Courageously, and with a free desire,
Attending but the signal to begin.

Mar. Sound, trumpets; and set forward, com

batants.

[A Charge sounded.

Stay, the king hath thrown his warder5 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. [To the Combatants.

Draw near,
And list, what with our council we have done.
For that our kingdom's earth should not be soil'd
With that dear blood which it hath foster'd;
And for our eyes do hate the dire aspéct
Of civil wounds plough'd up with neighbours'
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 sleep7;]
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;-

5 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. In Drayton's Battle of Agincourt, Erpingham is represented throwing it up as a signal for a charge.

6 Capel's '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.

7 The five lines in brackets are omitted in the folio.

Therefore, we banish you our territories:-
You, cousin Hereford, upon pain of death,
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 exíle;The hopeless word9 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 10; not so deep a maim

8 The old copies read 'sly-slow hours.' Pope reads 'fly-slow hours,' which has been admitted into the text, and conveys an image highly beautiful and just. It is however remarkable that Pope, in the fourth book of his Essay on Man, v. 226, has employed the epithet which, in the present instance, he has rejected:

:

All sly-slow things with circumspective eyes.'

9 Word, for sentence; any short phrase was called a word. Thus Ascham, in a Letter to Queen Elizabeth, 'Savinge that one unpleasaunte word in that Patent, called "Duringe pleasure," turned me after to great displeasure.'-Conway Papers.

10 As Shakspeare used merit, in this place, in the sense of reward, he frequently uses the word meed, which properly signifies reward, to express merit. Thus in Timon of Athens:

no meed but he repays

Sevenfold above itself.'

And in the Third Part of King Henry VI.:

'We are the sons of brave Plantagenet,
Each one already blazing by our meeds.'

Again, in the same play, King Henry says:

"That's not my fear, my meed hath got me fame.'

As to be cast forth in the common air,
Have I deserved at your highness' hand.

The language I haye 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. It boots thee not to be compassionate 11;
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.

11

[Retiring. K. Rich. Return again, and take an oath with thee. Lay on our royal sword your banish'd 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!)

11 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?' which would give the required meaning to the passage; passionate being frequently used for to express passion or grief, to complain. Now leave we this amorous hermit to passionate and playne his misfortune.'—Palace of Pleasure, vol. ii. Ll. 5.

'And cannot passionate our tenfold griefs.'

Tit. Andron. Act iii. Sc. 2.

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;
Nor never by advised 12 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 13;By this time, had the king permitted us, One of our souls had wander'd 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 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 banish'd, 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 14 K. Rich. Uncle, even in the glasses of thine eyes I see thy grieved heart: thy sad aspéct Hath from the number of his banish'd years Pluck'd four away;-Six frozen winters spent, Return [To BOLING.] with welcome home from banishment.

12 Premeditated, deliberated.

13 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.

14 The duke of Norfolk went to Venice, where for thought and melancholy he deceased.'-Holinshed.

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.

15

:

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 16, Whereto thy tongue a party 17 verdict gave; Why at our justice seem'st thou then to lower? 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 18:
A partial slander 19 sought I to avoid,

And in the sentence my own life destroy'd.

15 It is a matter of very melancholy consideration that all human advantages confer more power of doing evil than good. 16 Consideration. 17 Had a part or share in it.

18 This couplet is wanting in the folio. 19 i. e. the reproach of partiality.

VOL. V.

D