My native English, now I must forgo

Mowbray’s reaction to being banished. Instead of talking about how he’ll miss the family, his friends or his country, he makes a beautiful speech lamenting the loss of his language:

The language I have learn’d these forty years,

My native English, now I must forgo;

And now my tongue’s use is to me no more

Than an unstringed viol or a harp,

Or like a cunning instrument cas’d up

Or, being open, put into his hands

That knows no touch to tune the harmony:

Within my mouth you have engaol’d my tongue,

Doubly portcullis’d with my teeth and lips;

And dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance

Is made my gaoler to attend on me.

I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,

Too far in years to be a pupil now:

What is thy sentence, then, but speechless death,

Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?