BOLINGBROKE          As I was banished, I was banished Hereford,

But as I come, I come for Lancaster.

And, noble uncle, I beseech your grace,

Look on my wrongs with an indifferent eye.

You are my father, for methinks in you

I see old Gaunt alive. O then, my father,

Will you permit that I shall stand condemned

A wandering vagabond, my rights and royalties

Plucked from my arms perforce and given away

To upstart unthrifts? Wherefore was I born?

If that my cousin King be king in England,

It must be granted I am Duke of Lancaster.            (2.3.112-123)

This is one of Bolingbroke’s big numbers: he has to hit all the right notes, above all dignity, eloquence, and reasonableness. He begins with a point which could seem sophistry: when I was banished, I was the Duke of Hereford, but I’ve come back as the Duke of Lancaster; that new title means that the previous order does not apply to me. The syntax gives this argument more weight than it might deserve, with its repetitions, its balance, its parallel structure, and the way in which the first, slightly hypermetric line gives way to the perfect iambic pentameter of But as I come, I come for Lancaster; for Lancaster even has, perhaps, the cadence of a battle-cry: for Lancaster!(For England?) The tight expression acts to close down objection or argument. He then changes approach: rather than continuing to make a legal argument, he appeals to York as family. Immaculately polite—noble uncle, I beseech your grace—he asks York to set aside his feelings (look on my wrongs with an indifferent eye; he’s also saying, calm down) but then, in the same breath, tells him that you are my father. Bit of emotional blackmail, ramped up when he continues, for methinks in you I see old Gaunt alive. (York has just been lamenting his lost strength, invoking the glory days when he and his brother Gaunt were young. Gaunt’s absence, and perhaps York’s unlikeness to his brother, must be palpable here.) And also a reminder that Bolingbroke’s father has died while he has been absent, the thing he most feared and lamented when his banishment was proclaimed.

But then Bolingbroke really comes to the point. Are you going to stand by and let this happen? To see me condemned as a wandering vagabond, a beggar, almost a non-person? (The context here is partly the Elizabethan fear and distrust of such masterless men, controlled and punished through harsh and punitive laws: a vagabond was technically subject to the death penalty; beggars were to be whipped and sent back to their home parish. The death penalty for vagrancy was abolished in 1598, and there was wholesale reform of the ‘poor laws’ in 1601.) To see me deprived of my rights and royalties, everything (powers, privileges—and income) to which I am entitled as the rightful Duke of Lancaster taken from me, plucked from my arms (as in his coat of arms) and given away to upstart unthrifts, wastrels and jumped-up chancers. (Bushy, Bagot, and Green, in other words, but also leaving open the possibility that Bolingbroke is actually referring to the King, who is, after all, the one who has seized Gaunt’s estates.) Wherefore was I born, why was I born, is not a petulant adolescent snarl, but rather introduces the crux of the argument. If that my cousin King be king in England, it must be granted I am Duke of Lancaster. Richard is king because he lawfully inherited that title and office by descent from his father and grandfather (and that descent has been spelled out and reinforced on a number of occasions, not least by York himself). If that’s the principle, then there’s no possibility of disputing the fact that, following the same rule of primogeniture, on the death of my father John of Gaunt I became the Duke of Lancaster. I’m here by right, come to claim what is lawfully mine.