Were growing time once ripened to my will.

For your partaker Pole, and you yourself,

I’ll note you in my book of memory,

To scourge you for this apprehension.

Look to it well, and say you are well warned.

SOMERSET

Ah, thou shalt find us ready for thee still,

And know us by these colours for thy foes,

For these my friends, in spite of thee, shall wear.

RICHARD PLANTAGENET

And, by my soul, this pale and angry rose,

As cognizance of my blood-drinking hate,

Will I forever, and my faction, wear

Until it wither with me to my grave,

Or flourish to the height of my degree.

SUFFOLK

Go forward, and be choked with thy ambition.

And so farewell until I meet thee next. Exit

SOMERSET

Have with thee, Pole.—Farewell, ambitious Richard.

Exit

RICHARD PLANTAGENET

How I am braved, and must perforce endure it!

WARWICK

This blot that they object against your house

Shall be wiped out in the next parliament,

Called for the truce of Winchester and Gloucester.

An if thou be not then created York,

I will not live to be accounted Warwick.

Meantime, in signal of my love to thee.

Against proud Somerset and William Pole,

Will I upon thy party wear this rose.

And here I prophesy: this brawl today,

Grown to this faction in the Temple garden,

Shall send, between the red rose and the white,

A thousand souls to death and deadly night.

RICHARD PLANTAGENET

Good Master Vernon, I am bound to you,

That you on my behalf would pluck a flower.

VERNON

In your behalf still will I wear the same.

LAWYER And so will I.

RICHARD PLANTAGENET Thanks, gentles.

Come, let us four to dinner. I dare say

This quarrel will drink blood another day.

Exeunt. The rose brier is removed

2.5 Enter Edmund Mortimer, brought in a chair ⌈by⌉ his Keepers

MORTIMER

Kind keepers of my weak decaying age,

Let dying Mortimer here rest himself.

Even like a man new-haled from the rack,

So fare my limbs with long imprisonment;

And these grey locks, the pursuivants of death,

Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer,

Nestor-like aged in an age of care.

These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent,

Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent;

Weak shoulders, overborne with burdening grief,

And pithless arms, like to a withered vine

That droops his sapless branches to the ground.

Yet are these feet—whose strengthless stay is numb,

Unable to support this lump of clay—

Swift-winged with desire to get a grave,

As witting I no other comfort have.

But tell me, keeper, will my nephew come?

KEEPER

Richard Plantagenet, my lord, will come.

We sent unto the Temple, unto his chamber,

And answer was returned that he will come.

MORTIMER

Enough. My soul shall then be satisfied.

Poor gentleman, his wrong doth equal mine.

Since Henry Monmouth first began to reign—

Before whose glory I was great in arms—

This loathsome sequestration have I had;

And even since then hath Richard been obscured,

Deprived of honour and inheritance.

But now the arbitrator of despairs,

Just Death, kind umpire of men’s miseries,

With sweet enlargement doth dismiss me hence.

I would his troubles likewise were expired,

That so he might recover what was lost.

Enter Richard Plantagenet

KEEPER

My lord, your loving nephew now is come.

MORTIMER

Richard Plantagenet, my friend, is he come?

RICHARD PLANTAGENET

Ay, noble uncle, thus ignobly used:

Your nephew, late despised Richard, comes.

MORTIMER (to Keepers)

Direct mine arms I may embrace his neck

And in his bosom spend my latter gasp.

O tell me when my lips do touch his cheeks,

That I may kindly give one fainting kiss.

He embraces Richard

And now declare, sweet stem from York’s great stock,

Why didst thou say of late thou wert despised?

RICHARD PLANTAGENET

First lean thine aged back against mine arm,

And in that ease I’ll tell thee my dis-ease.

This day in argument upon a case

Some words there grew ’twixt Somerset and me;

Among which terms he used his lavish tongue

And did upbraid me with my father’s death;

Which obloquy set bars before my tongue,

Else with the like I had requited him.

Therefore, good uncle, for my father’s sake,

In honour of a true Plantagenet,

And for alliance’ sake, declare the cause

My father, Earl of Cambridge, lost his head.

MORTIMER

That cause, fair nephew, that imprisoned me,

And hath detained me all my flow’ring youth

Within a loathsome dungeon, there to pine,

Was cursed instrument of his decease.

RICHARD PLANTAGENET

Discover more at large what cause that was,

For I am ignorant and cannot guess.

MORTIMER

I will, if that my fading breath permit

And death approach not ere my tale be done.

Henry the Fourth, grandfather to this King,