As gentle and as jocund as to jest,' [The King and the Lords return to their seats. 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, 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, 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. [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 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, To wake our peace, which in our country's cradle 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; 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 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. Word, for sentence; any short phrase was called a word. Nor. A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege, As to be cast forth in the common air, That knows no touch to tune the harmony. What is thy sentence, then, but speechless death, 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!) 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 advised' 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.— Nor. No, Bolingbroke; if ever I were traitor, And I from heaven banished, as from hence! But what thou art, Heaven, thou, and I do know; Hath from the number of his banished years ment. Boling. How long a time lies in one little word! Gaunt. I thank my liege, that, in regard of me, 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; K. Rich. Why, uncle, thou hast many years to live. Thy word is current with him for my death; To smooth his fault I should have been more mild; And in the sentence my own life destroyed. 2 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? 1 Had a part or share in it. 2 This couplet is wanting in the folio. |