Taste of your wine, and see what cates you have;
For soldiers' stomachs always serve them well.

Count. With all my heart; and think me honored To feast so great a warrior in my house. [Exeunt.

SCENE IV. London. The Temple Garden.

Enter the Earls of SOMERSET, SUFFOLK, and WARWICK, RICHARD PLANTAGENET, VERNON, and another Lawyer.1

Plan. Great lords, and gentlemen, what means this silence?

Dare no man answer in a case of truth?

Suff. Within the Temple hall we were too loud. The garden here is more convenient.

Plan. Then say at once, if I maintained the truth, Or, else, was wrangling Somerset in the error?

Suff. 'Faith, I have been a truant in the law;
And never yet could frame my will to it;
And, therefore, frame the law unto my will.

Som. Judge you, my lord of Warwick, then be

tween us.

War. Between two hawks, which flies the higher

pitch,

Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth,
Between two blades, which bears the better temper,
Between two horses, which doth bear him best,
Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye,
I have, perhaps, some shallow spirit of judgment;
But in these nice, sharp quillets of the law,
Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.

Plan. Tut, tut, here is a mannerly forbearance.

The truth appears so naked on my side,

That any purblind eye may find it out.

Som. And on my side it is so well apparelled,

1 We should read a lawyer. This lawyer was probably Roger Nevyle, who was afterwards hanged. See W. Wyrcester, p. 478.

So clear, so shining, and so evident,

That it will glimmer through a blind man's eye.

Plan. Since you are tongue-tied, and so loath to speak,

In dumb significants' proclaim your thoughts:
Let him, that is a true-born gentleman,
And stands upon the honor of his birth,

If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,
From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.
Som. Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer,

But dare maintain the party of the truth,

Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.

War. I love no colors; and, without all color Of base, insinuating flattery,

I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.

Suff. I pluck this red rose, with young Somerset ; And say withal, I think he held the right.

Ver. Stay, lords and gentlemen; and pluck no more, Till you conclude-that he, upon whose side The fewest roses are cropped from the tree,

Shall yield the other in the right opinion.

Som. Good master Vernon, it is well objected;

If I have fewest, I subscribe in silence.

Plan. And I.

Ver. Then, for the truth and plainness of the case, I pluck this pale and maiden blossom here,

Giving my verdict on the white rose side.

Som. Prick not your finger as you pluck it off;
Lest, bleeding, you do paint the white rose red,
And fall on my side so against your will.

Ver. If I, my lord, for my opinion bleed,
Opinion shall be surgeon to my hurt,
And keep me on the side where still I am.

Som. Well, well, come on. Who else?
Law. Unless my study and my books be false,
The argument you held, was wrong in you;

[TO SOMERSET.

In sign whereof, I pluck a white rose too.

1 Signs or tokens.

2 Colors is here used ambiguously for tints and deceits.

Plan. Now, Somerset, where is your argument? Som. Here, in my scabbard; meditating that, Shall dye your white rose in a bloody red.

Plan. Mean time, your cheeks do counterfeit our

roses;

For pale they look with fear, as witnessing
The truth on our side.

Som.

No, Plantagenet,

'Tis not for fear; but anger,—that thy cheeks
Blush for pure shame, to counterfeit our roses;
And yet thy tongue will not confess thy error.
Plan. Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset ?
Som. Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?
Plan. Ay, sharp and piercing, to maintain his
truth;

Whiles thy consuming canker eats his falsehood.
Som. Well, I'll find friends to wear my bleeding

roses,

That shall maintain what I have said is true,
Where false Plantagenet dare not be seen.

Plan. Now, by this maiden blossom in my hand, I scorn thee and thy faction,' peevish boy.

Suff. Turn not thy scorns this way, Plantagenet. Plan. Proud Poole, I will; and scorn both him and thee.

Suff. I'll turn my part thereof into thy throat. Som. Away, away, good William De-la-Poole ! We grace the yeoman, by conversing with him. War. Now, by God's will, thou wrong'st him, Som

erset !

2

His grandfather was Lionel, duke of Clarence,
Third son to the third Edward, king of England;
Spring crestless yeomen from so deep a root?

1 Theobald altered fashion, which is the reading of the old copy, to faction. Warburton contends that "by fashion is meant the badge of the red rose."

2 The Poet mistakes. Plantagenet's paternal grandfather was Edmund of Langley, duke of York. His maternal grandfather was Roger Mortimer, earl of March, who was the son of Philippa, the daughter of Lionel, duke of Clarence. The duke, therefore, was his maternal great great grandfather.

Plan. He bears him on the place's privilege,1 Or durst not, for his craven heart, say thus.

Som. By him that made me, I'll maintain my words On any plot of ground in Christendom.

Was not thy father, Richard, earl of Cambridge,
For treason executed in our late king's day?
And, by his treason, stand'st not thou attainted,
Corrupted, and exempt from ancient gentry?
His trespass yet lives guilty in thy blood;
And, till thou be restored, thou art a yeoman.

Plan. My father was attached, not attainted;
Condemned to die for treason, but no traitor;
And that I'll prove on better men than Somerset,
Were growing time once ripened to my will.
For your partaker3 Poole, and you yourself,
I'll note you in my book of memory,
To scourge you for this apprehension.
Look to it well; and say you are well warned.
Som. Ay, thou shalt find us ready for thee still;
And know us, by these colors, for thy foes;
For these my friends, in spite of thee, shall wear.
Plan. And, by my soul, this pale and angry rose,
As cognizance of my blood-drinking hate,
Will I forever, and my faction, wear;

Until it wither with me to my grave,

Or flourish to the height of my degree.

OF

Suff. Go forward, and be choked with thy ambition!

And so farewell, until I meet thee next.

[Exit.

Som. Have with thee, Poole.-Farewell, ambitious

Richard.

[Exit

Plan. How I am braved, and must perforce endure it!

War. This blot, that they object against your house,

1 It does not appear that the Temple had any privilege of sanctuary at this time, being then, as now, the residence of law students. The author might imagine it to have derived some such privilege from the knights templars, or knights hospitallers, both religious orders, its former inhabitants.

2 Exempt for excluded.

3 Partaker, in ancient language, signifies one who takes part with another; an accomplice, a confederate.

Shall be wiped out in the next parliament,
Called for the truce of Winchester and Gloster;
And, if thou be not then created York,
I will not live to be accounted Warwick.
Mean time, in signal of my love to thee,
Against proud Somerset, and William Poole,
Will I upon thy party wear this rose.
And here I prophesy,-This brawl to-day,
Grown to this faction, in the Temple garden,
Shall send, between the red rose and the white,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.

Plan. Good master Vernon, I am bound to you,
That you on my behalf would pluck a flower.
Ver. In your behalf still will I wear the same.
Law. And so will I.

Plan. Thanks, gentle sir.

Come, let us four to dinner. I dare say,

This quarrel will drink blood another day. [Exeunt

SCENE V. The same. A Room in the Tower.

Enter MORTIMER,' brought in a chair by two Keepers.
Mor. Kind keepers of my weak, decaying age,
Let dying Mortimer here rest himself.—
Even like a man new haled from the rack,
So fare my limbs with long imprisonment;

And these gray locks, the pursuivants of death,
Nestor-like aged, in an age of care,

Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer.

These eyes-like lamps whose wasting oil is spent-
Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent;2

Weak shoulders, overborne with burdening grief,
And pithless arms, like to a withered vine

1 This is at variance with the strict truth of history. Edmund Mortimer, who was trusted and employed by Henry V. throughout his reign, died of the plague in his own castle at Trim, in Ireland, in 1424-5; being then only thirty-two years old.

2 Exigent is here used for end.