[The KING and 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. [To an Officer.] Go bear this lance 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, combatants. [A charge sounded. Stay, the king hath thrown his warder down.(6) 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. Draw near, [To the Combatants. And list, what with our council we have done. For that our kingdom's earth should not be

soil'd

And for we think the eagle-winged pride
Of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts,
With rival-hating envy, set on you

To wake our peace, which in our country's cradle
Draws the sweet infant-breath of gentle sleep;
Which so rous'd up with boisterous untun'd
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 life,*
Till twice five summers have enrich'd 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 hours shall not determinate
The dateless limit of thy dear exile ;-
The hopeless word of Never to return,
Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life.
NOR. A heavy sentence, my most sovereign
liege,

And all unlook'd 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' hands.
The language I have learn'd 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 cas'd up,
Or, being open, put into his hands
That knows no touch to tune the harmony.
Within my mouth you have engaol'd my tongue,
Doubly portcullis'd with my teeth and lips;
And dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance
Is made my gaoler to attend on me.
I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,
Too far in years to be a pupil now;

What is thy sentence, then, but speechless death, Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?

K. RICH. Return again, and take an oath with thee:

Lay on our royal sword your banish'd hands; (7)
Swear by the duty that you owe to God,*
(Our part therein we banish with yourselves,)
To keep the oath that we administer :-
You never shall (so help you truth and God! *)
Embrace each other's love in banishment;
Nor never look upon each other's face;
Nor never † write, regreet, nor ‡ reconcile
This low'ring tempest of your home-bred hate;
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; By this time, had the king permitted us, One of our souls had wandered in the air, Banish'd this frail sepulchre of our flesh, As now our flesh is banish'd from this land: Confess thy treasons ere thou fly the § realm; Since thou hast far to go, bear not along The clogging burthen 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 banish'd, as from hence! But what thou art, God, 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.d

a Compassionate;] As this is the only instance at present known of compassionate being employed to denote lamenting, it has been suspected to be a misprint for "so passionate; " but I apprehend the error, if there be one, consists in the latter part of become having got connexed by a very common typographical mishap, with the next word, and that we ought to read,

"It boots thee not to become passionate." Passionate is employed by the old writers with considerable freedom. Sometimes it is used to imply an outward expression of emotion, what Richard subsequently calls the "external manners of lament;" as in "Titus Andronicus," Act III. Sc. 2 :— "Thy niece and I, poor creatures, want our hands, And cannot passionate our tenfold grief."

And occasionally it is adopted to signify a passive endurance of

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 exile :
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,
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 banish'd upon good advice,
Whereto thy tongue a party-verdict gave;
Why at our justice seem'st thou then to lour?
GAUNT. Things sweet to taste prove in digestion

sour.

You urg'd 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:
A partial slander' sought I to avoid,
And in the sentence my own life destroy'd.
Alas, I look'd when some of you should say,
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. RICHARD and Train. AUM. Cousin, farewell: what presence must not know,

(*) First folio, sudden.

afliction, as in "King John," Act II. Sc. 2:

"She is sad and passionate at your highness' tent."

See Note (c). p. 298.

b (Our part therein we banish with yourselves,)-] Writers on the law of nations are divided in opinion whether an exile is still bound by his allegiance to the State that banished him. Shakespeare here is of the side of those who hold the negative.

e Norfolk,-so far as to mine enemy;-] This seems to mean, So far as I am now permitted to address my enemy. The first folio, reads," so fare," &c.

d All the world's my way.] Upon his banishment, the Duke of Norfolk went to Venice; where, according to Holinshed, "for thought and melancholy he deceased."

e O, had it been a stranger, &c.] Four lines, commencing here, are omitted in the folio.

f A partial slander-] The reproach of partiality.

you,

When the tongue's office should be prodigal
To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart.
GAUNT. Thy grief is but thy absence for a
time.

[time. BOLING. Joy absent, grief is present for that GAUNT. What is six winters? they are quickly gone. [hour ten. BOLING. To men in joy; but grief makes one GAUNT. Call it a travel that thou tak'st for pleasure.

BOLING. My heart will sigh when I miscall it so, Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage.

GAUNT. The sullen passage of thy weary steps Esteem a foil,* wherein thou art to set The precious jewel of thy home-return.

[make

BOLING. Nay, rather, every tedious stride I Will but remember me, what a deal of world I wander from the jewels that I love. Must I not serve a long apprenticehood To foreign passages; and in the end, Having my freedom, boast of nothing else But that I was a journeyman to grief?

GAUNT. All places that the eye of heaven visits,
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens:
Teach thy necessity to reason thus ;
There is no virtue like necessity.
Think not, the king did banish thee,

But thou the king: woe doth the heavier sit,
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.
Go, say-I sent thee forth to purchase honour,
And not, the king exil'd thee: or suppose,
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air,
And thou art flying to a fresher clime.
Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it

To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou com'st.
Suppose the singing birds, musicians; [strew'd;
The grass whereon thou tread'st, the presence
The flowers, fair ladies; and thy steps, no more
Than a delightful measure, or a dance:
For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite
The man that mocks at it, and sets it light."
BOLING. O, who can hold a fire in his hand,
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite,
By bare imagination of a feast?

(*) First folio, soyle.

a The man that mocks at it, and sets it light.] The whole of this speech and the preceding one are omitted in the folio.

b 'Faith, none for me,-] None on my part.

Or wallow naked in December snow,
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?
O, no! the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse:
Fell sorrow's tooth doth never
* rankle more,
Than when it bites but lanceth not the sore.
GAUNT. Come, come, my son, I'll bring thee
on thy way:

Had I thy youth and cause, I would not stay. BOLING. Then, England's ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu,

My mother, and my nurse, that † bears me yet!
Where'er I wander, boast of this I can,
Though banish'd, yet a true-born Englishman.
[Exeunt.

With humble and familiar courtesy ;

What reverence he did throw away on slaves,
Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles,+
And patient underbearing of his fortune.
As 't were to banish their affects with him,
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;
A brace of draymen bid-God speed him well,
And had the tribute of his supple knee, [friends;
With-Thanks, my countrymen, my loving
As were our England in reversion his,
And he our subjects' next degree in hope.

For our affairs in hand. If that come short,
Our substitutes at home shall have blank charters ;(8)
Whereto, when they shall know what men are rich,
They shall subscribe them for large sums of gold,
And send them after to supply our wants;
For we will make for Ireland presently.

Enter BUSHY.

Bushy, what news? b

[my lord;

these thoughts.

To entreat your majesty to visit him. K. RICH. Where lies he?

BUSHY. At Ely-house.

[mind,

K. RICH. Now put it, God,† in his physician's To help him to his grave immediately! The lining of his coffers shall make coats To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars. Come, gentlemen, let's all go visit him: [late! Pray God we may make haste, and come too ALL. Amen." [Exeunt.