Now mark me! how I will undo myself.
[199] "Hath Bolingbroke deposed thine intellect?" the Queen asks him, on his way to the Tower:—
Hath Bolingbroke
Deposed thine intellect? hath he been in thy heart?
And in truth, but for that adventitious poetic gold, it would be only "plume-plucked Richard."—
I find myself a traitor with the rest,
For I have given here my soul's consent
To undeck the pompous body of a king.
He is duly reminded, indeed, how
That which in mean men we entitle patience
Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.
Yet at least within the poetic bounds of Shakespeare's play, through Shakespeare's bountiful gifts, his desire seems fulfilled.—
O! that I were as great
As is my grief.
And his grief becomes nothing less than a central expression of all that in the revolutions of Fortune's wheel goes down in the world.