MOW.  How to my lord the king?

BLUNT.  O my Lord God! 
I never knew a subject love king more. 
She never would blin[371] telling, how his grace
Sav’d her young son from soldiers and from fire;
How fair he spake, gave her her son to keep: 
And then, poor lady, she would kiss her boy,
Pray for the king so hearty earnestly,
That in pure zeal she wept most bitterly.

KING.  I weep for her, and do by heaven protest,
I honour’d Bruce’s wife, howe’er that slave
Rudely effected what I rashly will’d. 
Yet when he came again, and I bethought
What bitter penance I had put them to
For my conceiv’d displeasure ’gainst old Bruce,
I bad the villain post and bear them meat: 
Which he excus’d, protesting pity mov’d him
To leave wine, bread, and other powder’d meat,[372]
More than they twain could in a fortnight eat.

BLUNT.  Indeed, this can I witness with the king,
Which argues in that point his innocence: 
Brand did bear in a month’s provision,
But lock’d it, like a villain, far from them;
And lock’d them in a place, where no man’s ear
Might hear their lamentable woful moans;
For all the issue, both of vent and light,
Came from a loover[373] at the tower’s top,
Till now Lord Bruce made open this wide gap.

BRUCE.  Had I not reason, think you, to make wide
The window, that should let so much woe forth? 
Where sits my mother, martyr’d by herself,
Hoping to save her child from martyrdom? 
Where stands my brother, martyr’d by himself,
Because he would not taste his mother’s blood? 
For thus I gather this:—­my mother’s teeth and chin
Are bloody with the savage cookery
Which her soft heart, through pity of her son,
Respectless made her practise on herself;
And her right hand, with offering it the child,
Is with her own pure blood stain’d and defil’d. 
My little brother’s lips and chin alone
Are tainted with the blood; but his even teeth,
Like orient pearl or snow-white ivory,
Have not one touch of blood, one little spot: 
Which is an argument the boy would not
Once stir his lips to taste that bloody food
Our cruel-gentle mother minister’d: 
But as it seem’d (for see his pretty palm
Is bloody too) he cast it on the ground,
For on this side the blessed relics lie,
By famine’s rage divided from this shrine. 
Sad woful mother in Jerusalem! 
Who, when thy son and thou didst faint for food,
Buried his sweet flesh in thy hungry womb,
How merciless wert thou, if we compare
Thy fact and this!  For my poor lady mother
Did kill herself to save my dying brother;
And thou, ungentle son of Miriam,
Why didst thou beg life when thy mother lack’d? 
My little brother George did nobly act
A more courageous part:  he would not eat,
Nor beg to live.  It seem’d he did not cry: 
Few tears stand on his cheek, smooth is each eye;
But when he saw my mother bent to die,
He died with her.  O childish valiancy—­