RICHARD Cousin, throw up your gage. Do you begin.
BOLINGBROKE O, God defend my soul from such deep sin!
Shall I seem crestfallen in my father’s sight,
Or with pale beggar fear impeach my height
Before this out-dared dastard? Ere my tongue
Shall wound my honour with such feeble wrong,
Or sound so base a parley, my teeth shall tear
The slavish motive of recanting fear
And spit it bleeding in his high disgrace,
Where shame doth harbour, even in Mowbray’s face. (1.1.186-195)
If Mowbray won’t budge, maybe Bolingbroke will: cousin, do you begin, you go first, King Richard commands, incidentally reminding Bolingbroke and all the hearers of their close relationship (is he asking as kinsman or as sovereign, or both? The possibility is briefly left open that it’s primarily the first). Throw up your gage: it could suggest that Richard’s sitting on a dais, slightly raised above the stage, or simply mean give up by throwing down. But Bolingbroke is every bit as adamant as Mowbray, and considerably fiercer: he doesn’t reach for commonplaces but for vivid, personalized, increasingly violent conceits. O, God defend my soul from such deep sin! I can’t give up now! It wouldn’t just be a sin: I would be humiliated, crestfallen in my father’s sight; I would shame my family (the crest glancing at heraldry, the dishonouring of a family crest or coat of arms). I would impeach, disgrace my status as a gentleman, a knight, a noble, my height, my high birth, with pale beggar fear (glancing back at the humoral language of blood, choler, action as opposed to the sickly pallor of cowardice or inaction). I have out-dared this dastard, this over-weening coward, who’s got above himself: well, I’m above him in courage and valour. I will bite out my own tongue, the slavish motive, moving part, organ, of recanting fear, and spit it bleeding in Mowbray’s face, where all shame and dishonour sits, before I wound my honour with such a feeble, petty wrong, by making such a vile concession, calling a truce, sounding a dishonourable parley, a trumpet call. Bolingbroke’s defiant speech is a trumpet call itself, piercing and resolute, specific and vivid in its violence. (It also recalls one of the most notorious and extreme moments of early modern drama, the climax of The Spanish Tragedy, when Hieronimo bites out his own tongue.)
Bolingbroke’s preoccupation with his personal honour is exactly the same as Mowbray’s, but he expresses himself very differently. It’s not just that his language is more vital and intense, rather than tending to the tired and conventional, it’s that—although he too speaks in rhyming couplets—he handles the couplet with much more suppleness and momentum. Mowbray has a tendency (albeit not exclusive) to two-line units, strongly endstopped; Bolingbroke likes enjambment, and develops his tongue-spitting image over nearly six lines. And—this is going to be a pattern of abiding significance in the play—Bolingbroke says much less, but makes it count much more. The scene’s almost over and, of the 195 lines spoken so far, Bolingbroke has spoken 59 and Mowbray 81. But Bolingbroke has more or less had the last word.
