MARSHAL
My Lord Aumerle, is Harry Hereford armed?
AUMERLE
Yea, at all points, and longs to enter in.
MARSHAL
The Duke of Norfolk, sprightfully and bold,
Stays but the summons of the appelant’s trumpet.
AUMERLE
Why then, the champions are prepared and stay
For nothing but his Majesty’s approach.
KING RICHARD
Marshal, demand of yonder champion
The cause of his arrival here in arms.
Ask him his name, and orderly proceed
To swear him in the justice of his cause.
MARSHAL
In God’s name and the King’s, say who art,
And why comest thus knightly clad in arms,
Against what man com’st, and what quarrel.
Speak truly, on knighthood and oath,
As so defend heaven and valour.
MOWBRAY
My name is Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,
Who come engaged by my oath—
Which God defend a knight should violate!—
Both to defend my loyalty and truth
To God, my King, and my succeeding issue,
Against the Duke of Hereford that appeals me,
And, by the grace of God and this mine arm,
To prove him, in defending of myself,
A traitor to my God, my king, and me;
And as I truly fight, defend me heaven.
KING RICHARD
Marshal, ask yonder knight in arms
Both who he is and why he cometh
Thus plated in habiliments of war,
And formally, according to our law,
Depose him in the justice of his cause.
MARSHAL
What is name? And com’st
Before King Richard in his royal lists?
Against whom comest ? and what’s quarrel?
Speak like a true knight, so defend heaven!
BOLINGBROKE
Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,
Am I, who ready here do stand in arms
To prove by God’s grace and my body’s valour,
In lists, on Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,
That he’s a traitor foul and dangerous,
To God of heaven, King Richard, and to me.
And as I truly fight, defend me heaven.
MARSHAL
On pain of death, no person be so bold
Or daring-hardy as to touch the lists,
Except the Marshal and such officers
Appointed to direct these fair designs.
BOLINGBROKE
Lord Marshal, let me kiss my sovereign’s hand
And bow my knee before his Majesty.
For Mowbray and myself are like two men
That vow a long and weary pilgrimage;
Then let us take a ceremonious leave
And loving farewell of our several friends.
MARSHAL
The appellant in all duty greets your highness
And craves to kiss your hand and take his leave.
KING RICHARD
We will descend and fold him in our arms.
Cousin of Hereford, as cause is right,
So be fortune in this royal fight.
Farewell, my blood, which if today shed,
Lament we may, but not revenge dead.
BOLINGBROKE
O, let no noble eye profane a tear
For me, if I be gored with Mowbray’s spear.
As confident as is the falcon’s flight
Against a bird, do I with Mowbray fight.
My loving lord, I take my leave of you.
Of you, my noble cousin, Lord Aumerle;
Not sick, although I have to do with death,
But lusty, young, and cheerly drawing breath.
Lo! as at English feasts, so I regreet
The daintiest last, to make the end most sweet.
O , the earthly author of my blood,
Whose youthful spirit, in me regenerate,
with a twofold vigour lift me up
To reach at victory above my head,
Add proof unto mine armour with prayers,
And with blessings steel my lance’s point,
That it may enter Mowbray’s waxen coat
And furbish new the name of John o’ Gaunt,
Even in the lusty haviour of his son.
GAUNT
God in good cause make prosperous.
Be swift like lightning in the execution,
And let blows, doubly redoubled,
Fall like amazing thunder on the casque
Of adverse pernicious enemy.
Rouse up youthful blood, be valiant, and live.
BOLINGBROKE
Mine innocence and Saint George to thrive!
MOWBRAY
However God or fortune cast my lot,
There lives or dies, true to King Richard’s throne,
A loyal, just, and upright gentleman.
Never did captive with a freer heart
Cast off his chains of bondage and embrace
His golden uncontrolled enfranchisement,
More than my dancing soul celebrate
This feast of battle with mine adversary.
Most mighty liege, and my companion peers,
Take from my mouth the wish of happy years.
As gentle and as jocund as to jest
Go I to fight. Truth a quiet breast.
KING RICHARD
Farewell, my lord. Securely I espy
Virtue with valour couched in eye.
Order the trial, Marshal, and begin.
MARSHAL
Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,
Receive lance; and God defend the right.
BOLINGBROKE
Strong as a tower in hope, I cry “Amen”!
MARSHAL
Go bear this lance to Thomas, Duke of Norfolk.
FIRST HERALD
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.
SECOND HERALD
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.
MARSHAL
Sound trumpets, and set forward, combatants.
MARSHAL
Stay! the King thrown his warder down.
KING RICHARD
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.
KING RICHARD
Draw near,
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 fostered;
And for our eyes do hate the dire aspect
Of civil wounds ploughed up with neighbours’ swords;
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 roused up with boist’rous 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 life,
Till twice five summers have enriched our fields
Shall not regreet our fair dominions,
But tread the stranger paths of banishment.
BOLINGBROKE
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.
KING RICHARD
Norfolk, for remains a heavier doom,
Which I with some unwillingness pronounce:
The sly slow hours shall not determinate
The dateless limit of dear exile.
The hopeless word of “never to return”
Breathe I against , upon pain of life.
MOWBRAY
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’ hands.
The language I have learnt these forty years,
My native English, now I must forgo;
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 engaoled my tongue,
Doubly portcullised 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 sentence, then, but speechless death,
Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?
KING RICHARD
It boots not to be compassionate.
After our sentence plaining comes too late.
MOWBRAY
Then thus I turn me from my country’s light,
To dwell in solemn shades of endless night.
KING RICHARD
Return again, and take an oath with .
Lay on our royal sword your banished hands.
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 louring 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.
BOLINGBROKE
I swear.
MOWBRAY
And I, to keep all this.
BOLINGBROKE
Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy:
By this time, had the King permitted us,
One of our souls had wandered in the air,
Banished this frail sepulchre of our flesh,
As now our flesh is banished from this land.
Confess treasons fly the realm.
Since far to go, bear not along
The clogging burden of a guilty soul.
MOWBRAY
No, Bolingbroke. If ever I were traitor,
My name be blotted from the book of life,
And I from heaven banished as from !
But what art, God, , 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.
KING RICHARD
Uncle, even in the glasses of eyes
I see grieved heart. sad aspect
from the number of his banished years
Plucked four away. Six frozen winters spent,
Return with welcome home from banishment.
BOLINGBROKE
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, the six years that he 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.
KING RICHARD
Why, uncle, many years to live.
GAUNT
But not a minute, king, that canst give.
Shorten my days canst with sullen sorrow,
And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow.
canst help time to furrow me with age,
But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage;
word is current with him for my death,
But dead, kingdom cannot buy my breath.
KING RICHARD
son is banished upon good advice,
Whereto tongue a party-verdict gave.
Why at our justice seem’st then to lour?
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.
A partial slander sought I to avoid,
And in the sentence my own life destroyed.
Alas, I looked 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.
KING RICHARD
Cousin, farewell, and, uncle, bid him so.
Six years we banish him, and he shall go.
AUMERLE
Cousin, farewell. What presence must not know,
From where you do remain let paper show.
MARSHAL
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 hoard words,
That return’st no greeting to friends?
BOLINGBROKE
I have too few to take my leave of you,
When the tongue’s office should be prodigal
To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart.
GAUNT
grief is but absence for a time.
BOLINGBROKE
Joy absent, grief is present for that time.
GAUNT
What is six winters? They are quickly gone.
BOLINGBROKE
To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten.
GAUNT
Call it a travel that tak’st for pleasure.
BOLINGBROKE
My heart will sigh when I miscall it so,
Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage.
GAUNT
The sullen passage of weary steps
Esteem as foil wherein art to set
The precious jewel of home return.
BOLINGBROKE
Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make
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 necessity to reason thus:
There is no virtue like necessity.
Think not the King did banish ,
But the King. Woe the heavier sit
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.
Go, say I sent forth to purchase honour,
And not the King exiled ; or suppose
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air,
And art flying to a fresher clime.
Look what soul holds dear, imagine it
To lie that way goest, not com’st.
Suppose the singing birds musicians,
The grass whereon tread’st the presence strewed,
The flowers fair ladies, and steps no more
Than a delightful measure or a dance;
For gnarling sorrow less power to bite
The man that mocks at it and sets it light.
BOLINGBROKE
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?
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 never rankle more
Than when it bites but lanceth not the sore.
GAUNT
Come, come, my son, I’ll bring on way.
Had I youth and cause, I would not stay.
BOLINGBROKE
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 banished, yet a true-born Englishman.