Today’s Totally Random Lines
Pale
trembling coward, there I throw my gage,
Disclaiming
here the kindred of the king;
And
lay aside my high blood's royalty,
Which
fear, not reverence, makes thee to except.
Henry Bolingbroke
King Richard the Second
Act
I, Scene i, Line 12
Okay - first scene of the play: The speaker is Henry Bolingbroke (later to become Henry IV - he’s first cousin to Richard II). The guy he’s talking to is Thomas Mowbray, the Duke of Norfolk (I think he’s got some royal blood too, but nothing nearly as close to the king as Henry). They’ve come before King Richard so that he can settle a dispute between themselves, and they end up challenging each other to a duel. A gage is an old-fashioned word for glove, and throwing down your glove was a way of challenging and/or accepting a duel.
So Henry, here, has some words
for Thomas as he challenges him to a duel, in the process telling Mowbray not
to let Henry’s royal blood stand in the way of accepting.
And there’s your context. Was it worth reading
that paragraph to know what’s happening in Today's Line?
I know what this guy's answer to that question would be.
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