Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/211

Rh How very beautiful is all this, and at the same time how very English too!

may be considered as the first of that series of English historical plays, in which "is hung armour of the invincible knights of old," in which their hearts seem to strike against their coats of mail, where their blood tingles for the fight, and words are but the harbingers of blows. Of this state of accomplished barbarism the appeal of Bolingbroke and Mowbray is an admirable specimen. Another of these "keen encounters of their wits," which serve to whet the talkers' swords, is where Aumerle answers in the presence of Bolingbroke to the charge which Bagot brings against him of being an accessory in Gloster's death.

"Fitzwater. If that thy valour stand on sympathies, There is my gage, Aumerle, in gage to thine; By that fair sun that shows me where thou stand'st I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak'st it, That thou wert cause of noble Gloster's death. If thou deny'st it twenty times thou liest, And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart Where it was forged, with my rapier's point. Aumerle. Thou dar'st not, coward, live to see the day. Fitzwater. Now, by my soul, I would it were this hour. Aumerle. Fitzwater, thou art damn'd to hell for this. Percy. Aumerle, thou liest; his honour is as true, In this appeal, as thou art all unjust; And that thou art so, there I throw my gage To prove it on thee, to th' extremest point Of mortal breathing. Seize it, if thou dar'st.