MOWBRAY However God or Fortune cast my lot,
There lives or dies, true to King Richard’s throne,
A loyal, just and upright gentleman.
Never did captive with freer heart
Cast off his chains of bondage and embrace
His golden uncontrolled enfranchisement
More than my dancing soul doth celebrate
This feast of battle with mine adversary.
Most mighty liege, and my companion peers,
Take from my mouth the wish of happy years.
As gentle and as jocund as to jest
Go I to fight. Truth hath a quiet breast. (1.3.85-96)
Mowbray has had to stay silent for 60 lines after the initial formalities, while Bolingbroke has pretty much dominated the stage physically and rhetorically. So now he takes the initiative. This is an interesting speech, mobile and quite varied. He begins by once again asserting that he is no traitor; he is true to King Richard’s throne, a loyal, just and upright gentleman—and that will be the case whatever the outcome, whether he lives or dies. (He does start a little shakily, though, by suggesting that the combat could be decided either by God or by chance, Fortune, whereas Bolingbroke has been clear that everything is in God’s hands.) But then there’s a quite extraordinary (in the context) middle movement, where Mowbray compares his enthusiasm and readiness for the fight to a prisoner’s release, the captive who casts off his chains of bondage in order to embrace his golden uncontrolled enfranchisement. Golden is the surprise here, freedom as perfect, gilded, glowing—and Mowbray’s soul is dancing at the prospect of this feast of battle. This almost-sensual, lyrical revelry is unexpected, especially after his earlier appearance, when his rhetorical flights have tended to miss the mark a little. But Mowbray reins it in a little at the end, a neat swerve into rhyming couplets, wishing happy years (which does sound rather like birthday wishes to a modern ear) to his mighty liege and his companion peers. There’s perhaps a final note of rueful self-awareness: he maybe knows he’s gone a little over the top here, but he wants to emphasise that his enthusiasm for the fight is as gentle (mild, but also gentlemanly) and as jocund, cheerful as the witty conceit he’s just come up with. (A slight potential for glibness, or tongue-twist, on gentle/jocund/jest?) But then a final, emphatic, reigned-in seriousness on the concluding half-line: Truth hath a quiet breast. He still thinks that he is in the right; he is at peace with himself and his situation, even as he faces the possibility of death and disgrace.
