SOURCE: “John of Gaunt and the Rhetoric of Frustration,” in ELH 43, No. 3, Fall, 1976, pp. 279-99.

In the following essay, Friedman studies the form and content of Gaunt's dying speech and argues that the speech reveals Gaunt to be deeply frustrated with his inability to insure the existence and stability of his particular view of “England's essence.” Friedman emphasizes that Gaunt's speech is more than the national panegyric it is often taken to be and that Gaunt does not simply serve as an objective commentator on England's glories.

This teeming womb of privilege, this feudal state, Whose shores beat back the turbulent sea of foreign anarchy. This ancient fortress, still commanded by the noblest Of our royal blood; this ancient land of ritual. This precious stone set in a silver sea.(1) 

John of Gaunt's deathbed speech on the glories of England, in the first scene of Act Two of...