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Enter DUCHESS.

Duch. O King, believe not this hard-hearted

man:

Love, loving not itself, none other can.

York. Thou frantic woman, what dost thou make here?

Shall thy old dugs once more a traitor rear? Duch. Sweet York, be patient.-Hear me, gentle liege. [Kneels.

Boling. Rise up, good aunt.

Duch.

Not yet, I thee beseech: For ever will I walk upon my knees, And never see day that the happy sees, Till thou give joy: until thou bid me joy, By pardoning Rutland, my transgressing boy. Aum. Unto my mother's prayers I bend my knee. [Kneels.

York. Against them both my true joints bended be. [Kneels.

Ill mayst thou thrive if thou grant any grace! Duch. Pleads he in earnest? look upon his face: His eyes do drop no tears; his prayers are in jest; His words come from his mouth, ours from our

breast:

He
prays but faintly, and would be denied ;
We pray with heart and soul, and all beside :
His weary joints would gladly rise, I know;
Our knees shall kneel till to the ground they grow:
His prayers are full of false hypocrisy ;
Ours of true zeal and deep integrity.
Our prayers do outpray his: then let them have
That mercy which true prayers ought to have.
Boling. Good aunt, stand up.
Duch.

Nay, do not say stand up:
But pardon, first; and afterwards, stand up.
An if I were thy nurse, thy tongue to teach,
Pardon should be the first word of thy speech.
I never longed to hear a word till now;
Say pardon, King: let pity teach thee how.
The word is short, but not so short as sweet:
No word like pardon, for kings' mouths so meet.
York. Speak it in French, King: say, pardon-

nez moy.

Duch. Dost thou teach pardon pardon to destroy?

Ah, my sour husband, my hard-hearted lord,
That sett'st the word itself against the word!—
Speak pardon as 't is current in our land:
The chopping French we do not understand.
Thine eye begins to speak; set thy tongue there :
Or in thy piteous heart plant thou thine ear:
That, hearing how our plaints and prayers do pierce,
Pity may move thee pardon to rehearse.
Boling. Good aunt, stand up.
Duch.
I do not sue to stand:

Pardon is all the suit I have in hand.
Boling. I pardon him, as God shall pardon me.

Duch. O happy vantage of a kneeling knee!
Yet am I sick for fear: speak it again :
Twice saying pardon doth not pardon twain,
But makes one pardon strong.

Boling. I pardon him with all my heart.
Duch. A God on earth thou art!

Boling. But for our trusty brother-in-law, and the abbot,

With all the rest of that consorted crew,
Destruction straight shall dog them at the heels.-
Good uncle, help to order several powers
To Oxford, or where'er these traitors are:
They shall not live within this world, I swear,
But I will have them if I once know where.
Uncle, farewell; and cousin too, adieu:
Your mother well hath prayed, and prove you true.
Duch. Come, my old son: I pray God make
thee new!
[Exeunt.

SCENE IV.

Enter EXTON and a Servant.

Exton. Didst thou not mark the King what words he spake :

"Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?" Was it not so? Serv.

Those were his very words. Exton. "Have I no friend?" quoth he. He spake it twice,

And urged it twice together: did he not?
Serv. He did.

Exton. And speaking it, he wistly looked on me,
As who should say, "I would thou wert the man
That would divorce this terror from my heart!"
Meaning the King at Pomfret. Come, let's go:
I am the King's friend, and will rid his foe.
[Exeunt.

SCENE V.-Pomfret. The Dungeon of the Castle.

Enter KING RICHARD.

K. Rich. I have been studying how I may

compare

This prison where I live unto the world:
And for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it: yet I'll hammer it out.
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul;
My soul the father: and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world;
In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented. The better sort

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(As thoughts of things divine) are intermixed
With scruples, and do set the word itself
Against the word:

As thus "Come, little ones;" and then again,—
"It is as hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a needle's eye."
Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls:
And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.
Thoughts tending to content, flatter themselves
That they are not the first of fortune's slaves,
Nor shall not be the last like silly beggars,
Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame
That many have and others must sit there:
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortune on the back
Of such as have before endured the like.
Thus play I, in one person, many people,
And none contented. Sometimes am I king:
Then treason makes me wish myself a beggar;
And so I am. Then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king:
Then am I kinged again: and by and by
Think that I am unkinged by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing. But whate'er I am,
Nor I, nor any man that but man is,
With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased
With being nothing.—Music do I hear? [Music.
Ha, ha! keep time.-How sour sweet music is
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear
To check time broke in a disordered string;
But, for the concord of my state and time,
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke!
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me:
For now hath time made me his numbering clock.
My thoughts are minutes; and, with sighs, they
jar

Their watches on to mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now, sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans that strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell. So sighs, and tears, and

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The cheapest of us is ten groats too dear. What art thou? and how com'st thou hither, Where no man ever comes but that sad dog That brings me food, to make misfortune live?

Groom. I was a poor groom of thy stable, King, When thou wert king; who travelling towards York,

With much ado, at length have gotten leave
To look upon my sometime master's face.
O how it yearned my heart when I beheld
In London streets, that coronation-day,
When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary!
That horse that thou so often hast bestrid;
That horse that I so carefully have dressed!
K. Rich. Rode he on Barbary? Tell me, gentle
friend,

How went he under him?

Groom. So proudly as if he had disdained the ground.

K. Rich. So proud that Bolingbroke was on

his back!

That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand: This hand hath made him proud with clapping

him.

Would he not stumble; would he not fall down
(Since pride must have a fall), and break the neck
Of that proud man that did usurp his back?—
Forgiveness, horse! why do I rail on thee,
Since thou, created to be awed by man,
Wast born to bear?-I was not made a horse:
And yet I bear a burden like an ass,
Spur-galled and tired by jauncing Bolingbroke.

Enter Keeper with a dish.

Keep. Fellow, give place: here is no longer stay. [To the Groom. K. Rich. If thou love me, 't is time thou wert away.

Groom. What my tongue dares not, that my
heart shall say.
[Exit.

Keep. My lord, wilt please you to fall to?
K. Rich. Taste of it first, as thou art wont to do.
Keep. My lord, I dare not: Sir Pierce of Ex-

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Two of the dangerous consorted traitors
That sought at Oxford thy dire overthrow
Boling. Thy pains, Fitzwater, shall not be
forgot;

Right noble is thy merit, well it wot.

Enter PERCY, with the BISHOP of Carisle.

Percy. The grand conspirator, abbot of Westminster,

With clog of conscience and sour melancholy,
Hath yielded up his body to the grave:
But here is Carlisle living, to abide
Thy kingly doom and sentence of his pride.
Boling. Carlisle, this is your doom :—
Choose out some secret place, some reverend
room,

More than thou hast, and with it joy thy life:
So, as thou liv'st in peace, die free from strife.
For though mine enemy thou hast ever been,
High sparks of honour in thee have I seen.

Enter EXTON, with Attendants bearing a coffin.
Exton. Great King, within this coffin I present
Thy buried fear: herein all breathless lies
The mightiest of thy greatest enemies,
Richard of Bordeaux, by me hither brought.
Boling. Exton, I thank thee not: for thou
hast wrought

A deed of slander, with thy fatal hand,
Upon my head and all this famous land.
Exton. From your own mouth, my lord, did I
this deed.

Boling. They love not poison that do poison need;

Nor do I thee though I did wish him dead,
I hate the murderer, love him murdered.
The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labour,
But neither my good word nor princely favour:
With Cain go wander through the shade of

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