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.
PLANTAGENET.
Of which, my lord, your honour is the last.
MORTIMER.
True; and thou seest that I no issue have,
And that my fainting words do warrant death.
Thou art my heir; the rest I wish thee gather.
But yet be wary in thy studious care.