

DUCH. Yet one word more ;-Grief boundeth where it falls,
Not with the empty hollowness, but weight:

I take my leave before I have begun ;
For sorrow ends not when it seemeth done.
Commend me to my brother, Edmund York.
Lo, this is all:-Nay, yet depart not so;
Though this be all, do not so quickly go;

I shall remember more. Bid him-0, what?

With all good speed at Plashy visit me.

Alack, and what shall good old York there see,

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Complain myself. The verb is here the same as the French verb se plaindre.

b Caitiff. The original meaning of this word was, a prisoner. Wickliffe has "he stighynge an

high ledde caityfte caityf" (captivity captive). As the captive anciently became a slave, the word gradually came to indicate a man in a servile condition—a mean creature-a dishonest person.

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MAR. My lord Aumerle, is Harry Hereford arm'd?
AUM. Yea, at all points; and longs to enter in.
MAR. The duke of Norfolk, sprightfully and bold,

Stays but the summons of the appellant's trumpet.
AUM. Why, then the champions are prepar'd, and stay
For nothing but his majesty's approach.

Flourish of trumpets. Enter KING RICHARD, who takes his seat on his throne ; GAUNT, and several Noblemen, who take their places. A trumpet is sounded, and answered by another trumpet within. Then enter NORFOLK, in armour, preceded by a Herald.

K. RICH. Marshal, demand of yonder champion

The cause of his arrival here in arms:

Ask him his name; and orderly proceed
To swear him in the justice of his cause.

MAR. In God's name and the king's, say who thou art,
And why thou com'st thus knightly clad in arms:
Against what man thou com'st, and what 's thy quarrel :
Speak truly, on thy knighthood, and thine oath;

As so defend thee heaven, and thy valour!

NOR. My name is Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk;
Who hither come engaged by my oath,

(Which heaven defend a knight should violate!)
Both to defend my loyalty and truth

To God, my king, and his succeeding issue a,
Against the duke of Hereford that appeals me;
And, by the grace of God, and this mine arm,

• The first folio, deviating from the first three editions, reads "his succeeding issue;"- the succeeding issue of the king. My succeeding issue, the reading of the quartos, must be received in the sense that Mowbray owed to his descendants to defend his loyalty and truth to them, as well as to his God and to his king. This, however, would be to refine somewhat too much.

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