That your attempts may overlive the hazard,

And fearful meeting of their opposite.

Mowb. Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground,

And dash themselves to pieces.

Hast.

Enter a Messenger.

Now, what news?

Mess. West of this forest, scarcely off a mile, In goodly form, comes on the enemy;

And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number Upon, or near, the rate of thirty thousand.

Mowb. The just proportion that we gave them out. Let us sway1 on, and face them in the field.

Enter WESTMORELAND.

Arch. What well-appointed leader fronts us here? Mowb. I think it is my lord of Westmoreland. West. Health and fair greeting from our general, The prince lord John and duke of Lancaster.

Arch. Say on, my lord of Westmoreland, in peace; What doth concern your coming?

West.

Then, my lord, Unto your grace do I in chief address

The substance of my speech. If that rebellion
Came like itself, in base and abject routs,
Led on by bloody 2 youth, guarded with rage,
And countenanced by boys, and beggary;
I say, if damned commotion so appeared
In his true, native, and most proper shape,-
You, reverend father, and these noble lords
Had not been here, to dress the ugly form

1 To sway was sometimes used for a rushing, hasty movement.

2 Baret distinguishes between bloody, full of blood, sanguineous, and bloody, desirous of blood, sanguinarius. In this speech Shakspeare uses the word in both senses.

3 Guarded is a metaphor taken from dress; to guard being to ornament with guards or facings.

Of base and bloody insurrection

With your fair honors. You, lord archbishop,-
Whose see is by a civil peace maintained;

Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touched;
Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutored;
Whose white investments' figure innocence,
The dove and very blessed spirit of peace,-
Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself,
Out of the speech of peace, that bears such grace,
Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war?
Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood,
Your pens to lances; and your tongue divine
To a loud trumpet, and a point of war?

2

Arch. Wherefore do I this?-so the question stands.

Briefly to this end.-We are all diseased;
And, with our surfeiting, and wanton hours,
Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,
And we must bleed for it; of which disease
Our late king, Richard, being infected, died.
But, my most noble lord of Westmoreland,
I take not on me here as a physician;
Nor do I as an enemy to peace,
Troop in the throngs of military men;
But, rather, show a while like fearful war,
To diet rank minds, sick of happiness;

And purge the obstructions, which begin to stop
Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.

I have in equal balance justly weighed

What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,
And find our griefs heavier than our offences.
We see which way the stream of time doth run,
And are enforced from our most quiet sphere3

1 Formerly all bishops wore white, even when they travelled."-Hody's History of Convocations, p. 141. This white investment was the episcopal rochet.

2 Warburton very plausibly reads glaives; Steevens proposed greaves. It should be remarked that greaves, or leg-armor, is sometimes spelled

graves.

3 The old copies read, "from our most quiet there." Warburton made the alteration.

By the rough torrent of occasion;

And have the summary of all our griefs,
When time shall serve, to show in articles;
Which, long ere this, we offered to the king,
And might by no suit gain our audience.

When we are wronged, and would unfold our griefs,
We are denied access unto his person1

2

Even by those men that most have done us wrong.
The dangers of the days but newly gone,
(Whose memory is written on the earth
With yet-appearing blood,) and the examples
Of every minute's instance, (present now,)
Have put us in these ill-beseeming arms;
Not to break peace, or any branch of it;
But to establish here a peace indeed,
Concurring both in name and quality.

West. When ever yet was your appeal denied?
Wherein have you been galled by the king?
What peer hath been suborned to grate on you?
That you should seal this lawless, bloody book
Of forged rebellion with a seal divine,
And consecrate commotion's bitter edge? 3

Arch. My brother general, the commonwealth,
To brother born a household cruelty,

I make my quarrel in particular.*

West. There is no need of any such redress

Or, if there were, it not belongs to you.

Mowb. Why not to him, in part; and to us all, That feel the bruises of the days before;

And suffer the condition of these times

1 In Holinshed, the archbishop says, "Where he and his companie were in armes, it was for feare of the king, to whom he could have no free accesse, by reason of such a multitude of flatterers as were about him."

26 Examples which every minute instances or supplies;" which even the present minute presses on their notice.

3 This line is omitted in the folio.

4 The second line of this obscure speech is omitted in the folio. Something appears to be wanting to render it intelligible. Johnson proposes to substitute the word quarrel for brother in the first line, and suggests the following paraphrase: "My general cause of discontent is public mismanagement; my particular cause a domestic injury done to my natural brother," who had been beheaded by the king's order.

To lay a heavy and unequal hand

Upon our honors?

West.

O, my good lord Mowbray,'
Construe the times to their necessities,
And you shall say indeed,

it is the time,

And not the king, that doth you injuries.
Yet, for your part, it not appears to me,
Either from the king, or in the present time,
That you should have an inch of any ground
To build a grief on. Were you not restored
To all the duke of Norfolk's seigniories,
Your noble and right well-remembered father's?
Mowb. What thing in honor had my father lost,
That need to be revived and breathed in me?
The king that loved him, as the state stood then,
Was, force perforce, compelled to banish him.
And then, when Harry Bolingbroke, and he,-
Being mounted, and both roused in their seats,
Their neighing coursers daring of the spur,
Their armed staves in charge, their beavers down,
Their eyes of fire sparkling through sights of steel,
And the loud trumpet blowing them together;-
Then, then, when there was nothing could have stayed
My father from the breast of Bolingbroke,

3

O, when the king did throw his warder down,

His own life hung upon the staff he threw;

Then threw he down himself; and all their lives,

That by indictment, and by dint of sword,

Have since miscarried under Bolingbroke.

West. You speak, lord Mowbray, now you know not what.

The earl of Hereford was reputed then
In England the most valiant gentleman;

Who knows, on whom fortune would then have smiled?
But, if your father had been victor there,

1 The thirty-seven following lines are not in the quarto.

2 i. e. their lances fixed in the rest for the encounter.

3 The perforated part of the helmets, through which they could see to

direct their aim (visiere, Fr.).

4 This is a mistake; he was duke of Hereford.

He ne'er had borne it out of Coventry;

For all the country, in a general voice,

Cried hate upon him; and all their prayers, and love,
Were set on Hereford, whom they doted on,

And blessed, and graced indeed, more than the king.
But this is mere digression from my purpose.-
Here come I from our princely general,

To know your griefs; to tell you from his grace,
That he will give you audience; and wherein
It shall appear that your demands are just,
You shall enjoy them; every thing set off,
That might so much as think you enemies.

Mowb. But he hath forced us to compel this offer, And it proceeds from policy, not love.

West. Mowbray, you overween, to take it so.
This offer comes from mercy, not from fear;
For, lo! within a ken our army lies;

Upon mine honor, all too confident
To give admittance to a thought of fear.
Our battle is more full of names than yours,
Our men more perfect in the use of arms,
Our armor all as strong, our cause the best;
Then reason wills, our hearts should be as good.-
Say you not, then, our offer is compelled.

Mowb. Well, by my will, we shall admit no parley. West. That argues but the shame of your offence. A rotten case abides no handling.

Hast. Hath the prince John a full commission,

In very ample virtue of his father,

To hear, and absolutely to determine

Of what conditions we shall stand upon ?

West. That is intended in the general's name.

I muse, you make so slight a question.

Arch. Then take, my lord of Westmoreland, this schedule;

For this contains our general grievances.—

Each several article herein redressed;

All members of our cause, both here and hence,

That are insinewed to this action,

Acquitted by a true, substantial form,