The sufferings of the man make us
forget that he ever was a king.
The right assumed by sovereign power to trifle at its will with the
happiness of others as a matter of course, or to remit its exercise
as a matter of favour, is strikingly shown in the sentence of
banishment so unjustly pronounced on Bolingbroke and Mowbray, and in
what Bolingbroke says when four years of his banishment are taken
off, with as little reason:
How long a time lies in one little word!
Four lagging winters and four wanton springs
End in a word: such is the breath of kings.
A more affecting image of the loneliness of a state of exile can
hardly be given than by what Bolingbroke afterwards observes of his
having 'sighed his English breath in foreign clouds'; or than that
conveyed in Mowbray's complaint at being banished for life.
The language I have learned these forty years,
My native English, now I must forego;
And now my tongue's use is to me no more
Than an unstringed viol or a harp,
Or like a cunning instrument cas'd up,
Or being open, put into his hands
That knows no touch to tune the harmony.
I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,
Too far in years to be a pupil now.--
How very beautiful is all this, and at the same time how very
ENGLISH too!
RICHARD II may be considered as the first of that series of English
historical plays, in which 'is hung armour of the invincible knights
of old', in which their hearts seem to strike against their coats of
mail, where their blood tingles for the fight, and words are but the
harbingers of blows.
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