Engage
it to the trial, if thou darest.
-Duke of Surrey
King Richard the Second Act
IV, scene i Line 71
Out of the Henry’s! Oh my goodness! Those Henrys, mostly the
sixth, really had us monopolized there, didn’t they! And now we’re on to
Richard the Second, which by the end of this play will get us into Henry IV.
But we’re not there yet. Henry is actually in this scene, but he’s still Henry
Bolingbroke, not King Henry. I’m not sure where he gets the Bolingbroke from.
His dad is John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. But, oh well.
Now I
have absolutely no idea what this line is about. And I don’t know who the Duke
of Surrey is. Okay, some quick research, listened to the Arkangel version,
some notes in my Penguin classics, Four Histories, and we're ready to go.
The Duke of Surrey just threw down his gage (glove),
challenging Fitzwater to battle, and he follows it up with this line which is
just daring him to accept his challenge. Long story short. ‘Pick up the glove
and accept my challenge, if you dare!’ That’s what he’s saying.
So they do this a lot in these history plays. The stage
direction says ‘he throws down his gage’. In fact, in this scene there’s a
gage-fest going on. I counted six ‘he throws down his gage’s’. Surrey’s is the
fifth. They throw down their glove to challenge to the other guy to fight. At one point in this scene one of the guys has to borrow a glove
because he’s all out of gloves and wants to challenge another guy. Lots of
gloves!
Here's my gage. I throw it down a lot. But it's not to challenge anyone. It's when I take off my gage to have a coffee break, or a lunch break. And half the time I don't remember where I threw my gage down, and then I spend a half hour looking for my gage. So I bought a second pair for those days when I throw down my gage and forget where I threw it.
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