185

K. Rich. Cousin, throw up your gage; do you begin.
Boling. O, God defend my soul from such deep sin!
Shall I seem crest-fallen in my father's sight?
Or with pale beggar-fear impeach my height
Before this out-dared dastard? Ere my tongue
Shall wound my 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. 195

190

[Exit Gaunt.

Rich and frice

K. Rich. We were not born to sue, but to command;
Which since we cannot do to make you friends,
Be ready, as your lives shall answer it,
At Coventry, upon Saint Lambert's day:
There shall your swords and lances arbitrate
The swelling difference of your settled hate:
Since we can not atone you, we shall see
Justice design the victor's chivalry.
Lord Marshal, command our officers at arms
Be ready to direct these home alarms.

a

200

[Exeunt. 205

189. beggar-fear] so Q 1, Ff 1, 2, Q 5; beggar-face Qq 2, 3, 4.
parle] so Ff, Q 5; parlee Qq 1, 2, 3, 4.
Qq 2, 3, 4, Ff, Q 5.

189-90. impeach dastard] bring
discredit upon my rank before this
cowed dastard.

192. sound

a parle] A metaphor taken from the blowing of a trumpet for a parley between opposing forces. Compare 3 Henry VI. v. 16: "Go, trumpet, to the walls, and sound a parle."

193. motive] instrument, organ. Compare Troilus and Cressida, IV. v. 57:

"Her wanton spirits look out

At every joint and motive of her
body.'

192-5. Compare Lyly, Euphues
and his England, ed. Arber, p. 146:
"Zeno bicause hee would not be en-
forced to reveale anything against his

192.

202. we shall] Q1; you shall

will by torments, bit off his tongue and
spit it in the face of the tyrant.'

199. Saint Lambert's day] September
17. Stowe makes it St. Edith's day,
September 16.

202. atone] reconcile; derived from at and one, therefore = to make one. This directly transitive use is common in Shakespeare. The above line is the earliest use in English discovered by the New Eng. Dict. editors.

203. Justice design] See 1. iii. 45, infra.

204. Lord Marshal] Possibly Shakepeare wrote Marshal not Lord Marshal. Dr. Herford points out (Warwick Shakespeare) that nowhere else in Shakespeare does a King address a Marshal as Lord. The omission of Lord regularises the line.

SCENE II.-The Duke of Lancaster's pa Enter JOHN OF GAUNT with the DUCHESS OF GL

Gaunt. Alas, the part I had in Woodstock'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 they see the hours ripe on earth,
Will rain hot vengeance on offenders' heads.
Duch. Finds brotherhood in thee no sharper spuri
Hath love in thy old blood no living fire?
Edward's seven sons, whereof thyself art one,
Were as seven vials of his sacred blood,
Or seven fair branches springing from one ro
Some of those seven are dried by nature's co
Some of those branches by the Destinies cut
But Thomas, my dear lord, my life, my Glou
One vial 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 fa
By envy's hand and murder's bloody axe.
Ah, Gaunt, his blood was thine! that bed, th
That metal, that self mould, that fashion'd th
Made him a man; and though thou livest an
Yet art thou slain in him: thou dost consent
In some large measure to thy father's death,
In that thou seest thy wretched brother die,

SCENE II.

1. Woodstock's] so Qq 1, 2, 3, 4; Glousters Ff 1, 2, 3; Glo

SCENE II.

1. Woodstock's] The alteration to Gloucester's in the Folios and last Quarto was probably owing to the fact that the audience was less familiar with Gloucester's earlier title.

part... blood] my blood-relationship to Gloucester, not, of course, the part I had in Gloucester's death. 2. exclaims] outcries. Compare Titus Andronicus, Iv. i. 86: “And arm the minds of infants to exclaims."

6-7. heaven the Shakespearian usage.

II-20. The simultan two images is somewhat

20. faded] Perhaps, fo sake, we ought to printz vials in line 12, or phi faded.

same.

23. self] adj. of the Qq and Ff, thou some modern editors (e.g Shakespeare), is unnece

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 showest the naked pathway to thy life,
Teaching stern murder how to butcher thee:
That which in mean men we intitle patience
Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.
What shall I say? to safeguard thine own life,
The best way is to venge my Gloucester's death.
Gaunt. God's is the quarrel; for God's substitute
His deputy anointed in His sight,

Hath caused 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 God, the widow's champion and defence
Duch. Why, then, I will. Farewell, old Gaunt.
Thou goest to Coventry, there to behold
Our cousin Hereford and fell Mowbray fight:
O, sit my husband's wrongs on Hereford's spear,

l root,

pilt,

30

35

to oppoer til? tall with Richard ar рамотам

45

That it may enter butcher Mowbray's breast!
Or, if misfortune miss the first career,

20

Be Mowbray's sins so heavy in his bosom,

50

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

A caitiff recreant to my cousin Hereford!

25

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

55

ce.

all faded,

ed, that womb,

n'd thee

est and breathest,

nsent

eath, die,

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:

28. model] not the pattern but the
copy made from the pattern. Both
meanings are found in Shakespeare.
See infra, III. ii, 153, III. iv. 42, and
v. i. II.

33. mean] poor, humble.

37. Staunton's shifting of the comma from after sight to anointed is tempting; but the sense is sound enough as it stands.

44. Many attempts have been made to regularise this line. It is probably one of the short lines often used by Shakespeare in dialogue.

49. career] from French carrière, a

racecourse. The meaning gradually
extended to racing and then to the rush
of knights in the lists. Here it is
equivalent to onset.

53. caitiff recreant] caitiff from O.F.
caitiff Latin captivum, a captive. For
recreant see supra, i. 39 and 144. A bit
of chivalric jargon.

58-9. grief. weight] Heavy and solid elastic bodies rebound equally with light hollow bodies like tennisballs. The Duchess compares her reiterated plaints to a rebounding of this first kind.

I take my leave before I have begun,
For sorrow ends not when it seemeth done.
Commend me to thy 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-ah, what?-
With all good speed at Plashy visit me.
Alack, and what shall good old York there see
But empty lodgings and unfurnish'd walls,
Unpeopled offices, untrodden stones?

And what hear there for welcome but my groans?
Therefore commend me; let him not come there,
To seek out sorrow that dwells every where.
Desolate, desolate, will I hence and die:
The last leave of thee takes my weeping eye. [A

SCENE III.-The lists at Coventry.

Enter the LORD MARSHAL and the DUKE OF AUMER
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 prepared, and stay
For nothing but his majesty's approach.

The trumpets sound, and the KING enters with his nobles, G
BUSHY, BAGOT, GREEN, and others. When they
enter Mowbray in arms, defendant, with 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 comest thus knightly clad in arms;
Against what man thou comest, and what thy quarre

59-74. The hopeless grief of the
Duchess now that her appeal to Gaunt
has failed and now that he-her last
friend-is leaving her, reflects itself in
the parenthetic flutterings of her
speech.

pare Hamlet, I. ii. 201: "A point exactly, cap-a-pe!"

3. sprightfully and bold boldly, a case of ellipsis of suffix (see Abbott's Shak Grammar, § 397).

6. The trumpets sound, etc.] direction made up from thos Quartos and Folios; see C

60

65

=? 70

[Exeunt.

MERLE.

Speak truly, on thy knighthood and thy oath;
As so defend thee heaven and thy valour!
Mow. My name is Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk;
Who hither come engaged by my oath-
Which God defend a knight should violate!-
Both to defend my loyalty and truth

To God, my king, and his succeeding issue,
Against the Duke of Hereford that appeals me;
And, by the grace of God and this mine arm,
To prove him, in defending of myself,

A traitor to my God, my king, and me:
And as I truly fight, defend me heaven!

The trumpets sound. Enter BOLINGBROKE, appellant, in
armour, with a Herald.

K. Rich. Marshal, ask yonder knight in arms,

15

20

1

25

30

Mar. What is thy name? and wherefore comest 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 God's grace and my body's valour,
In lists, on Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,
That he is 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

35

40