_Mor._ Kind keepers of my weak decaying age,   [abe001] Let dying Mortimer here rest himself. Even like a man new haled from the rack,   [abe003] So fare my limbs with long imprisonment; And these grey locks, the pursuivants of death,   ·abe005· Nestor-like aged in an age of care,   [abe006] Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer. These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent, Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent; Weak shoulders, overborne with burthening grief,   ·abe010· And pithless arms, like to a wither’d vine   [abe011] That droops his sapless branches to the ground: Yet are these feet, whose strengthless stay is numb, Unable to support this lump of clay, Swift-winged with desire to get a grave,   ·abe015· As witting I no other comfort have.   [abe016] But tell me, keeper, will my nephew come? _First Gaol._ Richard Plantagenet, my lord, will come:   [abe018] We sent unto the Temple, unto his chamber;   [abe019] And answer was return’d that he will come.   ·abe020· _Mor._ Enough: my soul shall then be satisfied.   [abe021] Poor gentleman! his wrong doth equal mine. Since Henry Monmouth first began to reign, Before whose glory I was great in arms, This loathsome sequestration have I had;   ·abe025· And even since then hath Richard been obscured, Deprived of honour and inheritance. But now the arbitrator of despairs, Just death, kind umpire of men’s miseries, With sweet enlargement doth dismiss me hence:   ·abe030· I would his troubles likewise were expired, That so he might recover what was lost.   [abe032] _Enter_ RICHARD PLANTAGENET. _First Gaol._ My lord, your loving nephew now is come. _Mor._ Richard Plantagenet, my friend, is he come?   [abe034] _Plan._ Ay, noble uncle, thus ignobly used,   [abe035] Your nephew, late despised Richard, comes. _Mor._ Direct mine arms I may embrace his neck, And in his bosom spend my latter gasp:   [abe038] O, tell me when my lips do touch his cheeks, That I may kindly give one fainting kiss.   ·abe040· And now declare, sweet stem from York’s great stock, Why didst thou say, of late thou wert despised? _Plan._ First, lean thine aged back against mine arm; And, in that ease, I’ll tell thee my disease.   [abe044] This day, in argument upon a case,   ·abe045· Some words there grew ’twixt Somerset and me; Among which terms he used his lavish tongue   [abe047] And did upbraid me with my father’s death: Which obloquy set bars before my tongue, Else with the like I had requited him.   ·abe050· Therefore, good uncle, for my father’s sake, In honour of a true Plantagenet And for alliance sake, declare the cause My father, Earl of Cambridge, lost his head. _Mor._ That cause, fair nephew, that imprison’d me   [abe055] And hath detain’d me all my flowering youth Within a loathsome dungeon, there to pine, Was cursed instrument of his decease. _Plan._ Discover more at large what cause that was, For I am ignorant and cannot guess.   ·abe060·