Traitor! Choke on that! (but icily polite) (1.1.35-46) #KingedUnkinged

BOLINGBROKE          Now, Thomas Mowbray, do I turn to thee,

And mark my greeting well; for what I speak,

My body shall make good upon this earth

Or my divine soul answer it in heaven.

Thou art a traitor and a miscreant!

Too good to be so and too bad to live—

Since the more fair and crystal is the sky,

The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.

Once more, the more to aggravate the note,

With a foul traitor’s name stuff I thy throat,

And wish, so please my sovereign, ere I move,

What my tongue speaks, my right drawn sword may prove. (1.1.35-46)

This isn’t merely the courtly preliminaries to armed combat—it’s already a war of words, and Bolingbroke goes first, with armour-piercing eloquence and deadly accuracy. The formal accusation is in the middle: Thou art a traitor and a miscreant, a villain, dishonourable, common. Like Richard, Bolingbroke thinks in terms of the relationship between words, bodies, and actions, between heaven and earth. He is not simply making an accusation, he is swearing an oath: he will prove that Mowbray is a traitor or die in the attempt. It’s much more than simple name-calling, however: part of his accusation is that Mowbray is noble, in birth and, perhaps, in his character; he has betrayed himself (and his class) as much as his king. The clearer and more beautiful the sky, the more the clouds seem to disfigure it (and implicit here is the figure of Richard as the sun, a motif that will come back again and again in the play). But Bolingbroke’s not going to end with that heavenly invocation, but with words as weapons: I repeat my accusation, he says, to give even more weight to that I charge you with; I’m not merely calling you a traitor, I’m making that your name, cramming it into your mouth, stuffing it down your throat, so that you in effect name and accuse yourself, and choke on it. And I’ll prove it: these aren’t just words, empty threats: my sword, right drawn, drawn in a just cause, will prove the truth of what I say. (This play is very, very interested in speech-acts, in what words can—or can’t—do, especially when they’re spoken by a king… but let’s not look too far ahead…)

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  1. This speech also emphasizes a consistent theme in Shakespeare: the importance of maintaining agreement between internal and external good, or “truth.” To be noble of birth and ignoble in character, or fair (beautiful) in feature but foul in deed was unnatural and harmful. “Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds” (S. 94).

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