KING RICHARD II	Cousin, throw up your gage; do you begin.

HENRY BOLINGBROKE	O, God defend my soul from such deep sin!
	Shall I seem crest-fall'n in my father's sight?
	Or with pale beggar-fear impeach my height
	Before this out-dared dastard? Ere my tongue
	Shall wound my honour with such feeble wrong,
	Or sound so base a parle, my teeth shall tear
	The slavish motive of recanting fear,
	And spit it bleeding in his high disgrace,
	Where shame doth harbour, even in Mowbray's face.

	[Exit JOHN OF GAUNT]

KING RICHARD II	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:
	There shall your swords and lances arbitrate
	The swelling difference of your settled hate:
	Since we can not atone you, we shall see
	Justice design the victor's chivalry.
	Lord marshal, command our officers at arms
	Be ready to direct these home alarms.

	[Exeunt]

	KING RICHARD II

ACT I

SCENE II	The DUKE OF LANCASTER'S palace.

	[Enter JOHN OF GAUNT with DUCHESS]

JOHN OF 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!
	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.

DUCHESS	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 Gloucester,
	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 self-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 showest the naked pathway to thy life,
	Teaching stern murder how to butcher thee:
	That which in mean men we intitle patience
	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.

JOHN OF GAUNT	God's is the quarrel; for God's substitute,
	His deputy anointed 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.

DUCHESS	Where then, alas, may I complain myself?

JOHN OF GAUNT	To God, the widow's champion and defence.

DUCHESS	Why, then, I will. Farewell, old Gaunt.
	Thou goest 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,
	Be Mowbray's sins so heavy in his bosom,
	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.

JOHN OF GAUNT	Sister, farewell; I must to Coventry:
	As much good stay with thee as go with me!