Take honour from me, and my life is done:
Then, dear my liege, mine honour let me try;
In that I live, and for that will I die.
KING RICHARD.
Cousin, throw down your gage: do you begin.
BOLINGBROKE.
O! God defend my soul from such deep sin.
Shall I seem crest-fall’n in my father’s sight,
Or with pale beggar-fear impeach my height
Before this outdar’d 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.
[Exit GAUNT.]
KING RICHARD.
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.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE II. The same. A room in the DUKE OF LANCASTER’S palace.
[Enter GAUNT and DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER.]
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.
DUCHESS.
Finds brotherhood in thee no sharper spur?
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 root:
Some of those seven are dried by nature’s course,
Some of those branches by the Destinies cut;
But Thomas, my dear lord, my life, my Gloucester,
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 vaded,
By envy’s hand and murder’s bloody axe.
Ah, Gaunt! his blood was thine: that bed, that womb,
That metal, that self-mould, that fashion’d thee,
Made him a man; and though thou liv’st and breath’st,
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,
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 entitle 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 caus’d his death; the which if wrongfully,
Let heaven revenge, for I may never lift
An angry arm against his minister.
DUCHESS.
Where then, alas! may I complain myself?
GAUNT.
To God, the widow’s champion and defence.
DUCHESS.
Why then, I will. Farewell, old Gaunt.
Thou go’st to Coventry, there to behold
Our cousin Hereford and fell Mowbray fight:
O! sit my husband’s wrongs on Hereford’s spear,
That it may enter butcher Mowbray’s breast.
Or, if misfortune miss the first career,
Be Mowbray’s sins so heavy in his bosom
That they may break his foaming courser’s back,
And throw the rider headlong in the lists,
A caitiff recreant to my cousin Hereford!
Farewell, old Gaunt: thy sometimes brother’s wife
With her companion, Grief, must end her life.
GAUNT.
Sister, farewell; I must to Coventry.
As much good stay with thee as go with me!
DUCHESS.
Yet one word more. Grief boundeth where it falls,
Not with the empty hollowness, but weight:
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.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE III. Open Space, near Coventry. Lists set out, and a Throne. Heralds, &c., attending.
[Enter the Lord Marshal and AUMERLE.]
MARSHAL.
My Lord Aumerle, is Harry Hereford arm’d?
AUMERLE.