MOWBRAY                             Take but my shame

And I resign my gage. My dear dear lord,

The purest treasure mortal times afford

Is spotless reputation; that away,

Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.

A jewel in a ten-times-barred-up chest

Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.

Mine honour is my life, both grow in one—

Take honour from me and my life is done.

Then, dear my liege, mine honour let me try;

In that I live and for that will I die. (1.1.175-185)

Mowbray is stubborn, adamant, and somewhat repetitive, reinforced by the rhymes and the aphoristic, commonplace conceits he employs to make his argument. If you can take away my shame at this dishonour, not being able to fight to clear my name, then I’ll give you this gage. That’s the only exchange I’m prepared to countenance. His comparisons are neat commonplaces: a spotless reputation is life’s purest treasure, without which men are gilded loam, gold-painted earth, or painted clay. (Earth being the substance from which God makes Adam, there is the suggestion here that reputation, honour is God-given, part of what makes humans more than beasts, marked with the divine.) A bold spirit in a loyal breast, honour, courage, is every bit as valuable as the sort of jewel which is so precious that it has to be stowed away in a chest bound around with many iron bars. You can’t separate my honour from my life: without my honour, my name, my reputation, I will die. So let me fight to prove myself honourable and no traitor: I’m willing to die in the attempt.

Nearly at the end of this fraught, yet oddly static opening scene…