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Lew. We will attend to neither:-
Strike up the drums; and let the tongue of war
Plead for our interest; and our being here.

Bast. Indeed, your drums, being beaten, will
out;

cry

And so shall you, being beaten : Do but start
An echo with the clamour of thy drum,
And even at hand a drum is ready brac'd,
That shall reverberate all as loud as thine;
Sound but another, and another shall,
As loud as thine, rattle the welkin's ear,
And mock the deep-mouth'd thunder: for at hand
(Not trusting to this halting legate here,
Whom he hath us'd rather for sport than need,)
Is warlike John; and in his forehead sits
A bare-ribb'd death, whose office is this day
To feast upon whole thousands of the French.
Lew. Strike up our drums, to find this danger out.
Bust. And thou shalt find it, Dauphin, do not
doubt.
[Exeunt.
SCENE III. The same. A Field of Battle.
Alarums. Enter KING JOHN and HUBERT.
K. John. How goes the day with us? O, tell me,

Hubert.

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bey there.

Mess. Be of good comfort; for the great supply,'
That was expected by the Dauphin here,
Are wreck'd three nights ago on Goodwin Sands.
This news was brought to Richard but even now:
The French fight coldly, and retire themselves.

K. John. Ah me! this tyrant fever burns me up,
And will not let me welcome this good news.-
Set on toward Swinstead: to my litter straight;
Weakness possesseth me, and I am faint. [Exeunt.
SCENE IV. The same. Another part of the same.
Enter SALISBURY, PEMBROKE, BIGOT, and

others.

Sal. I did not think the king so stor'd with friends. Pem. Up once again; put spirit in the French; If they miscarry, we miscarry too.

Sal. That misbegotten devil, Faulconbridge, In spite of spite, alone upholds the day.

Pem. They say, King John, sore sick, hath left the field.

Enter MELUN wounded, and led by Soldiers. Mel. Lead me to the revolts of England here. Sal. When we were happy, we had other names. Pem. It is the Count Melun.

Wounded to death.

Sal
Mel. Fly, noble English, you are bought andsold ;3
Unthread the rude eye of rebellion,
And welcome home again discarded faith.
Seek out King John, and fall before his feet:
For, if the French be lords of this loud day,
He means to recompense the pains you take,
By cutting off your heads: Thus hath he sworn,
And I with him, and many more with me,
Upon the altar of Saint Edmund's Bury;

Even on that altar, where we swore to you
Dear amity and everlasting love.

Sal. May this be possible? may this be true?
Mel. Have I not hideous death within my view,
Retaining but a quantity of life;

Which bleeds away, even as a form of wax
Resolveth' from his figure 'gainst the fire?
What in the world should make me now deceive,

Since I must lose the use of all deceit ?
Why should I then be false; since it is true
That I must die here, and live hence by truth?
I say again, if Lewis do win the day,

He is forsworn, if e'er those eyes of yours
Behold another day break in the east:

But even this night,-whose black contagious breath
Already smokes about the burning crest
Of the old, feeble, and day-wearied sun,-
Even this ill night, your breathing shall expire;
Paying the fine of rated treachery,
Even with a treacherous fine of all your lives,
If Lewis by your assistance win the day.
Commend me to one Hubert, with your king;
The love of him,--and this respect besides,
For that my grandsire was an Englishman,
Awakes my conscience to confess all this.
From forth the noise and rumour of the field;
In lieu whereof, I pray you, bear me hence
Where I may think the remnant of my thoughts
peace, and part this body and my soul
With contemplation and devout desires.

In

Sal. We do believe thee,--And beshrew my soul
But I do love the favour and the form
Of this most fair occasion, by the which
We will untread the steps of damned flight;
And, like a bated and retired flood,
Leaving our rankness and irregular course,
Stoop low within those bounds we have o'erlook'd,
And calmly run on in obedience,

Even to our ocean, to our great King John.
My arm shall give thee help to bear thee hence;
For I do see the cruel pangs of death
Right in thine eye.--Away, my friends! New
flight!

And happy newness, that intends old right.

[Exeunt, leading of MELUN. SCENE V. The same. The French Camp. Enter LEWIS and his Train.

Lew. The sun of heaven, methought, was loath to set;

But stay'd, and made the western welkin blush,
When the English measur'd backward their own
ground,

In faint retire: O, bravely came we off,
When with a volley of our needless shot,
After such bloody toil, we bid good night;
And wound our tott'ring colours clearly up,
Last in the field, and almost lords of it!
Enter a Messenger.
Mess. Where is my prince, the Dauphin?
Here:-What news?
Mess. The Count Melun is slain; the English
lords,

Lew.

By his persuasion, are again fallen off:
And your supply, which you have wish'd so long,
Are cast away, and sunk, on Goodwin Sands.

Lew. Ah, foul shrewd news!-Beshrew thy very
heart!

I did not think to be so sad to-night,

As this hath made me.--Who was he, that said,

1 Supply is here used as a noun of multitude, as it King John did fly, an hour or two before is again in scene v.

2 The king had not long since called him by his original name of Philip, but the messenger could not take the same liberty.

3 A proverbial expression intimating treachery.
4 The Frenchman, i. e. Lewis means, &c.
5 i. e. dissolveth.

6 Rankness, as applied to a river, here signifies eruberant, ready to overflow; as applied to the actions of the speaker and his party it signifies wanton wild ness. Petulantia.

'Rain added to a river that is rank Perforce will force it overflow the bank.'

The stumbling night did part our weary powers

8 Innovation.

?

7 Immediate. 9 Tuiring colours is the reading of the old copy, which was unnecessarily altered to tatter'd by Johnson, who is followed by the subsequent editors. To totter, in old language, was to waver, to shake with a tremulous motion as colours would do in the wind. It is obvious that tatter'd cannot be the right word, for how could their tatter'd colours be clearly wound up? tottre (says Baret,) nutare, vaccilare, see shake and wagge. The colours were waving in the wind during the battle, and were wound up at the close of it.

To

Mess. Whoever spoke it, it is true, my lord.

The day shall not be up so soon as I, To try the fair adventure of to-morrow.

[Exeunt.

Myself, well mounted, hardly have escap'd.

[Exeunt.

Lew. Well; keep good quarter,' and good care Away, before! conduct me to the king;
to-night;
I doubt, he will be dead, or ere I come.
SCENE VII. The Orchard of Swinstead-Abbey.
Enter PRINCE HEnry, Salisbury, and BIGOT.
P. Hen. It is too late; the life of all his blood
Is touch'd corruptibly; and his pure brain
(Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling-
house,)

SCENE VI. An open Place in the neighbourhood
of Swinstead-Abbey.
Enter the Bastard and
HUBERT, meeting.

Hub. Who's there? speak, ho! speak quickly, or Doth, by the idle comments that it makes,

I shoot.

Bast. A friend :--What art thou?

Hub. Of the part of England. Bast. Whither dost thou go? Hub. What's that to thee? Why may not I demand Of thine affairs, as well as thou of mine? Bast. Hubert, I think. Hub.

Thou hast a perfect2 thought: I will, upon all hazards, well believe, Thou art my friend, that know'st my tongue so well: Who art thou?

Bast. Who thou wilt: an if thou please, Thou may'st befriend me so much, as to think I come one way of the Plantagenets.

Hub. Unkind remembrance! thou, and eyeless night,3

Have done me shame :--Brave soldier, pardon me,
That any accent, breaking from thy tongue,
Should 'scape the true acquaintance of mine ear.
Bast. Come, come; sans compliment, what news
abroad?

Hub. Why, here walk I, in the black brow of night,
To find you out.
Bast.
Brief, then; and what's the news?
Hub. O, my sweet sir, news fitting to the night,
Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible.

Bast. Show me the very wound of this ill news; I am no woman, I'll not swoon at it.

Hub. The king, I fear, is poison'd by a monk:
I left him almost speechless, and broke out
To acquaint you with this evil; that you might
The better arm you to the sudden time,
Than if you had at leisure' known of this.

Bast. How did he take it? who did taste to him?
Huo. A monk, I tell you; a resolved villain,
Whose bowels suddenly burst out: the king
Yet speaks, and, peradventure, may recover.
Bast. Who didst thou leave to tend his majesty?
Hub. Why, know you not? the lords are all come
back,

Aud brought prince Henry in their company;
At whose request the king hath pardon'd them,
And they are all about his majesty.

Bast. Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven,
And tempt us not to bear above our power!·
I'll tell thee, Hubert, half my power this night,
Passing these flats, are taken by the tide,
These Lincoln washes have devoured them;

1 i. e. keep in your allotted posts or stations. 2 i. e. a well informed one.

3 The old copy reads endless night.' The emendation was made by Theobald.

Foretell the ending of mortality.

Enter PEMBROKE.

Pem. His highness yet doth speak: and holds belief,

Pem.

That, being brought into the open air,
It would allay the burning quality
Of that fell poison which assaileth him.
P. Hen. Let him be brought into the orchard here.
Doth he still rage?
[Exit BIGOT.
He is more patient
Than when you left him; even now he sung.
P. Hen. O vanity of sickness! fierce extremes,
In their continuance, will not feel themselves.
Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts,
Leaves them insensible; and his siege is now
Against the mind, the which he pricks and wounds
With many legions of strange fantasies;
Which, in their throng and press to that last hold,
Confound themselves. "Tis strange, that death
should sing.

4 Not one of the historians who wrote within sixty years of the event mentions this improbable story. The tale is, that a monk, to revenge himself on the king for a saying at which he took offence, poisoned a cup of ale, and having brought it to his majesty, drank some of it himself, to induce the king to taste it, and soon afterwards expired. Thomas Wylkes is the first who mentions it in his Chronicle as a report. According to the best accounts John died at Newark, of a fever.

5 i. e. less speedy, after some delay.

6 Prince Henry was only nine years old when his father died.

7 Continuance here means continuity. Bacon uses it in that sense also. So Baret, If the disease be of any continuance, if it be an old and settled disease. I should not have thought this passage needed elucida tion, had not Malone proposed to read in thy continu.

ance.'

8 The old copy reads invisible. Sir T. Hanmer proposed the reading admitted into the text. Malone has endeavoured to elaborate a meaning out of the old read. ing but without success. I must refer the reader to

I

am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death;
And, from the organ-pipe of frailty, sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.

Sal. Be of good comfort, prince; for you are born To set a form upon that indigest

Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude."
Re-enter BIGOT and Attendants, who bring in KING
JOHN in a Chair.

K. John. Ay, marry, now, my soul hath elbow

room;

It would not out at windows, nor at doors.
There is so hot a summer in my bosom,
That all my bowels crumble up to dust:
I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen
Upon a parchment; and against this fire
Do I shrink up.
P. Hen. How fares your majesty ?
K. John. Poison'd,-ill fare;-dead, for ook,
cast off;

And none of you will bid the winter come,
To thrust his icy fingers in my maw; 19
Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course
Through my burn'd bosom; nor entreat the north
To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips,
And comfort me with cold :--I do not ask you much,

the variorum editions for his argument, and Steevens's vein of pleasant irony upon it.

9 A description of Chaos, almost in the very words of Ovid:

Quem dixere Chaos rudis indigestæque moles.—Met. i.
Which Chaos hight a huge rude heap:-
No sunne as yet with lightsome beames the shapeless
world did view.
Golding's Translation.

10 This scene has been imitated by Beaumont and Fletcher, in A Wife for a Month, Act iv. Decker, in the Gull's Hornbook, has the same thought:-the morting waxing cold thrust his frosty fingers into thy bosome. Perhaps Shakspeare was acquainted with the following passages in two of Marlowe's plays, which Marlowe died in 1593:must both have been written previous to King John, l

'OI am dull, and the cold hand of sleep Hath thrust his icy fingers in my ireast, And made a frost within me.-Lust's Dominion. O poor Zabina, O my queen, my queen, Fetch me some water for my Inurning breast, To cool and comfort me with longer date.' The corresponding passage in the old play runs thus:Tamburlaine, 1591. 'Philip, some drink. O for the frozen Alps To tumble on, and cool this inward heat That rageth as a furnace seven-fold.

I beg cold comfort: and you are so strait,' And so ingrateful, you deny me that.

Who half an hour since came from the dauphin;
And brings from him such offers of our peace

P. Hen. O, that there were some virtue in my As we with honour and respect may take,

tears,

That might relieve you! K. John.

With purpose presently to leave this war.
Bast. He will the rather do it, when he sees

The salt in them is hot. Ourselves well sinewed to our defence.

Within me is a hell; and there the poison
Is, as a fiend, confin'd to tyrannize
On unreprievable condemned blood.

Enter the Bastard.

Bast. O, I am scalded with my violent emotion, And spleen of speed to see your majesty.

K. John. O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye: The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burn'd; And all the shrouds, wherewith my life should sail, Are turned to one thread, one little hair: My heart hath one poor string to stay it by, Which holds but till thy news be uttered: And then all this thou seest, is but a clod, And module of confounded royalty.

Bast. The Dauphin is preparing hitherward: Where, heaven he knows, how we shall answer him: For, in a night, the best part of my power, As I upon advantage did remove, Were in the washes, all unwarily,

Devoured by the unexpected flood. [The King dies. Sal. You breathe these dead news in as dead an

ear.

My liege! my lord!--But now a king,--now thus. P. Hen. Even so must I run on, and even so stop. What surety of the world, what hope, what stay, When this was now a king, and now is clay!

Bast. Art thou gone so? I do but stay behind,
To do the office for thee of revenge;
And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven,
As it on earth hath been thy servant still.-
Now, now, you stars, that move in your right spheres,
Where be your powers? Show now your mended
faiths;

And instantly return with me again,
To push destruction and perpetual shame
Out of the weak door of our fainting land:
Straight let us seek, or straight we shall be sought;
The Dauphin rages at our very heels.

Sal. It seems, you know not then so much as we: The cardinal Pandulph is within at rest,

1 Narrow, avaricious.

2 Module and model were only different modes of spelling the same word. Model signified not an archetype, after which something was to be formed, but the thing formed after an archetype, a copy. Bullokar, in his Expositor, 1616, explains model, the platform, or form of any thing."

3 This untoward accident really happened to King John himself. As he passed from Lynn to Lincolnshire he lost by an inundation all his treasure, carriages, bag. gage, and regalia.

4 In crastino S. Luca Johannes Rex Angliæ in castro de Newark obiit, et sepultus est in ecclesia Wigor

Sal. Nay, it is in a manner done already;
For many carriages he hath despatch'd
To the seaside, and put his cause and quarrel
To the disposing of the cardinal:
With whom yourself, myself, and other lords,
If you think meet, this afternoon will post
To consummate this business happily.

Bast. Let it be so:-And you, my noble prince,
With other princes that may best be spared,
Shall wait upon your father's funeral.

P. Hen. At Worcester must his body be interr'd ;4

For so he will'd it.

Bast.
Thither shall it then.
And happily may your sweet self put on
The lineal state and glory of the land!
To whom, with all submission, on my knee,
I do bequeath my faithful services
And true subjection everlastingly.

Sal. And the like tender of our love we make, To rest without a spot for evermore.

P. Hen. I have a kind soul, that would give you thanks,

And knows not how to do it, but with tears.

Bast. O, let us pay the time but needful woe, Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.-This England never did (nor never shall) Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, But when it first did help to wound itself. Now these her princes are come home again, Come the three corners of the world in arms, And we shall shock them: Nought shall make us rue, If England to itself do rest but true. [Exeunt.

THE tragedy of King John, though not written with the pleasing interchange of incidents and characters. The utmost power of Shakspeare, is varied with a very lady's grief is very affecting; and the character of the Bastard contains that mixture of greatness and levity which this author delighted to exhibit. JOHNSON.

niensi inter corpora S. Oswaldi et sancti [Wolstani] Chronic. sive Annal. Prioratus de Dunstable, edit. a T. Hearne, t. i. p. 173. A stone coffin, containing the body of King John, was discovered in the cathedral church of Worcester, July 17, 1797.

5As previously we have found sufficient cause for lamentation, let us not waste the time in superfluous sorrow.'

6 This sentiment may have been borrowed from the following passage in the old play :

Let England live but true within herself,
And all the world can never wrong her state,'

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF

KING RICHARD THE SECOND.

IN

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

N the construction of this play Shakspeare has followed Holished, his usual historical authority, some passages of the Chronicle he has transplanted into the drama with very little alteration.

It has been suspected that there was an old play on the subject of King Richard II. which the poet might have seen. Sir Gillie Merrick, who was concerned in the harebrained business of the Earl of Essex, is accused of having procured to be played before the conspirators the play of the deposing of Richard the Second; when

it was told him by one of the players that the play was old, and they should have loss in playing it, because few would come to it, there was forty shillings extraordinary given to play, and so thereupon played it was! It seems probable, from a passage in the State Trials, quoted by Mr. Tyrwhitt, that this old play bore the title of King Henry IV, and not King Richard II, and it could not be Shakspeare's King Henry IV, as that commences a year after the death of King Richard. It may seem strange says Malone) that this old play should have

of Shakspeare's historical dramas, which Schlegel thinks the poet designed to form one great whole, 'as it were an historical heroic poem, of which the separate plays constitute the rhapsodies."

When the

been represented after Shakspeare's drama on the same subject had been printed: the reason undoubtedly was, that in the old play the deposing of King Richard II. made a part of the exhibition: but in the first edition of Shakspeare's play, one hundred and fifty-four lines, In King Richard the Second the poet exhibits to us a describing a kind of trial of the king, and his actual noble kingly nature, at first obscured by levity and the deposition in parliament, were omitted: nor was it pro- errors of unbridled youth, and afterwards purified by bably represented on the stage. Merrick, Cuffe, and misfortune, and rendered more highly splendid and the rest of Essex's train, naturally preferred the play in illustrious. When he has lost the love and reverence which his deposition was represented, their plot not of his subjects, and is on the point of losing also his aiming at the life of the queen. It is, I know, commonly throne, he then feels with painful inspiration the elevated thought that the parliament scene, as it is called, which vocation of the kingly dignity, and its prerogatives over was first printed in the 4to of 1608, was an addition personal merit and changeable institutions. made by Shakspeare to this play after its first represent-earthly crown has fallen from off his head, he first ation: but it seems to me more probable that it was appears as a king whose innate nobility no humiliation written with the rest, and suppressed in the printed copy can annihilate. This is felt by a poor groom: he is of 1597, from the fear of offending Elizabeth; against shocked that his master's favourite horse should have whom the Pope had published a bull in the preceding carried the proud Bolingbroke at his coronation; he visits year, exhorting her subjects to take up arms against her. the captive king in his prison, and shames the desertion In 1599 Hayward published his History of the first year of the great. The political history of the deposition is of King Henry IV. which is in fact nothing more than a represented with extraordinary knowledge of the world; history of the deposing of King Richard II. The dis--the ebb of fortune on the one hand, and the swelling pleasure which that book excited at court sufficiently tide on the other, which carries every thing along with accounts for the omitted lines not being inserted in the it; while Bolingbroke acts as a king, and his adherents copy of this play, which was published in 1602. Hay- behave towards him as if he really were so, he still ward was heavily censured in the Star Chamber, and continues to give out that he comes with an armed band, committed to prison. In 1608, when James was quietly merely for the sake of demanding his birthright and the and firmly settled on the throne, and the fear of internal removal of abuses. The usurpation has been long commotion, or foreign invasion, no longer subsisted, completed before the word is pronounced, and the thing neither the author, the managers of the theatre, nor the publicly avowed. John of Gaunt is a model of chival bookseller, could entertain any apprehension of giving rous truth: he stands there like a pillar of the olden offence to the sovereign; the rejected scene was there- time which he had outlived.' fore restored without scruple, and from some playhouse copy probably found its way to the press.'†

Malone places the date of its composition in 1593; Mr. Chalmers in 1596. The play was first entered on the stationers' books by Andrew Wise, August 29, 1597; and there were four quarto editions published during the life of Shakspeare, viz. in 1597, 1598, 1608, and 1615. This play may be considered the first link in the chain

This is a mistake of Mr. Malone's, there is no quarto copy of the date of 1602, he probably meant the edition of 1598.

This drama abounds in passages of eminent poetica) beauty; among which every reader will recollect the pathetic description of Richard's entrance into London with Bolingbroke, of which Dryden said that he knew nothing comparable to it in any other language; John of Gaunt's praise of England,"

Dear for her reputation through the world;
and Mowbray's complaint at being banished for life.
Malone's Chronology of Shakspeare's plays.
Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Literature, vol. ii

p. 224.

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ACT I.

SCENE I. London. A Room in the Palace. Enter KING RICHARD, attended; JOHN of GAUNT, and other Nobles with him.

King Richard.

OLD' John of Gaunt, time-honour'd Lancaster,
Hast thou, according to thy oath and band,2
Brought hither Henry Hereford3 thy bold son;
Here to make good the boisterous late appeal,
Which then our leisure would not let us hear,

1 Old John of Gaunt, time-honour'd Lancaster.' Our ancestors, in their estimate of old age, appear to have reckoned somewhat differently from us, and to have considered men as old whom we should now esteem as middle-aged. With them, every man that had passed fifty seems to have been accounted an old man. John of Gaunt, at the period when the commencement of this play is laid (1398), was only fifty-eight years old: he died in 1399, aged fifty-nine. This may have arisen from its being customary in former times to enter life at

HENRY PERCY, his Son.

Lord Ross. Lord Willoughby. Lord Fitzwater.
Bishop of Carlisle. Abbot of Westminster.
Lord Marshal; and another Lord.
SIR PIERCE of Exton. SIR STEPHEN SCROOP.
Captain of a Band of Welshmen.
Queen to King Richard.
Duchess of Gloster.
Duchess of York.

Lady attending on the Queen.

Lords, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, two Gardeners,
Keeper, Messenger, Groom, and other Attendants.
SCENE, dispersedly in England and Wales.

Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray ?
Gaunt. I have, my liege.

K. Rich. Tell me, moreover, hast thou sounded
him,

If he appeal the duke on ancient malice;
Or worthily as a good subject should,
On some known ground of treachery in him?
Gaunt. As near as I could sift him on that argu-
ment,-

On some apparent danger seen in him,
Aim'd at your highness; no inveterate malice.
an earlier period than we do now. Those who married
at fifteen, had at fifty been masters of a house and
family for thirty-five years.

2 When these public challenges were accepted, each combatant found a pledge for his appearance at the time and place appointed. Band and bond were formerly

synonymous.

3 In the old play, and in Harding's Chronicle, Bolingbroke's title is written Herford and Harford. This was the pronunciation of our poet's time, and he therefore uses this word as a dissyllable.

K. Rich. Then call them to our presence, face to
face,

And frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear
The accuser, and the accused, freely speak :-
[Exeunt some Attendants.
High stomach'd are they both, and full of ire,
In rage deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.
Re-enter Attendants, with BOLINGBROKE1 and NOR-

FOLK.

Boling. May many years of happy days befall
My gracious sovereign, my most loving liege!
Nor. Each day still better other's happiness;
Until the heavens, envying earth's good hap,
Add an immortal title to your crown!

K. Rich. We thank you both: yet one but flat

ters us,

As well appeareth by the cause you come :2
Namely, to appeal each other of high treason.-
Cousin of Hereford, what dost thou object
Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray ?
Boling. First, (heaven be the record of my
speech!)

In the devotion of a subject's love,
Tendering the precious safety of my prince,
And free from other misbegotten hate,
Come I appellant to this princely presence.-
Now, Thomas Mowbray, do I turn to thee,
And mark my greeting well; for what I speak,
My body shall make good upon this earth,
Or my divine soul answer it in heaven.
Thou art a traitor, and a miscreant ;
Too good to be so, and too bad to live:
Since, the more fair and crystal is the sky,
The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.
Once more, the more to aggravate the note,
With a foul traitor's name stuff I thy throat;
And wish (so please my sovereign), ere I move,
What my tongue speaks, my right-drawn sword

may prove.

Nor. Let not my cold words here accuse my zeal :
"Tis not the trial of a woman's war,
The bitter clamour of two eager tongues,
Can arbitrate this cause betwixt us twain:
The blood is hot that must be cool'd for this:
Yet can I not of such tame patience boast,
As to be hush'd, and nought at all to say:
First, the fair reverence of your highness curbs me
From giving reins and spurs to my free speech;
Which else would post, until it had return'd
These terms of treason doubled down his throat.
Setting aside his high blood's royalty,
And let him be no kinsman to my liege,

I do defy him, and I spit at him;

Call him-a slanderous coward, and a villain:

Which to maintain, I would allow him odds
And meet him, were I tied to run a-foot
Even to the frozen ridges of the Alps,

Or any other ground inhabitable*

Where ever Englishman durst set his foot.
Mean time, let this defend my loyalty,-
By all my hopes, most falsely doth he lie.

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If guilty dread hath left thee so much strength,
As to take up mine honour's pawn, then stoop;
By that, and all the rites of knighthood else,
Will I make good against thee, arm to arm,
What I have spoke, or thou canst worst devise.

Nor. I take it up; and, by that sword I swear,
Which gently lay'd my knighthood on my shoulder,
I'll answer thee in any fair degree,

Or chivalrous design of knightly trial;
And, when I mount, alive may I not light,
If I be a traitor, or unjustly fight!

K. Rich. What doth our cousin lay to Mowbray's
charge?

It must be great, that can inherit us

So much as of a thought of ill in him.

Boling. Look, what I speak my life shall prove it

true;

That Mowbray hath receiv'd eight thousand nobles,
In name of lendings for your highness' soldiers;
The which he hath detain'd for lewd employments,
Like a false traitor, and injurious villain."
Besides I say, and will in battle prove,-
Or here, or elsewhere, to the furthest verge
That ever was survey'd by English eye,-
That all the treasons for these eighteen years
Complotted and contrived in this land,
Fetch from false Mowbray their first head and
spring.

Further I say,-and further will maintain
Upon his bad life, to make all this good,-
That he did plot the Duke of Gloster's death;"
Suggest his soon-believing adversaries;
And, consequently, like a traitor coward,
Sluic'd out his innocent soul through streams of
blood:

Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries,
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth,
To me for justice, and rough chastisement;
And by the glorious worth of my descent,
This arm shall do it, or this life be spent."

K. Rich. How high a pitch his resolution soars !-
Thomas of Norfolk, what say'st thou to this?

Nor. O, let my sovereign turn away his face,
And bid his ears a little while be deaf,
Till I have told this slander of his blood,"
How God, and good men, hate so foul a liar.
K. Rich. Mowbray, impartial are our eyes, and

ears:

Were he my brother, nay, my kingdom's heir
(As he is but my father's brother's son,)
Now by my sceptre's awe I make a vow,
Such neighbour nearness to our sacred blood
Should nothing privilege him, nor partialize
The unstooping firmness of my upright soul;
He is our subject, Mowbray, so art thou;
Free speech, and fearless, to thee allow.

Nor. Then, Bolingbroke, 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,

Boling. Pale trembling coward, there I throw my Upon remainder of a dear account,

gage,

Disclaiming here the kindred of the king;
And lay aside my high blood's royalty,
Which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except:

1 Drayton asserts that Henry Plantagenet, the eldest son of John of Gaunt, was not distinguished by the name of Bolingbroke till after he had assumed the crown. He is called earl of Hereford by the old historians, and was surnamed Bolingbroke from having been born at the town of that name in Lincolnshire, about 1366.

2 i. e. by the cause you come on.' The suppression of the preposition has been shown to have been frequent with Shakspeare.

3 My right-drawn sword is my sword drawn in a right or just cause.

Le. uninhabitable.

5 To inherit, in the language of Shakspeare, is to

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Since last I went to France to fetch his queen:10
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.-

7 Thomas of Woodstock, the youngest son of Edward III. who was murdered at Calais in 1397. See Froissart, chap ccxxvi.

8 i. e. prompt them, set them on by injurious hints. 9 Reproach to his ancestry.

10 The duke of Norfolk was joined in commission with Edward Earl of Rutland (the Aumerle of this play) to go to France in the year 1395, to demand in marriage Isabel, eldest daughter of Charles VI. then between seven and eight years of age. Richard was married to his young consort in November 1396, at Calais; his first wife, Anne, daughter of Charles IV. emperor of Germany, died at Shene on Whit Sunday, 1394. His marriage with Isabella was merely political, it was accompanied with an agreement for a truce between France and England for thirty years.

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