_Aumerle._ Where is the Duke my father with his power?

_K. Rich._ No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth, &c.

_Aumerle._ My father hath a power, enquire of him;
And learn to make a body of a limb.

_K. Rich._ Thou chid'st me well: proud Bolingbroke, I come
To change blows with thee for our day of doom.
This ague-fit of fear is over-blown;
An easy task it is to win our own.

_Scroop._ Your uncle York hath join'd with Bolingbroke.--

_K. Rich._ Thou hast said enough,
Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth
Of that sweet way I was in to despair!
What say you now? what comfort have we now?
By heaven, I'll hate him everlastingly,
That bids me be of comfort any more."

Act iii. sc. 3. Bolingbroke's speech:--

"Noble lord,
Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle," &c.

Observe the fine struggle of a haughty sense of power and ambition in
Bolingbroke with the necessity for dissimulation.

_Ib._ sc. 4. See here the skill and judgment of our poet in giving reality
and individual life, by the introduction of accidents in his historic
plays, and thereby making them dramas, and not histories. How beautiful an
islet of repose--a melancholy repose, indeed--is this scene with the
Gardener and his Servant. And how truly affecting and realising is the
incident of the very horse Barbary, in the scene with the Groom in the
last act!--

"_Groom._ I was a poor groom of thy stable, King,
When thou wert King; who, travelling towards York,
With much ado, at length have gotten leave
To look upon my sometimes master's face.
O, how it yearn'd my heart, when I beheld,
In London streets, that coronation day,
When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary!
That horse, that thou so often hast bestrid;
That horse, that I so carefully have dress'd!

_K. Rich._ Rode he on Barbary?"

Bolingbroke's character, in general, is an instance how Shakespeare makes
one play introductory to another; for it is evidently a preparation for
Henry IV., as Gloster in the third part of _Henry VI._ is for Richard III.

I would once more remark upon the exalted idea of the only true loyalty
developed in this noble and impressive play. We have neither the rants of
Beaumont and Fletcher, nor the sneers of Massinger;--the vast importance of
the personal character of the sovereign is distinctly enounced, whilst, at
the s