BOLINGBROKE          Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy:

By this time, had the King permitted us,

One of our souls had wandered in the air,

Banished this frail sepulchre of our flesh,

As now our flesh is banished from this land.

Confess thy treasons ere thou fly the realm—

Since thou hast far to go, bear not along

The clogging burden of a guilty soul.

MOWBRAY                 No, Bolingbroke, if ever I were traitor,

My name be blotted from the book of life

And I from heaven banished as from hence.

But what thou art, God, thou and I do know,

And all to soon, I fear, the King shall rue.

Farewell, my liege. Now no way can I stray;

Save back to England, all the world’s my way.      Exit.     (1.3.193-207)

 

This is the would-be combatants’ final exchange, and Bolingbroke is asserting his moral authority with a speech of moralizing and spiritual magnanimity: I’m going to say this, so far as to mine enemy, even though you’re still my enemy. If the King had permitted us to fight, one of us would have been dead by now, his soul wandering in the air, banished not simply from England but from this frail sepulchre of our flesh. (The soul as a prisoner of the body, the body as the soul’s tomb is a familiar Christian trope; it’ll come back again at the end of the play. Also underlying this exchange, and the presentation of banishment more generally, is the motif of life as a pilgrimage and the only true home as being in heaven. Psalm 39, for instance: ‘I am a stranger with thee: and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength: before I go hence, and be no more seen’.) Be conscious of your mortality and so the state of your soul, Bolingbroke advises Mowbray: confess thy treasons ere thou fly the realm. (Fly is a bit of a dig; Mowbray isn’t fleeing of his own volition, he’s been sent into exile very much against his will.) You’ve got a long way to go; don’t weigh yourself down with the clogging burden of a guilty soul. Clogging here isn’t in the sense of a blocked drain, although that might speak more vividly to a modern audience; rather a clog is a weight, usually a heavy block of wood, tied to the leg of a prisoner or an animal (such as a pet monkey) to prevent it escaping. Bolingbroke imagines Mowbray dragging such a weight behind him, ungainly and slow, if he doesn’t unburden himself of his sins and confess his treason.

 

But Mowbray is having none of it, and he joins Bolingbroke in the use of familiar, striking Christian tropes: if I am a traitor, then I deserve to have my name blotted from the book of life, and to be banished from heaven too—to be damned for all time, that is. But I know all about you, Bolingbroke, he says, and you know the truth, and God knows the truth. And the King will be sorry, all too soon, I fear, for what he’s done today, and in particular that he’s shown more lenience to you than to me.

 

And finally he gets to exit, with a resounding couplet, if not quite on his own terms. I cannot stray (from the path of righteousness, implicitly; to stray or wander is to err, errare) except by returning back to England; that’s the only place and route that’s barred to me. All the world’s my way. (And some later ears might supply the end of Paradise Lost: ‘The world was all before them, where to choose | Their place of rest, and Providence their guide: | They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow | Through Eden took their solitary way’. Milton knew his Shakespeare…)