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.