AUMERLE      Princes and noble lords,

What answer shall I make to this base man?

Shall I so much dishonour my fair stars

On equal terms to give him chastisement?

Either I must, or have mine honour soiled

With the attainder of his sland’rous lips.

There is my gage, the manual seal of death

That marks thee out for hell. I say thou liest,

And will maintain what thou hast said is false

In thy heart-blood, though being all too base

To stain the temper of my knightly sword.             (4.1.20-30)

The thing to remember here is that Aumerle is royal, like his cousins Richard and Bolingbroke the grandson of a king, and himself a duke and the son of a duke. He’s pulling rank, magnificently, and he’s got a heck of a lot of rank to pull. Princes and noble lords (his peers, the only people whose opinion or advice might, possibly matter to him) what answer shall I make to this base man? this commoner, this lowly villain? (Base is the word that King Richard has played with so bitterly at Flint Castle.) Can I even bring myself to speak to him, chastise him as I would an equal? Even that would be to dishonour my fair stars, my noble birth. But either I must stoop to his level in doing so, in answering him, or else have mine honour soiled with the attainder of his sland’rous lips. On balance, it would be worse to let this attainder, this accusation and this insult left unanswered than to respond—as Aumerle is about to do—by challenging Bagot.

So—gloves ahoy! There is my gage (and not for the last time). In Holinshed, the gages, pledges are hoods, but they’re almost always gloves in performance, and there are moments later in the scene (there are going to be many, many more gages) which seem to confirm that. Gloves would make sense in the context of 1590s chivalry; hoods wouldn’t, and they wouldn’t be an option available in elite 1590s dress, which is what the characters would be wearing. (One recent editor suggests that they would be chain mail hoods, which is theatrically impractical—ripping them off safely and at speed?—and historically dubious, given that the scene is in the Parliament in Westminster Hall.) So, gloves it is. Aumerle will remove his glove from his hand—there is my gage, the pledge of my honour, in effect my hand, my honour, my oath—and it is the manual seal of death, a seal and a sign fixed and attested by my hand (punning on the glove) that marks thee out for hell. This is a challenge to the death: I’m going to kill you and you’re going to hell. I say thou liest: he’s accusing Bagot of telling a falsehood in that moment, and in so doing of giving him, Aumerle, the lie, impugning his honour as a noble and a gentleman, terms that would be instantly intelligible in the early modern context. I’ll prove that you’re a liar, maintain what thou hast said is false in thy heart-blood. I’ll prove my integrity and your villainy in thy heart-blood even though your blood is far too base to stain the temper of my knightly sword. I’ll kill you, even though it’ll besmirch the lovely shiny high-quality steel of my super-elite sword, even though it’s below my honour to lower myself in such a way.

At some point in this speech, Aumerle will fling his glove at Bagot’s feet, perhaps as he says There is my gage, perhaps after he throws it down.