but my

My life thou shalt command, but not my shame :
The one my duty owes ;
fair name,
Despite of death that lives upon my grave,36
To dark dishonour's use thou shalt not have.
I am disgraced, impeach'd, and baffled 37 here;
Pierced to the soul with slander's venom'd spear,
The which no balm can cure but his heart-blood
Which breathed 38 this poison.

Norf. Yea, but not change his 40 spots: take but my shame,

And I resign my gage. My dear dear lord,

The purest treasure mortal times afford

Is spotless reputation; that away,
Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.
A jewel in a ten-times-barr'd-up chest
Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.

Mine honour is my life; both grow in one;
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.

K. Rich. Cousin, throw down your gage; 41 do you begin.

86 "That lives upon my grave in spite of death" is the meaning.

37 Abused, reviled, belaboured with opprobrious terms, are among the old senses of baffled.

38 "The heart-blood of him who breathed."

39 Alluding, probably, to Norfolk's crest, which is said to have been a golden leopard.

40 It may seem as if his should be their, to accord with leopards; but Norfolk probably has in mind the text, " Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?"

41 Here, again, it may seem that your should be his. But "your gage" is the gage which you have made yours by taking it up. So, just before, Norfolk says "resign my gage," meaning the appellant's gage, which he has taken up.

Boling. O, God defend my soul from such foul sin!
Shall I seem crest-fall'n in my father's sight?
Or with pale beggar-fear impeach my height 42
Before this outdared dastard? Ere my tongue
Shall wound mine honour with such feeble wrong,"
43
Or sound so base a parle, my teeth shall tear
The slavish motive 44 of recanting fear,

And spit it bleeding in his high disgrace,

Where shame doth harbour, even in Mowbray's face!
[Exit GAUNT.
K. Rich. 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.45
There shall your swords and lances arbitrate
The swelling difference of your settled hate :
Since we cannot atone you," 46 you shall see
Justice design the victor's chivalry.-
Marshal, command our officers-at-arms
Be ready to direct these home alarms.47

[Exeunt.

42" Impeach my height" means "draw my high descent in question"; that is, "show that I am not a Plantagenet."

43 Such base notes of feebleness or imbecility.

--

-"Sound a parle" is, order the trumpeter to sound a parley, to settle the quarrel with talk.

44 Here motive is the moving power, or agent; that is, the tongue, which utters the cowardly recantation. The Poet has motive repeatedly so.

45 Saint Lambert's day is the 17th of September.

46 Cannot reconcile or at-one you, or make you friends. Such is the old meaning of the word. - Design, in the next line, has the classical sense of mark or point out. So designator was “a marshal, or master of a play or prize, who appointed every one his place, and adjudged the victory."

47 Upon the closing part of this scene, Professor Dowden, of Dublin, has the following apt remarks: "Nothing has disturbed the graceful dream of Richard's adolescence. He has an indescribable charm of person and presence; Hotspur remembers him as 'Richard, that sweet, lovely rose.'

SCENE II. -The Same. A Room in the Duke of LANCASTER'S Palace.

Enter GAUNT and the Duchess of GLOSTER.

Gaunt. Alas, the part I had in Gloster's blood1
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 fault2 that we cannot correct,
Put we our quarrel to the will of Heaven;
Who, when they3 see the hours ripe on Earth,
Will rain hot vengeance on offenders' heads.

But a king who rules a discontented people and turbulent nobles needs to
be something more than a beautiful, blossoming flower. Richard has aban-
doned his nature to self-indulgence, and therefore the world becomes to
him more unreal than ever. He has been surrounded by flatterers, who
helped to make his atmosphere a 'luminous mist,' through which the facts
of life appeared with all their ragged outlines smoothed away. In the first
scene of the play he enacts the part of a king with a fine show of dignity;
his bearing is splendid and irreproachable. Mowbray is obstinate, and will
not throw down the gage of Bolingbroke; Richard exclaims, 'Rage must
be withstood: give me his gage: lions make leopards tame.' But Mowbray
retains the gage. 'We were not born to sue, but to command,' declared
Richard with royal majesty; yet he admits that to command exceeds his
power. What of that?
Has not Richard borne himself splendidly, and

uttered himself in a royal metaphor,—'Lions make leopards tame'?"

1 Gaunt means his blood-relationship, his consanguinity to the Duke of Gloster. Thomas, like his brothers, John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley, was surnamed Woodstock, from the place of his birth.— Exclaims for exclamations. The Poet has many words thus shortened.

2 Referring, evidently, to the King, whom Gaunt believes to have caused the murder of Gloster. As the King alone could punish the crime, and as Gaunt could not call him to account, he might well speak of it as a "fault that we cannot correct."

3 They refers to Heaven, which is here used as a collective noun. Shakespeare has the same usage elsewhere. — In this line, as in many other places, hours is a dissyllable.

Duch. 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 Gloster,
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 faded,
By envy's hand and murder's bloody axe.

Ah, Gaunt, his blood was thine! that bed, that womb,
That metal, that self5 mould, that fashion'd thee,
Made him a man; and though thou livest and breathest,
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 show'st 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 Gloster's death.

4 Envy, here, is malice; the more common meaning of the word ir Shakespeare's time.

5 Self for self-same; a very frequent usage.

• Model for image or copy; that which is modelled. Often so.

Gaunt. God's is the quarrel; for God's substitute,
His deputy annointed 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.

Duch. Where, then, alas, may I complain myself ??

Gaunt. To God, the widow's champion and defence.
Duch. 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,8
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!

Duch. Yet one word more: Grief boundeth where it falls, Not with the empty hollowness, but weight: 10

I take my leave before I have begun ;

For sorrow ends not when it seemeth done.

7 Complain used reflexively; like the French me complaindre.

8 Career is here a technical term of the tilt-yard, for the course or race from the lists or extremities of the yard to the spot where the combatants met full-tilt. The Poet has it so once again, at least.

9 Sometime and sometimes were used indiscriminately, and often, as here, in the sense of former or formerly.

10 She is likening her wordy grief to the repeated boundings of a tennis ball.