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What shall I say? to safeguard thine own life, |
The best way is to venge my Gloucester's death. |
JOHN OF GAUNT: |
God's is the quarrel; for God's substitute, |
His deputy anointed in His sight, |
Hath caused 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? |
JOHN OF GAUNT: |
To God, the widow's champion and defence. |
DUCHESS: |
Why, then, I will. Farewell, old Gaunt. |
Thou goest 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, |
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. |
JOHN OF 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. |
Lord Marshal: |
My Lord Aumerle, is Harry Hereford arm'd? |
DUKE OF AUMERLE: |
Yea, at all points; and longs to enter in. |
Lord Marshal: |
The Duke of Norfolk, sprightfully and bold, |
Stays but the summons of the appellant's trumpet. |
DUKE OF AUMERLE: |
Why, then, the champions are prepared, and stay |
For nothing but his majesty's approach. |
KING RICHARD II: |
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. |
Lord Marshal: |
In God's name and the king's, say who thou art |
And why thou comest thus knightly clad in arms, |
Against what man thou comest, and what thy quarrel: |
Speak truly, on thy knighthood and thy oath; |
As so defend thee heaven and thy valour! |
THOMAS MOWBRAY: |
My name is Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk; |
Who hither 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 II: |
Marshal, ask yonder knight in arms, |
Both who he is and why he cometh hither |
Thus plated in habiliments of war, |
And formally, according to our law, |
Depose him in the justice of his cause. |
Lord Marshal: |
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