The Complete Works of William Shakespeare · William Shakespeare
SCENE V. The Tower of London.
Enter Mortimer, brought in a chair, and Jailers. 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 gray locks, the pursuivants of death, Nestor-like aged in an age of care, Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer. 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 wither’d 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? FIRST JAILER. Richard Plantagenet, my lord, will come. We sent unto the Temple, unto his chamber, And answer was return’d 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. FIRST JAILER. My lord, your loving nephew now is come. MORTIMER. Richard Plantagenet, my friend, is he come? PLANTAGENET. Ay, noble uncle, thus ignobly used, Your nephew, late despised Richard, comes. MORTIMER. 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. And now declare, sweet stem from York’s great stock, Why didst thou say of late thou wert despised? PLANTAGENET. First, lean thine aged back against mine arm, And, in that ease, I’ll tell thee my disease. 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 imprison’d me And hath detain’d me all my flowering youth Within a loathsome dungeon, there to pine, Was cursed instrument of his decease. 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, Deposed his nephew Richard, Edward’s son, The first-begotten and the lawful heir Of Edward king, the third of that descent; During whose reign the Percies of the north, Finding his usurpation most unjust, Endeavour’d my advancement to the throne. The reason moved these warlike lords to this Was, for that—young King Richard thus removed, Leaving no heir begotten of his body— I was the next by birth and parentage; For by my mother I derived am From Lionel Duke of Clarence, third son To King Edward the Third; whereas he From John of Gaunt doth bring his pedigree, Being but fourth of that heroic line. But mark: as in this haughty great attempt They labored to plant the rightful heir, I lost my liberty and they their lives. Long after this, when Henry the Fifth, Succeeding his father Bolingbroke, did reign, Thy father, Earl of Cambridge then, derived From famous Edmund Langley, Duke of York, Marrying my sister that thy mother was, Again, in pity of my hard distress. Levied an army, weening to redeem And have install’d me in the diadem. But, as the rest, so fell that noble earl And was beheaded. Thus the Mortimers, In whom the title rested, were suppress’d.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.