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
Virtue with valor couched in thine eye.-
Order the trial, marshal, and begin.

[The King and the Lords return to their seats.
Mar. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,
Receive thy lance; and God defend the right!
Boling. [Rising.] Strong as a tower in hope, I cry—
Amen.

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,
A traitor to his God, his king, and him,

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,
Both to defend himself, and to approve
Henry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,
To God, his sovereign, and to him, disloyal;
Courageously, and with a free desire,

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,
While we return these dukes what we decree.

[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
With that dear blood which it hath fostered;
And for our eyes do hate the dire aspéct

Of civil1 wounds ploughed up with neighbors' swords; [And for we think the eagle-winged pride

Of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts,

With rival-hating envy, set you on

To wake our peace, which in our country's cradle
Draws the sweet, infant breath of gentle sleep; 2]
Which so roused up with boisterous, untuned drums,
With harsh, resounding trumpets' dreadful bray,
And grating shock of wrathful iron arms,
Might from our quiet confines fright fair peace,
And make us wade even in our kindred's blood;-
Therefore, we banish you our territories.-
You, cousin Hereford, upon pain of death,
Till twice five summers have enriched our fields,
Shall not regreet our fair dominions,

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;
And those his golden beams, to you here lent,
Shall point on me, and gild my banishment.

K. Rich. Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom,
Which I with some unwillingness pronounce.
The fly-slow 3 hours shall not determinate
The dateless limit of thy dear exíle ;—
The hopeless word of―never to return,
Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life.

4

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 epiphet 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,
And all unlooked for from your highness' mouth:
A dearer merit,' not so deep a maim

As to be cast forth in the common air,
Have I deserved at your highness' hand.
The language I have learned these forty years,
My native English, now I must forego:
And now my tongue's use is to me no more,
Than an unstringed viol or a harp;
Or like a cunning instrument cased up,
Or, being open, put into his hands

That knows no touch to tune the harmony.
Within my mouth you have enjailed my tongue,
Doubly portcullised, with my teeth, and lips;
And dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance

Is made my jailer to attend on me.
I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,
Too far in years to be a pupil now;

2

What is thy sentence, then, but speechless death,
Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?
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!)
Embrace each other's love in banishment;
Nor never look upon each other's face;
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,
To plot, contrive, or complot any ill,

'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.
Boling. I swear.

Nor. And I, to keep all this.

Boling. Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy.2—
By this time, had the king permitted us,
One of our souls had wandered in the air,
Banished this frail sepúlchre of our flesh,
As now our flesh is banished from this land.
Confess thy treasons, ere thou fly the realm;
Since thou hast far to go, bear not along
The clogging burden of a guilty soul.

Nor. No, Bolingbroke; if ever I were traitor,
My name be blotted from the book of life,
And I from heaven banished, as from hence!
But what thou art, Heaven, thou, and I do know;
And all too soon, I fear, the king shall rue.—
Farewell, my liege.-Now no way can I stray;
Save back to England, all the world's my way. [Exit.3
K. Rich. Uncle, even in the glasses of thine eyes
I see thy grieved heart; thy sad aspéct

Hath from the number of his banished years
Plucked four away.-Six frozen winters spent,

Return [To BOLING.] with welcome home from banish

ment.

Boling. How long a time lies in one little word!
Four lagging winters, and four wanton springs,
End in a word; such is the breath of kings.

Gaunt. I thank my liege, that, in regard of me,
He shortens four years of my son's exíle.
But little vantage shall I reap thereby;

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.

Shall be extinct with age, and endless night;
My inch of taper will be burnt and done,
And blindfold death not let me see my son.

K. Rich. Why, uncle, thou hast many years to live.
Gaunt. But not a minute, king, that thou canst give.
Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow,
And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow;
Thou canst help time to furrow me with age,
But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage;

Thy word is current with him for my death;
But, dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath.
K. Rich. Thy son is banished upon good advice,
Whereto thy tongue a party' verdict gave.
Why at our justice seem'st thou then to lower?

Gaunt. Things sweet to taste, prove in digestion sour.
You urged me as a judge; but I had rather,
You would have bid me argue like a father.-
O, had it been a stranger, not my child,

To smooth his fault I should have been more mild; 2 A partial slander3 sought I to avoid,

say

And in the sentence my own life destroyed.
Alas, I looked, when some of
you should
I was too strict, to make mine own away;
But you gave leave to my unwilling tongue,
Against my will, to do myself this wrong.

K. Rich. Cousin, farewell;—and, uncle, bid him so ; Six years we banish him, and he shall go.

[Flourish. Exeunt K. RICH. and Train. Aum. Cousin, farewell; what presence must not

know,

From where you do remain, let paper show.

Mar. My lord, no leave take I; for I will ride,

As far as land will let me, by your side.

Gaunt. O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy

words,

That thou return'st no greeting to thy friends?
Boling. I have too few to take my leave of you,

1 Had a part or share in it.

2 This couplet is wanting in the folio.

3 i. e. the reproach of partiality.