Snow in the Caucasus mountains near Krasnaya Polyana, Sochi, Russia.
Part 1 of 2
John of Gaunt:
ALL places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.*
Teach thy necessity to reason thus —
There is no virtue like necessity.*
Think not the king did banish thee,*
But thou the king. Woe doth the heavier sit
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.*
Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honour,
And not the king exil’d thee; or suppose
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air,
And thou art flying to a fresher clime.
Look what thy soul holds dear, imagine it
To lie that way thou goest, not whence thou com’st.
Suppose the singing birds musicians,
The grass whereon thou tread’st the presence strew’d,*
The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more
Than a delightful measure or a dance;
For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite
The man that mocks at it and sets it light.
* John of Gaunt was born in Ghent (hence his surname ‘of Gaunt’) in Belgium, and had spent much of his life abroad, winning for himself the titles of King of Castile and Léon, and of Duke of Aquitaine. His son knew only England.
* Already a common proverb. Necessity is of course not a virtue: a virtue is by definition a power that one chooses whether to exercise or not. John of Gaunt is in danger of uttering as many platitudes as Polonius in Hamlet, when he helped Laertes (also boarding a ship for France) to a generous helping of fatherly advice: see ‘To Thine Own Self Be True’.
* The line is short, resulting is a pregnant little pause at the end.
* That is, borne in a faint-hearted manner.
* The royal presence-chamber, which was typically strewn (scattered over) with rushes. John wants Henry to imagine himself back at court.
Précis
In William Shakespeare’s Richard II, John of Gaunt and his son Henry Bolingbroke have been banished from England by the King. Henry is fretful, so John recommends Henry take refuge in mind-games, pretending that he has banished Richard, or that he is going abroad for his health, or even that he is dancing at court rather than walking into exile. (60 / 60 words)
Part Two
‘Suppose the flowers fair ladies’... Rhododendron caucasicum on a hillside in the Caucasus mountains near Sochi, Russia.
Bolingbroke. O, who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?*
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow
By thinking on fantastic* summer’s heat?
O no, the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.
Fell sorrow’s tooth doth never rankle more
Than when he bites, but lanceth not the sore.*
Gaunt. Come, come, my son, I’ll bring thee on thy way,
Had I thy youth and cause, I would not stay.*
My mother and my nurse that bears me yet.
Where’er I wander boast of this I can,
Though banish’d, yet a true-born Englishman.
* A mountain range stretching across from the Black Sea in Russia and Georgia to Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea. The regional climate is actually comparatively warm, but there is abundant snow in winter.
* The word ‘fantastic’ today generally has extravagant overtones, implying something stunning or wildly extreme, but here it just means imaginary, fancied.
* That is, that sorrow can be healing if its ‘bite’ also lances (surgically opens and drains) whatever it is that the patient is sorrowing over. By trying to soften sorrow’s bite, John of Gaunt may even be preventing sorrow from effecting Henry’s cure.
* Henry Bolingbroke (1366-1413) was, like Richard, a grandson of Edward III, and his ‘cause’ was to take the crown from his cousin. Henry’s hereditary right was much less: he was the son of Edward’s third son, John of Gaunt, whereas Richard was the son of Edward’s eldest, Edward the Black Prince, and was the late King’s own choice. But Richard had antagonised the Commons and many of his nobility, especially the powerful Percy family of Northumberland, and Henry promised to be less extravagant and more even-handed. In 1399, the year after he was banished, he returned and seized the throne with an army of no more than a few hundred men.
Précis
John of Gaunt’s well-meant advice does not please his son. Such mind-games, Henry says, do not work, any more than memories of a warm summer allow a man to lie naked in the snow. John does not deny the justice of this, and the two set out for exile with Henry vowing never to forget his mother-country. (57 / 60 words)
