Yet can I not of such tame patience boast
As to be hush'd and nought at all to say:
First, the fair reverence of your highness curbs

me

From giving reins and spurs to my free speech;
Which else would post until it had return'd
These terms of treason doubled down his throat.
Setting aside his high blood's royalty,
And let him be no kinsman to my liege,
I do defy him, and I spit at him;

Call him a slanderous coward and a villain:
Which to maintain I would allow him odds,
And meet him, were I tied to run afoot
Even to the frozen ridges of the Alps,
Or any other ground inhabitable,

Where ever Englishman durst set his foot.
Mean time let this defend my loyalty,

6C

By all my hopes, most falsely doth he lie. Boling. Pale trembling coward, there I throw my gage,

Disclaiming here the kindred of the king; 70

57. All the quartos have "doubled." The first folio has doubly.— H. N. H.

65. “inhabitable"; Theobald suggested “unhabitable.”—I. G. Mr. Collier quotes a like instance of the word from Heywood's General History of Women, 1624: "Where all the country was scorched by the heat of the sun, and the place almost inhabitable for the multitude of serpents." A case still more in point occurs in Holland's Plutarch: "Haply by the divine providence so ordering all, that some parts of the world should be habitable, others inhabitable, according to excessive cold, extreme heat, and a mean temperature of both."-H. N. H.

70. So in the first quarto. All the other old editions have a king. But the speaker plainly refers to his present sovereign; so that the is manifestly right.-H. N. H.

And lay aside my high blood's royalty,

Which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except.

If guilty dread have left thee so much strength As to take up mine honor's pawn, then stoop: By that and all the rites of knighthood else, Will I make good against thee, arm to arm, What I have spoke, or thou canst worse defise. Mow. I take it up; and by that sword I swear, Which gently laid my knighthood on my shoulder,

I'll answer thee in any fair degree,

Or chivalrous design of knightly trial:
And when I mount, alive may I not light,
If I be traitor or unjustly fight!

80

K. Rich. What doth our cousin lay to Mowbray's charge?

It must be great that can inherit us

So much as of a thought of ill in him.

Boling. Look, what I speak, my life shall prove it true;

That Mowbray hath received eight thousand nobles

In name of lendings for your highness' soldiers,

74. Pawn, pledge.-C. H. H.

77. "What I have spoke, or thou canst worse deuise"; this is the reading of Q. 1; Q. 2, “spoke, or thou canst deuise"; Qq. 3, 4, “spoke, or what thou canst deuise"; Ff. and Q. 5, "spoken, or thou canst deuise"; Hanmer conjectured, "spoke, as what thou hast devised."I. G.

87. "Speak," so in the first quarto. The others have said. As Bolingbroke apparently refers to what he is going to say, the present tense, speak, seems more proper.-H. N. H.

The which he hath detain'd for lewd employ

ments,

Like a false traitor and injurious villain.
Besides I say and will in battle prove,
Or here or elsewhere to the furthest verge
That ever was survey'd by English eye,
That all the treasons for these eighteen years
Complotted and contrived in this land

90

Fetch from false Mowbray their first head and
spring.

Further I say, and further will maintain
Upon his bad life to make all this good,

That he did plot the Duke of Gloucester's
death,

Suggest his soon-believing adversaries,

100

90. "Lewd" was anciently used in the sense of knavish, wicked.--H. N. H.

95. "for these eighteen years"; since the insurrection of Wat Tyler, in 1381.-I. G.

100. This was Thomas of Woodstock, the youngest son of Edward III, and of course uncle to Richard II. Fierce, turbulent and distinguished for cruelty in an age of cruel men, he was arrested for treason in 1397, and his own nephews and brothers concurred in the judgment against him. Upon his arrest he was given into the keeping of Norfolk, who pretended to conduct him to the Tower; but when they reached the Thames, he put him on board a ship, took him to Calais, of which Norfolk was governor, and confined him in the castle. Being ordered to bring his prisoner before Parliament for trial, Norfolk answered that he could not produce the duke, for that, being in the king's prison at Calais, he had there died. Holinshed says "the king sent unto Thomas Mowbraie, to make the duke secretlie awaie." And he further relates, that when Norfolk deferred to execute this order, "the king conceived no small displeasure, and sware that it should cost him his life, if he quickly obeied not his commandment. Being thus in a maner inforced, he called out the duke at midnight, as if he should have taken ship to passe over into England, and caused his servants to cast feather beds upon him, and so smother him to death, or otherwise to strangle him with towels, (as some write.)"-H. N. H.

And consequently, like a traitor coward, Sluiced out his innocent soul through streams of blood:

Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries, Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth, To me for justice and rough chastisement; And, by the glorious worth of my descent, This arm shall do it, or this life be spent. K. Rich. How high a pitch his resolution soars! Thomas of Norfolk, what say'st thou to this? Mow. O, let my sovereign turn away his face, 111 And bid his ears a little while be deaf,

Till I have told this slander of his blood, How God and good men hate so foul a liar. K. Rich. Mowbray, impartial are our eyes and

ears:

Were he my brother, nay, my kingdom's heir, As he is but my father's brother's son, Now, by my scepter's awe, I make a vow, Such neighbor nearness to our sacred blood Should nothing privilege him, nor partialize 120 The unstooping firmness of my upright soul: He is our subject, Mowbray; so art thou: Free speech and fearless I to thee allow. Mow. Then, Bolingbroke, as low as to thy heart, Through the false passage of thy throat, thou liest.

106. This "cries to me for justice" finely expresses the sly but stern audacity of Bolingbroke. It is a hint of terror to the King, and works all the more for being so cunningly done that he cannot or dare not resent it as such.-H. N. H.

113. "Slander of his blood," reproach to his ancestry.

116. "My kingdom's heir," so in all the quartos; in the folio, "our kingdom's heir.”—H. N. H.

Three parts of that receipt I had for Calais
Disbursed I duly to his highness' soldiers;
The other part reserved I by consent,

130

For that my sovereign liege was in my debt
Upon remainder of a dear account,
Since last I went to France to fetch his queen:
Now swallow down that lie. For Gloucester's

death,

I slew him not; but to my own disgrace

Neglected my sworn duty in that case.

131. The earls of Nottingham and Rutland, with several other noblemen and a large retinue of knights and squires, were sent over to France in 1395, to negotiate a marriage between their sovereign and Isabella, the daughter of the French king, then in her eighth year. The following year, 1396, "the ambassadors," says Holished, "went thither againe, and so after that the two kings by sending to and fro were growne to certaine points and covenants of agreement, the earl marshal," (Nottingham,) "by letters of procuration, married the ladie Isabell in name of King Richard, so that from thencefoorth she was called queene of England. Amongst other covenants and articles of this marriage there was a truce accorded, to indure betwixt the two realms of England and France for the tearme of thirtie years." Richard's first wife, daughter of Charles IV, emperor of Germany, and known in history as "the good queen Anne," died at Shene in 1394, "to the great greefe of hir husband, who loved hir intirelie." Nottingham and Rutland were made Dukes of Norfolk and Albemarle or Aumerle, about the time of Christmas, 1397.-H. N. H.

132. 'For Gloucester's death,” etc. In Holinshed, Mowbray ignores this charge. A previous page of his Chronicle (iii. 489) relates that Mowbray had unwillingly, and only under threats, carried out Richard's own order for his death. He had thus "neglected his sworn duty" to his sovereign. According to Mowbray's own account to Bagot, as told by him after Richard's death (Hol. iii. 511), he had saved Gloucester's life "for three weeks and more," in defiance of Richard's order and at peril of his life: the murder being finally carried out by persons expressly despatched by Richard "to see it done."-C. H. H.

134. This reads as if Norfolk considered it his sworn duty to slay Gloucester, or at least, to obey the King's order to that effect. But perhaps the "sworn duty” which he charges himself with neglecting,