SCENE I.-London. A Room in Ely House.
GAUNT on a couch; the DUKE OF YORK and others standing by him.
Gaunt. Will the King come, that I may breathe my last
In wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth? York. Vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath;
For all in vain comes counsel to his ear.
Gaunt. O, but they say the tongues of dying men Enforce attention like deep harmony: Where words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain ;
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
He that no more must say is listened more
Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose:
More are men's ends marked than their lives before:
The setting sun and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last;
Writ in remembrance more than things long past.
Though Richard my life's counsel would not hear,
My death's sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.
York. No; it is stopped with other flattering
As praises of his state. Then there are found
Lascivious metres, to whose venom sound
The open ear of youth doth always listen:
Report of fashions in proud Italy;
Whose manners still our tardy apish nation
Limps after, in base imitation.
Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity
(So it be new, there's no respect how vile)
That is not quickly buzzed into his ears?
Then all too late comes counsel to be heard,
Where will doth mutiny with wit's regard.
Direct not him whose way himself will choose:
'Tis breath thou lack'st, and that breath wilt
thou lose.
Gaunt. Methinks I am a prophet new inspired; And thus, expiring, do foretel of him :His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last; For violent fires soon burn out themselves: Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short: He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes: With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder: Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise;
This fortress, built by nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war ;
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious stone set in the silver sea
(Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands);
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this Eng
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Feared by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home
(For Christian service and true chivalry)
As is the sepulchre, in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world's ransom, blesséd Mary's son:
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out (I die pronouncing it)
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself:—
O, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!
Enter KING RICHARD and QUEEN; AUMERLE,
BUSHY, GREEN, BAGOT, Ross, and WIL-
York. The King is come: deal mildly with his youth;
For young hot colts, being raged, do rage the more. Queen. How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster? K. Rich. What comfort, man? How is 't with
Gaunt. O, how that name befits my composi-
tion!
Old Gaunt, indeed! and gaunt in being old.
Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast:
And who abstains from meat that is not gaunt?
For sleeping England long time have I watched:
Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt.
The pleasure that some fathers feed upon
Is my strict fast: I mean my children's looks:
And, therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt.
Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,
Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones.
K. Rich. Can sick men play so nicely with their
names?
Gaunt. No: misery makes sport to mock itself.
Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me,
I mock my name, great King, to flatter thee.
K. Rich. Should dying men flatter with those that live?
Gaunt. No, no: men living flatter those that die. K. Rich. Thou, now a dying, sayst thou flatter'st me.
Gaunt. Oh no: thou diest, though I the sicker be. K. Rich. I am in health; I breathe, and see
Gaunt. Now, He that made me knows I see
thee ill:
Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill.
Thy death-bed is no lesser than thy land,
Wherein thou liest in reputation sick:
And thou, too careless patient as thou art,
Committ'st thy anointed body to the cure
Of those physicians that first wounded thee.
A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,
Whose compass is no bigger than thy head:
And yet, incaged in so small a verge,
The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.
O had thy grandsire, with a prophet's eye,
Seen how his son's son should destroy his sons,
From forth thy reach he would have laid thy
shame;
Deposing thee before thou wert possessed,
Which art possessed now to depose thyself.
Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world,
It were a shame to let this land by lease:
But for thy world enjoying but this land,
Is it not more than shame to shame it so?
Landlord of England art thou now, not King:
Thy state of law is bondslave to the law;
And thou-
K. Rich. -A lunatic, lean-witted fool,
Presuming on an ague's privilege,
Dar'st with thy frozen admonition
Make pale our cheek; chasing the royal blood,
With fury, from his native residence.
Now by my seat's right royal majesty,
Wert thou not brother to great Edward's son,
This tongue that runs so roundly in thy head
Should run thy head from thy unreverend shoul-
ders.
Gaunt. O, spare me not, my brother Edward's
For that I was his father Edward's son:
That blood already, like the pelican,
Hast thou tapped out and drunkenly caroused.
My brother Gloster, plain well-meaning soul,
(Whom fair befal in heaven 'mongst happy souls!)
May be a precedent and witness good
That thou respect'st not spilling Edward's blood.
Join with the present sickness that I have:
And thy unkindness be like crooked age,
To crop at once a too-long-withered flower.
Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!
These words hereafter thy tormentors be.-
Convey me to my bed, then to my grave: Love they to live that love and honour have. [Exit, borne out by his Attendants.
K. Rich. And let them die that age and sullens have:
For both hast thou, and both become the grave. York. I do beseech your majesty, impute his words
To wayward sickliness and age in him:
He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear
As Harry Duke of Hereford, were he here.
K. Rich. Right; you say true:-as Hereford's
love, so his:
As theirs, so mine: and all be as it is.
His tongue is now a stringless instrument: Words, life, and all, old Lancaster hath spent. York. Be York the next that must be bank
Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.
K. Rich. The ripest fruit first falls, and so
doth he:
His time is spent; our pilgrimage must be.
So much for that.-Now for our Irish wars:
We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns,
Which live like venom where no venom else
But only they hath privilege to live.
And, for these great affairs do ask some charge,
Towards our assistance we do seize to us
The plate, coin, revenues and moveables
Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possessed.
York. How long shall I be patient? Ah, how
Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?
Not Gloster's death, nor Hereford's banishment,
Not Gaunt's rebukes, nor England's private
Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke
About his marriage, nor my own disgrace,
Have ever made me sour my patient cheek,
Or bend one wrinkle on my sovereign's face.-
I am the last of noble Edward's sons,
Of whom thy father, Prince of Wales, was first:
In war was never lion raged more fierce,
In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,
Than was that young and princely gentleman.
His face thou hast; for even so looked he
Accomplished with the number of thy hours:
But when he frowned, it was against the French,
And not against his friends: his noble hand
Did win what he did spend, and spent not that
Which his triumphant father's hand had won:
His hands were guilty of no kindred's blood,
But bloody with the enemies of his kin.
O Richard! York is too far gone with grief,
Or else he never would compare between.
K. Rich. Why, uncle, what's the matter?
York.
O my liege,
Pardon me, if you please: if not, I (pleased
Not to be pardoned) am content withal.
Seek you to seize and gripe into your hands
The royalties and rights of banished Hereford?
Is not Gaunt dead; and doth not Hereford live?
Was not Gaunt just; and is not Harry true?
Did not the one deserve to have an heir:
Is not his heir a well-deserving son?
Take Hereford's rights away, and take from time
His charters and his customary rights:
Let not to-morrow then ensue to-day :
Be not thyself; for how art thou a king
But by fair sequence and succession ?-
Now, afore God, (God forbid I say true!)
If you do wrongfully seize Hereford's rights,
Call in the letters-patent that he hath
By his attorneys-general to sue
His livery, and deny his offered homage,
You pluck a thousand dangers on your head;
You lose a thousand well-disposéd hearts,
And prick my tender patience to those thoughts
Which honour and allegiance cannot think.
K. Rich. Think what you will: we seize into
our hands
His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands. York. I'll not be by the while. My liege,
What will ensue hereof there 's none can tell:
But by bad courses may be understood
That their events can never fall out good. [Exit.
K. Rich. Go Bushy, to the Earl of Wiltshire
straight:
Bid him repair to us to Ely House,
To see this business. To-morrow next
We will for Ireland: and 't is time, I trow.
And we create, in absence of ourself,
Our uncle York lord governor of England;
For he is just, and always loved us well.—
Come on, our Queen: to-morrow must we part:
Be merry, for our time of stay is short. [Flourish.
[Exeunt KING, QUEEN, BUSHY, Aumerle,
GREEN, and BAGOT.
North. Well, lords, the Duke of Lancaster is dead.
Ross. And living too; for now his son is duke.
Willo. Barely in title, not in revenue.
North. Richly in both, if justice had her right.
Ross. My heart is great: but it must break
with silence,
Ere 't be disburdened with a liberal tongue.
North. Nay, speak thy mind: and let him
That speaks thy words again, to do thee harm! Willo. Tends that thou 'dst speak to the Duke of Hereford?
If it be so, out with it boldly, man:
Quick is mine ear to hear of good towards him.
Ross. No good at all that I can do for him:
Unless you call it good to pity him,
Bereft and gelded of his patrimony.
North. Now, afore heaven, 't is shame such wrongs are borne
In him (a royal prince) and many more
Of noble blood in this declining land.
The King is not himself, but basely led
By flatterers: and what they will inform,
Merely in hate, 'gainst any of us all,
That will the King severely prosecute
'Gainst us, our lives, our children, and our heirs.
Ross. The commons hath he pilled with grievous
North. His noble kinsman :—most degenerate
But, lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing,
Yet seek no shelter to avoid the storm:
We see the wind sit sore upon our sails,
And yet we strike not, but securely perish.
Ross. We see the very wreck that we must
And unavoided is the danger now,
For suffering so the causes of our wreck.
North. Not so: even through the hollow eyes of death
I spy life peering; but I dare not say
How near the tidings of our comfort is.
Willo. Nay, let us share thy thoughts, as thou dost ours.
Ross. Be confident to speak, Northumberland. We three are but thyself; and speaking so, Thy words are but as thoughts: therefore be bold. North. Then thus:-I have from Port le Blanc (a bay
In Britanny) received intelligence
That Harry Hereford, Reignold Lord Cobham
(The son of Richard Earl of Arundel),
That late broke from the Duke of Exeter,
His brother, Archbishop late of Canterbury,
Sir Thomas Erpingham, Sir John Ramston,
Sir John Norbery, Sir Robert Waterton, and
Francis Quoint,-
All these, well furnished by the Duke of Bretagne
With eight tall ships, three thousand men of war,
Are making hither with all due expedience,
And shortly mean to touch our northern shore :
Perhaps they had ere this, but that they stay
The first departure of the King for Ireland.
If, then, we shall shake off our slavish yoke,
Imp out our drooping country's broken wing,
Redeem from broking pawn the blemished crown,
Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre's gilt,
And make high majesty look like itself,
Away with me, in post to Ravenspurg:
But if you faint, as fearing to do so,
Stay and be secret, and myself will go.
Ross. To horse, to horse! urge doubts to them that fear.
Willo. Hold out my horse, and I will first be there.
SCENE II.-The same. A Room in the Palace.
Enter QUEEN, BUSHY, and BAGOT. Bushy. Madam, your majesty is too much sad: You promised, when you parted with the King, To lay aside life-harming heaviness, And entertain a cheerful disposition.
Queen. To please the King, I did: to please myself
I cannot do it: yet I know no cause
Why I should welcome such a guest as grief,
Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest
As my sweet Richard :-yet again, methinks,
Some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune's womb,
Is coming towards me, and my inward soul
With nothing trembles: at something it grieves,
More than with parting from my lord the King.
Bushy. Each substance of a grief hath twenty
Which shew like grief itself, but are not so:
For sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire to many objects:
Like perspectives, which rightly gazed upon
Shew nothing but confusion; eyed awry,
Distinguish form:-so your sweet majesty,
Looking awry upon your lord's departure,
Finds shapes of griefs, more than himself, to wail :
Which, looked on as it is, is nought but shadows
Of what it is not. Then, thrice-gracious queen,
More than your lord's departure weep not:
more's not seen:
|