Corrupted, and exempt from ancient gentry?
His trespass yet lives guilty in thy blood,
And till thou be restored thou art a yeoman.
95
RICHARD My father was attached, not attainted,
Condemned to die for treason, but no traitor;
And that I’ll prove on better men than Somerset,
Were growing time once ripened to my will.
For your partaker Poole, and you yourself,
100
I’ll note you in my book of memory,
To scourge you for this apprehension;
Look to it well, and say you are well warned.
SOMERSET Ah, thou shalt find us ready for thee still,
And know us by these colours for thy foes;
105
For these my friends, in spite of thee, shall wear.
RICHARD And, by my soul, this pale and angry rose,
As cognizance of my blood-drinking hate,
Will I for ever, and my faction, wear
Until it wither with me to my grave
110
Or flourish to the height of my degree.
SUFFOLK
Go forward, and be choked with thy ambition:
And so farewell, until I meet thee next. Exit.
SOMERSET
Have with thee, Pole. Farewell, ambitious Richard.
Exit.
RICHARD
How I am braved, and must perforce endure it.
115
WARWICK This blot that they object against your house
Shall be whipped out in the next parliament,
Called for the truce of Winchester and Gloucester:
And if thou be not then created York,
I will not live to be accounted Warwick.
120
Meantime, in signal of my love to thee,
Against proud Somerset and William Poole
Will I upon thy party wear this rose.
And here I prophesy: this brawl today,
Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden,
125
Shall send between the red rose and the white
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.
RICHARD Good Master Vernon, I am bound to you,
That you on my behalf would pluck a flower.
VERNON In your behalf, still will I wear the same.
130
LAWYER And so will I.
RICHARD Thanks, gentle.
Come, let us four to dinner: I dare say
This quarrel will drink blood another day. Exeunt.
2.5 Enter MORTIMER, brought in a chair, and Gaolers.
MORTIMER Kind keepers of my weak decaying age,
Let dying Mortimer here rest himself.
Even like a man new haled from the rack,
So fare my limbs with long imprisonment;
And these grey locks, the pursuivants of death,
5
Nestor-like aged, in an age of care,
Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer.
These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent,
Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent;
Weak shoulders, overborne with burdening grief,
10
And pithless arms, like to a withered vine
That droops his sapless branches to the ground.
Yet are these feet, whose strengthless stay is numb,
Unable to support this lump of clay,
Swift-winged with desire to get a grave,
15
As witting I no other comfort have.
But tell me, keeper, will my nephew come?
GAOLER Richard Plantagenet, my lord, will come:
We sent unto the Temple, unto his chamber,
And answer was returned that he will come.
20
MORTIMER Enough; my soul shall then be satisfied.
Poor gentleman, his wrong doth equal mine.
Since Henry Monmouth first began to reign –
Before whose glory I was great in arms –
This loathsome sequestration have I had;
25
And even since then hath Richard been obscured,
Deprived of honour and inheritance.
But now the arbitrator of despairs,
Just death, kind umpire of men’s miseries,
With sweet enlargement doth dismiss me hence:
30
I would his troubles likewise were expired,
That so he might recover what was lost.
Enter RICHARD.
GAOLER My lord, your loving nephew now is come.
MORTIMER
Richard Plantagenet, my friend, is he come?
RICHARD Ay, noble uncle, thus ignobly used,
35
Your nephew, late despised Richard, comes.
MORTIMER
Direct mine arms – I may embrace his neck,
And in his bosom spend my latter gasp.
O tell me when my lips do touch his cheeks,
That I may kindly give one fainting kiss.
40
And now declare, sweet stem from York’s great stock,
Why didst thou say of late thou wert despised?
RICHARD First, lean thine aged back against mine arm,
And in that ease I’ll tell thee my disease.
This day, in argument upon a case,
45
Some words there grew ’twixt Somerset and me,
Among which terms he used his lavish tongue
And did upbraid me with my father’s death;
Which obloquy set bars before my tongue,
Else with the like I had requited him.
50
Therefore, good uncle, for my father’s sake –
In honour of a true Plantagenet –
And for alliance’ sake, declare the cause
My father, Earl of Cambridge, lost his head.
MORTIMER
That cause, fair nephew, that imprisoned me,
55
And hath detained me all my flowering youth
Within a loathsome dungeon, there to pine,
Was cursed instrument of his decease.
RICHARD Discover more at large what cause that was,
For I am ignorant and cannot guess.
60
MORTIMER I will, if that my fading breath permit,
And death approach not ere my tale be done.
Henry the Fourth, grandfather to this King,
Deposed his nephew Richard, Edward’s son,
The first begotten and the lawful heir
65
Of Edward, king, the third of that descent,
During whose reign the Percies of the north,
Finding his usurpation most unjust,
Endeavoured my advancement to the throne.
The reason moved these warlike lords to this
70
Was for that – young Richard thus removed,
Leaving no heir begotten of his body –
I was the next by birth and parentage:
For by my mother I derived am
From Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third son
75
To King Edward the Third, whereas he
From John of Gaunt doth bring his pedigree,
Being but fourth of that heroic line.
But mark: as in this haughty great attempt
They laboured to plant the rightful heir,
80
I lost my liberty and they their lives.
Long after this, when Henry the Fifth,
Succeeding his father Bolingbroke, did reign,
Thy father, Earl of Cambridge then – derived
From famous Edmund Langley, Duke of York –
85
Marrying my sister, that thy mother was,
Again, in pity of my hard distress,
Levied an army, weening to redeem
And have installed me in the diadem;
B
ut as the rest, so fell that noble earl,
90
And was beheaded. Thus the Mortimers,
In whom the title rested, were suppressed.
RICHARD Of which, my lord, your honour is the last.
MORTIMER True; and thou seest that I no issue have,
And that my fainting words do warrant death.
95
Thou art my heir. The rest, I wish thee gather:
But yet be wary in thy studious care.
RICHARD Thy grave admonishments prevail with me.
But yet, methinks, my father’s execution
Was nothing less than bloody tyranny.
100
MORTIMER With silence, nephew, be thou politic.
Strong fixed is the house of Lancaster,
And, like a mountain, not to be removed.
But now thy uncle is removing hence,
As princes do their courts, when they are cloyed
105
With long continuance in a settled place.
RICHARD O uncle, would some part of my young years
Might but redeem the passage of your age.
MORTIMER
Thou dost then wrong me, as that slaughterer doth
Which giveth many wounds when one will kill.
110
Mourn not, except thou sorrow for my good;
Only give order for my funeral.
And so farewell, and fair be all thy hopes,
And prosperous be thy life in peace and war. [Dies.]
RICHARD And peace, no war, befall thy parting soul.
115
In prison hast thou spent a pilgrimage
And like a hermit overpassed thy days.
Well, I will lock his counsel in my breast,
And what I do imagine – let that rest.
Keepers, convey him hence, and I myself
120
Will see his burial better than his life.
Exeunt Gaolers, bearing out the body of Mortimer.
Here dies the dusky torch of Mortimer,
Choked with ambition of the meaner sort.
And for those wrongs, those bitter injuries
Which Somerset hath offered to my house,
125
I doubt not but with honour to redress.
And therefore haste I to the parliament –
Either to be restored to my blood,
Or make my will th’advantage of my good.
Exit.
3.1 Flourish. Enter KING, EXETER, GLOUCESTER, WINCHESTER, WARWICK, SOMERSET, SUFFOLK, RICHARD Plantagenet. Gloucester offers to put up a bill; Winchester snatches it, tears it.
WINCHESTER
Com’st thou with deep premeditated lines?
With written pamphlets, studiously devised?
Humphrey of Gloucester, if thou canst accuse,
Or aught intend’st to lay unto my charge,
Do it without invention, suddenly,
5
As I with sudden and extemporal speech
Purpose to answer what thou canst object.
GLOUCESTER
Presumptuous priest, this place commands my patience,
Or thou shouldst find thou hast dishonoured me.
Think not, although in writing I preferred
10
The manner of thy vile outrageous crimes,
That therefore I have forged or am not able
Verbatim to rehearse the method of my pen.
No, prelate, such is thy audacious wickedness,
Thy lewd, pestiferous and dissentious pranks,
15
As very infants prattle of thy pride.
Thou art a most pernicious usurer,
Froward by nature, enemy to peace,
Lascivious, wanton – more than well beseems
A man of thy profession and degree.
20
And for thy treachery, what’s more manifest,
In that thou laid’st a trap to take my life,
As well at London Bridge as at the Tower?
Beside, I fear me, if thy thoughts were sifted,
The King, thy sovereign, is not quite exempt
25
From envious malice of thy swelling heart.
WINCHESTER
Gloucester, I do defy thee. Lords, vouchsafe
To give me hearing what I shall reply.
If I were covetous, ambitious, or perverse –
As he will have me – how am I so poor?
30
Or how haps it I seek not to advance
Or raise myself, but keep my wonted calling?
And for dissension, who preferreth peace
More than I do? – except I be provoked.
No, my good lords, it is not that offends,
35
It is not that that hath incensed the Duke.
It is because no one should sway but he,
No one but he should be about the King;
And that engenders thunder in his breast
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 205
