Act I scene 2 - The Duke of Lancaster's palace
Enter JOHN OF GAUNT with DUCHESS
JOHN OF GAUNT
Alas, the part I had in Gloucester’s blood
Doth more solicit me than your exclaims,
To stir against the Butchers of his life.
But since correction lieth in those hands
Which made the fault that we cannot correct, 5
Put we our quarrel to the will of heaven.
DUCHESS
Finds brotherhood in thee no sharper spur?
Hath love in thy old blood no living fire?
Edward's seven sons, whereof thyself art one,
Were as seven vials of his Sacred blood, 10
Some of those seven are dried by nature's course,
But Thomas, my dear Lord, my life, my Gloucester,
One Vial full of Edward's Sacred blood,
Is crack'd, and all the precious liquor spilt
By Envy's hand, and Murder's bloody Axe. 15
Ah Gaunt! His blood was thine, that bed, that womb,
That mettle, that self-mold that fashion'd thee
Made him a man: and though thou liv’st, and breath’st,
Yet art thou slain in him: thou dost consent
In some large measure to thy Father's death, 20
In that thou seest thy wretched brother die,
Who was the model of thy Father's life.
Call it not patience, Gaunt; it is despair:
In suffering thus thy brother to be slaughter'd,
Thou showest the naked pathway to thy life, 25
Teaching stern murder how to butcher thee:
What shall I say? to safeguard thine own life,
The best way is to venge my Gloucester's death.
JOHN OF GAUNT
God's is the quarrel: for God's substitute,
His Deputy anointed in his sight, 30
Hath caused his death, the which if wrongfully
Let heaven revenge: for I may never lift
An angry arm against his Minister.
DUCHESS
Where then, alas, may I complain myself?
JOHN OF GAUNT
To God, the widow's Champion to defence. 35
DUCHESS
Why then I will: farewell old Gaunt.
Thou goest to Coventry, there to behold
Our Cousin Hereford and fell Mowbray fight:
Oh sit my husband's wrongs on Hereford's spear,
That it may enter butcher Mowbray's breast: 40
Farewell old Gaunt, thy sometimes brother's wife
With her companion Grief must end her life.
JOHN OF GAUNT
Sister farewell: I must to Coventry,
As much good stay with thee, as go with me.
DUCHESS
Yet one word more: Grief boundeth where it falls, 45
Not with the empty hollowness, but weight:
Commend me to my brother Edmund York.
Lo, this is all:--nay, yet depart not so,
Though this be all, do not so quickly go.
Desolate, desolate will I hence, and die: 50
The last leave of thee takes my weeping eye.
Exeunt
The Duchess watched the previous scene from the low SL platform, where she stopped Gaunt before he could go up the stairs. They played the scene on the platform and main deck, allowing the playing space to shrink to just the two of them. She dominates the space and conversation.
This scene is always such an odd little one. The Duchess shows up and gets a couple of great monologues, rife with backstory and peppered with shots at Gaunt's backbone. Gaunt has no satisfying answers. And then she's gone forever.
The history of Edward III and his sons is crucial; already Shakespeare is setting us up, reminding us that Gaunt is descended from the previous king. And therein lies the argument Bolingbroke will later use to justify his rule.
At the end of line 36, the Duchess turned to leave. Her brother-in-law reaches out a hand to stop her, prompting her next lines. He feels he cannot give her what she asks, and though she is in the depths of grief and despair, they seem to arrive at something of a familial farewell.
Gaunt exits SL to go to Coventry. The Duchess pulls her veil over her face, then slowly ascends the center platform up to the top platform as the transition to 1.3 begins...