The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 300
QUEEN My legs can keep no measure in delight,
When my poor heart no measure keeps in grief:
Therefore no dancing, girl – some other sport.
LADY Madam, we’ll tell tales.
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QUEEN Of sorrow or of joy?
LADY Of either, madam.
QUEEN Of neither, girl.
For if of joy, being altogether wanting,
It doth remember me the more of sorrow;
Or if of grief, being altogether had,
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It adds more sorrow to my want of joy;
For what I have I need not to repeat,
And what I want it boots not to complain.
LADY Madam, I’ll sing.
QUEEN ’Tis well that thou hast cause,
But thou shouldst please me better wouldst thou weep.
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LADY I could weep, madam, would it do you good.
QUEEN And I could sing, would weeping do me good,
And never borrow any tear of thee.
Enter a Gardener and two Servants.
But stay, here come the gardeners.
Let’s step into the shadow of these trees.
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My wretchedness unto a row of pins,
They’ll talk of state, for everyone doth so
Against a change: woe is forerun with woe.
GARDENER
Go, bind thou up young dangling apricocks,
Which like unruly children make their sire
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Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight,
Give some supportance to the bending twigs.
Go thou, and like an executioner
Cut off the heads of too fast growing sprays,
That look too lofty in our commonwealth:
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All must be even in our government.
You thus employed, I will go root away
The noisome weeds which without profit suck
The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.
MAN Why should we, in the compass of a pale,
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Keep law and form and due proportion,
Showing, as in a model, our firm estate,
When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers chok’d up,
Her fruit-trees all unprun’d, her hedges ruin’d,
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Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars?
GARDENER Hold thy peace –
He that hath suffered this disordered spring
Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf.
The weeds which his broad-spreading leaves did shelter,
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That seem’d in eating him to hold him up,
Are pluck’d up root and all by Bolingbroke –
I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Greene.
MAN What, are they dead?
GARDENER They are; and Bolingbroke
Hath seiz’d the wasteful king. O, what pity is it
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That he had not so trimm’d and dress’d his land
As we this garden! We at time of year
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees,
Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood,
With too much riches it confound itself;
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Had he done so to great and growing men,
They might have liv’d to bear, and he to taste
Their fruits of duty. Superfluous branches
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live;
Had he done so, himself had borne the crown,
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Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.
MAN What, think you the king shall be deposed?
GARDENER Depress’d he is already, and depos’d
’Tis doubt he will be. Letters came last night
To a dear friend of the good Duke of York’s
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That tell black tidings.
QUEEN
O, I am press’d to death through want of speaking!
Thou, old Adam’s likeness set to dress this garden,
How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news?
What Eve, what serpent, hath suggested thee
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To make a second fall of cursed man?
Why dost thou say King Richard is depos’d?
Dar’st thou, thou little better thing than earth,
Divine his downfall? Say, where, when, and how
Cam’st thou by this ill tidings? Speak, thou wretch.
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GARDENER Pardon me, madam, little joy have I
To breathe this news, yet what I say is true.
King Richard he is in the mighty hold
Of Bolingbroke. Their fortunes both are weigh’d;
In your lord’s scale is nothing but himself,
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And some few vanities that make him light.
But in the balance of great Bolingbroke,
Besides himself, are all the English peers,
And with that odds he weighs King Richard down.
Post you to London and you’ll find it so;
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I speak no more than everyone doth know.
QUEEN Nimble mischance, that art so light of foot,
Doth not thy embassage belong to me,
And am I last that knows it? O, thou thinkest
To serve me last that I may longest keep
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Thy sorrow in my breast. Come, ladies, go
To meet at London London’s king in woe.
What, was I born to this, that my sad look
Should grace the triumph of great Bolingbroke?
Gard’ner, for telling me these news of woe,
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Pray God the plants thou graft’st may never grow.
Exeunt Queen and Ladies.
GARDENER
Poor queen, so that thy state might be no worse,
I would my skill were subject to thy curse.
Here did she fall a tear; here in this place
I’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace.
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Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen,
In the remembrance of a weeping queen. Exeunt.
4.1 Enter as to the Parliament BOLINGBROKE, AUMERLE, NORTHUMBERLAND, PERCY, FITZWATER, SURREY, the Bishop of CARLISLE, the Abbot of Westminster and another LORD, herald, officers and BAGOT.
BOLINGBROKE Call forth Bagot.
Now, Bagot, freely speak thy mind –
What thou dost know of noble Gloucester’s death,
Who wrought it with the king, and who perform’d
The bloody office of his timeless end.
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BAGOT Then set before my face the Lord Aumerle.
BOLINGBROKE
Cousin, stand forth, and look upon that man.
BAGOT My Lord Aumerle, I know your daring tongue
Scorns to unsay what once it hath delivered.
In that dead time when Gloucester’s death was plotted,
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I heard you say ‘Is not my arm of length,
That reacheth from the restful English court
As far as Callice, to mine uncle’s head?’
Amongst much other talk that very time
I heard you say that you had rather refuse
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The offer of an hundred thousand crowns
Than Bolingbroke’s return to England –
Adding withal, how bless’d this would be,
In this your cousin’s death.
AUMERLE Princes and noble lords,
What answer shall I make to this base man?
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Shall I so much dishonour my fair stars
On equal terms to give him chastisement?
Either I must, or have mine honour soil’d
With the
attainder of his slanderous lips.
There is my gage, the manual seal of death,
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That marks thee out for hell. I say thou liest,
And will maintain what thou hast said is false
In thy heart-blood, though being all too base
To stain the temper of my knightly sword.
BOLINGBROKE
Bagot, forbear, thou shalt not take it up.
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AUMERLE Excepting one, I would he were the best
In all this presence that hath mov’d me so.
FITZWATER If that thy valour stand on sympathy,
There is my gage, Aumerle, in gage to thine;
By that fair sun which shows me where thou stand’st,
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I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak’st it,
That thou wert cause of noble Gloucester’s death.
If thou deniest it twenty times, thou liest;
And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart,
Where it was forged, with my rapier’s point.
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AUMERLE Thou dar’st not, coward, live to see that day.
FITZWATER Now by my soul, I would it were this hour.
AUMERLE Fitzwater, thou art damn’d to hell for this.
PERCY Aumerle, thou liest, his honour is as true
In this appeal as thou art all unjust;
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And that thou art so, there I throw my gage,
To prove it on thee to the extremest point
Of mortal breathing. Seize it, if thou dar’st.
AUMERLE And if I do not, may my hands rot off,
And never brandish more revengeful steel
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Over the glittering helmet of my foe!
ANOTHER LORD
I task the earth to the like, forsworn Aumerle,
And spur thee on with full as many lies
As may be hollowed in thy treacherous ear
From sun to sun. There is my honour’s pawn;
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Ingage it to the trial if thou darest.
AUMERLE
Who sets me else? By heaven, I’ll throw at all!
I have a thousand spirits in one breast
To answer twenty thousand such as you.
SURREY My Lord Fitzwater, I do remember well
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The very time Aumerle and you did talk.
FITZWATER ’Tis very true; you were in presence then,
And you can witness with me this is true.
SURREY As false, by heaven, as heaven itself is true.
FITZWATER Surrey, thou liest.
SURREY Dishonourable boy,
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That lie shall lie so heavy on my sword
That it shall render vengeance and revenge
Till thou, the lie-giver, and that lie do lie
In earth as quiet as thy father’s skull.
In proof whereof there is my honour’s pawn;
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Ingage it to the trial if thou darest.
FITZWATER How fondly dost thou spur a forward horse!
If I dare eat, or drink, or breathe, or live,
I dare meet Surrey in a wilderness,
And spit upon him whilst I say he lies,
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And lies, and lies. There is my bond of faith
To tie thee to my strong correction.
As I intend to thrive in this new world,
Aumerle is guilty of my true appeal.
Besides, I heard the banished Norfolk say
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That thou, Aumerle, did’st send two of thy men
To execute the noble Duke at Callice.
AUMERLE Some honest Christian trust me with a gage,
That Norfolk lies – here do I throw down this,
If he may be repeal’d to try his honour.
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BOLINGBROKE
These differences shall all rest under gage
Till Norfolk be repeal’d – repeal’d he shall be,
And, though mine enemy, restor’d again
To all his lands and signories. When he’s return’d,
Against Aumerle we will inforce his trial.
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CARLISLE That honourable day shall ne’er be seen.
Many a time hath banish’d Norfolk fought
For Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field,
Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross
Against black Pagans, Turks, and Saracens;
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And, toil’d with works of war, retir’d himself
To Italy; and there at Venice gave
His body to that pleasant country’s earth,
And his pure soul unto his captain Christ,
Under whose colours he had fought so long.
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BOLINGBROKE Why, Bishop, is Norfolk dead?
CARLISLE As surely as I live, my lord.
BOLINGBROKE