Page 1073 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

MOWBRAY

Why not to him in part, and to us all
That feel the bruises of the days before, [100]
And suffer the condition of these times

To lay a heavy and unequal hand
Upon our honours?

WESTMORELAND
[O, my good Lord Mowbray,
Construe the times to their necessities,
And you shall say indeed, it is the time, [105]

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 [110]
To all the Duke of Norfolk’s signories,
Your noble and right well remembered father’s?

MOWBRAY
What thing, in honour, had my father lost,
That need to be revived and breathed in me?

The king that loved him, as the state stood then, [115]
Was force perforce compelled to banish him.
And then that Henry Bolingbroke and he,

Being mounted and both rousèd in their seats,
Their neighing coursers daring of the spur,
Their armèd staves in charge, their beavers down, [120]
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,
O, when the king did throw his warder down, [125]

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.