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The Same. A Room in the DUKE OF LANCASTER’S Palace. | |
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Enter GAUNT and DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER. | |
| Gaunt. Alas! the part I had in Woodstock’s blood | |
| Doth more solicit me than your exclaims, | |
| To stir against the butchers of his life. | 5 |
| But since correction lieth in those hands | |
| Which made the fault that we cannot correct, | |
| Put we our quarrel to the will of heaven; | |
| Who, when they see the hours ripe on earth, | |
| Will rain hot vengeance on offenders’ heads. | 10 |
| 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: | 15 |
| 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 Gloucester, | |
| One vial full of Edward’s sacred blood, | |
| One flourishing branch of his most royal root, | 20 |
| Is crack’d, and all the precious liquor spilt; | |
| Is hack’d down, and his summer leaves all vaded, | |
| By envy’s hand and murder’s bloody axe. | |
| Ah, Gaunt! his blood was thine: that bed, that womb, | |
| That metal, that self-mould, that fashion’d thee | 25 |
| Made him a man; and though thou liv’st and breath’st, | |
| 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. | 30 |
| 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 | 35 |
| Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts. | |
| What shall I say? to safeguard thine own life, | |
| The best way is to venge my Gloucester’s death. | |
| Gaunt. God’s is the quarrel; for God’s substitute, | |
| His deputy anointed in his sight, | 40 |
| Hath caus’d 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. | 45 |
| 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. | 50 |
| Or if misfortune miss the first career, | |
| 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! | 55 |
| 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, | 60 |
| 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 my brother, Edmund York. | |
| Lo! this is all: nay, yet depart not so; | 65 |
| 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, | 70 |
| 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: | 75 |
| The last leave of thee takes my weeping eye. [Exeunt. | |
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