Page 1071 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

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 youth, guarded with rage,

And countenanced by boys and beggary, [35]
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
Of base and bloody insurrection [40]
With your fair honours. 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, [45]
The dove and very blessèd 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, [50]

Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine
To a loud trumpet and a point of war?

ARCHBISHOP
Wherefore do I this? So the question stands.
Briefly to this end: we are all diseased,

[And with our surfeiting and wanton hours [55]
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, [60]
Nor do I as an enemy to peace
Troop in the throngs of military men,

But rather show awhile like fearful war,
To diet rank minds sick of happiness
And purge the obstructions which begin to stop [65]
Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.