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And pardon us the interruption
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Of thy devotion and right Christian zeal.
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GLOUCESTER:
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My lord, there needs no such apology:
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I rather do beseech you pardon me,
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Who, earnest in the service of my God,
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Neglect the visitation of my friends.
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But, leaving this, what is your grace's pleasure?
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BUCKINGHAM:
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Even that, I hope, which pleaseth God above,
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And all good men of this ungovern'd isle.
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GLOUCESTER:
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I do suspect I have done some offence
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That seems disgracious in the city's eyes,
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And that you come to reprehend my ignorance.
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BUCKINGHAM:
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You have, my lord: would it might please your grace,
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At our entreaties, to amend that fault!
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GLOUCESTER:
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Else wherefore breathe I in a Christian land?
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BUCKINGHAM:
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Then know, it is your fault that you resign
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The supreme seat, the throne majestical,
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The scepter'd office of your ancestors,
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Your state of fortune and your due of birth,
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The lineal glory of your royal house,
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To the corruption of a blemished stock:
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Whilst, in the mildness of your sleepy thoughts,
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Which here we waken to our country's good,
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This noble isle doth want her proper limbs;
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Her face defaced with scars of infamy,
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Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants,
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And almost shoulder'd in the swallowing gulf
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Of blind forgetfulness and dark oblivion.
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Which to recure, we heartily solicit
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Your gracious self to take on you the charge
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And kingly government of this your land,
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Not as protector, steward, substitute,
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Or lowly factor for another's gain;
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But as successively from blood to blood,
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Your right of birth, your empery, your own.
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For this, consorted with the citizens,
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Your very worshipful and loving friends,
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And by their vehement instigation,
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In this just suit come I to move your grace.
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GLOUCESTER:
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I know not whether to depart in silence,
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Or bitterly to speak in your reproof.
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Best fitteth my degree or your condition
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If not to answer, you might haply think
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Tongue-tied ambition, not replying, yielded
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To bear the golden yoke of sovereignty,
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Which fondly you would here impose on me;
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If to reprove you for this suit of yours,
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So season'd with your faithful love to me.
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Then, on the other side, I cheque'd my friends.
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Therefore, to speak, and to avoid the first,
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And then, in speaking, not to incur the last,
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Definitively thus I answer you.
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Your love deserves my thanks; but my desert
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Unmeritable shuns your high request.
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First if all obstacles were cut away,
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And that my path were even to the crown,
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As my ripe revenue and due by birth
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Yet so much is my poverty of spirit,
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So mighty and so many my defects,
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As I had rather hide me from my greatness,
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Being a bark to brook no mighty sea,
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Than in my greatness covet to be hid,
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And in the vapour of my glory smother'd.
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But, God be thank'd, there's no need of me,
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And much I need to help you, if need were;
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The royal tree hath left us royal fruit,
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Which, mellow'd by the stealing hours of time,
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Will well become the seat of majesty,
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And make, no doubt, us happy by his reign.
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On him I lay what you would lay on me,
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The right and fortune of his happy stars;
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Which God defend that I should wring from him!
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BUCKINGHAM:
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My lord, this argues conscience in your grace;
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But the respects thereof are nice and trivial,
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All circumstances well considered.
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You say that Edward is your brother's son:
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So say we too, but not by Edward's wife;
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For first he was contract to Lady Lucy--
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Your mother lives a witness to that vow--
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And afterward by substitute betroth'd
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To Bona, sister to the King of France.
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These both put by a poor petitioner,
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A care-crazed mother of a many children,
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A beauty-waning and distressed widow,
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