DUCHESS.
Where then, alas! may I complain myself?
GAUNT.
To God, the widow’s champion and defence.
DUCHESS.
Why then, I will. Farewell, old Gaunt.
Thou goest to Coventry, there to behold
Our cousin Hereford and fell Mowbray fight.
O, sit my husband’s wrongs on Hereford’s spear,
That it may enter butcher Mowbray’s breast!
Or if misfortune miss the first career,
Be Mowbray’s sins so heavy in his bosom
That they may break his foaming courser’s back
And throw the rider headlong in the lists,
A caitiff recreant to my cousin Hereford!
Farewell, old Gaunt. Thy sometimes brother’s wife
With her companion, Grief, must end her life.
GAUNT.
Sister, farewell; I must to Coventry.
As much good stay with thee as go with me!
DUCHESS.
Yet one word more. Grief boundeth where it falls,
Not with the empty hollowness, but weight.
I take my leave before I have begun,
For sorrow ends not when it seemeth done.
Commend me to thy brother, Edmund York.
Lo, this is all. Nay, yet depart not so!
Though this be all, do not so quickly go;
I shall remember more. Bid him—ah, what?—
With all good speed at Plashy visit me.
Alack, and what shall good old York there see
But empty lodgings and unfurnished walls,
Unpeopled offices, untrodden stones?
And what hear there for welcome but my groans?
Therefore commend me; let him not come there
To seek out sorrow that dwells everywhere.
Desolate, desolate, will I hence and die!
The last leave of thee takes my weeping eye.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE III. Open Space, near Coventry. Lists set out, and a Throne. Heralds, &c., attending.
Enter the Lord Marshal and the Duke of Aumerle.
MARSHAL.
My Lord Aumerle, is Harry Hereford armed?
AUMERLE.
Yea, at all points, and longs to enter in.