The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 301
Sweet peace conduct his sweet soul to the bosom
Of good old Abraham! Lords appellants,
Your differences shall all rest under gage
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Till we assign you to your days of trial.
Enter YORK.
YORK Great Duke of Lancaster, I come to thee
From plume-pluck’d Richard, who with willing soul
Adopts thee heir, and his high sceptre yields
To the possession of thy royal hand.
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Ascend his throne, descending now from him,
And long live Henry, fourth of that name!
BOLINGBROKE
In God’s name, I’ll ascend the regal throne.
CARLISLE Marry, God forbid!
Worst in this royal presence may I speak,
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Yet best beseeming me to speak the truth.
Would God that any in this noble presence
Were enough noble to be upright judge
Of noble Richard! then true noblesse would
Learn him forbearance from so foul a wrong.
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What subject can give sentence on his king?
And who sits here that is not Richard’s subject?
Thieves are not judg’d but they are by to hear,
Although apparent guilt be seen in them,
And shall the figure of God’s majesty,
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His captain, steward, deputy elect,
Anointed, crowned, planted many years,
Be judg’d by subject and inferior breath,
And he himself not present? O forfend it, God,
That in Christian climate souls refin’d
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Should show so heinous, black, obscene a deed!
I speak to subjects, and a subject speaks,
Stirr’d up by God thus boldly for his king.
My Lord of Herford here, whom you call king,
Is a foul traitor to proud Herford’s king,
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And if you crown him, let me prophesy –
The blood of English shall manure the ground,
And future ages groan for this foul act,
Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels,
And, in this seat of peace, tumultuous wars
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Shall kin with kin, and kind with kind, confound.
Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny,
Shall here inhabit, and this land be call’d
The field of Golgotha and dead men’s skulls –
O, if you raise this house against this house,
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It will the woefullest division prove
That ever fell upon this cursed earth.
Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so,
Lest child, child’s children, cry against you woe.
NORTHUMBERLAND
Well have you argued, sir, and, for your pains,
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Of capital treason we arrest you here.
My Lord of Westminster, be it your charge
To keep him safely till his day of trial.
May it please you, lords, to grant the commons’ suit?
BOLINGBROKE
Fetch hither Richard, that in common view
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He may surrender; so we shall proceed
Without suspicion.
GAUNT I will be his conduct. Exit.
BOLINGBROKE
Lords, you that here are under our arrest,
Procure your sureties for your days of answer.
Little are we beholding to your love,
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And little look’d for at your helping hands.
Re-enter YORK, with RICHARD, and officers bearing the regalia.
RICHARD Alack, why am I sent for to a king
Before I have shook off the regal thoughts
Wherewith I reign’d? I hardly yet have learn’d
To insinuate, flatter, bow, and bend my knee.
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Give sorrow leave awhile to tutor me
To this submission. Yet I well remember
The favours of these men. Were they not mine?
Did they not sometime cry ‘All hail!’ to me?
So Judas did to Christ. But he, in twelve,
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Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand, none.
God save the king! Will no man say amen?
Am I both priest and clerk? well then, amen.
God save the king! although I be not he;
And yet, amen, if heaven do think him me.
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To do what service am I sent for hither?
YORK To do that office of thine own good will
Which tired majesty did make thee offer:
The resignation of thy state and crown
To Henry Bolingbroke.
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RICHARD
Give me the crown. Here, cousin, seize the crown.
Here, cousin,
On this side my hand, and on that side thine.
Now is this golden crown like a deep well
That owes two buckets, filling one another,
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The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen, and full of water.
That bucket down and full of tears am I,
Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.
BOLINGBROKE
I thought you had been willing to resign.
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RICHARD My crown I am, but still my griefs are mine.
You may my glories and my state depose,
But not my griefs; still am I king of those.
BOLINGBROKE
Part of your cares you give me with your crown.
RICHARD Your cares set up do not pluck my cares down.
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My care is loss of care, by old care done;
Your care is gain of care, by new care won.
The cares I give, I have, though given away,
They ’tend the crown, yet still with me they stay.
BOLINGBROKE
Are you contented to resign the crown?
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RICHARD Ay, no; no, ay; for I must nothing be.
Therefore no ‘no’, for I resign to thee.
Now, mark me how I will undo myself.
I give this heavy weight from off my head,
And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,
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The pride of kingly sway from out my heart;
With mine own tears I wash away my balm,
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duteous oaths;
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All pomp and majesty I do forswear;
My manors, rents, revenues, I forgo;
My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny.
God pardon all oaths that are broke to me,
God keep all vows unbroke are made to thee!
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Make me, that nothing have, with nothing griev’d,
And thou with all pleas’d, that hast all achiev’d.
Long may’st thou live in Richard’s seat to sit,
And soon lie Richard in an earthy pit.
God save King Henry, unking’d Richard says,
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And send him many years of sunshine days!
What more remains?
NORTHUMBERLAND No more; but that you read
These accusations, and these grievous crimes
Committed by your person and your followers
Against the state and profit of this land;
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That, by confessing them, the souls of men
May deem that you are worthily depos’d.
RICHARD Must I do so? and must I ravel out
My weav’d-up follies? Gentle Northumberland,
If thy offences were upon record,
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To read a lecture of them? If thou wouldst,
There shouldst thou find one heinous article,
Containing the deposing of a king,
And cracking the strong warrant of an oath,
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Mark’d with a blot, damn’d in the book of heaven.
Nay, all of you, that stand and look upon me
Whilst that my wretchedness doth bait myself,
Though some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands,
Showing an outward pity – yet you Pilates
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Have here deliver’d me to my sour cross,
And water cannot wash away your sin.
NORTHUMBERLAND
My lord, dispatch, read o’er these articles.
RICHARD Mine eyes are full of tears, I cannot see.
And yet salt water blinds them not so much
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But they can see a sort of traitors here.
Nay, if I turn mine eyes upon myself,
I find myself a traitor with the rest.
For I have given here my soul’s consent
T’undeck the pompous body of a king;
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Made glory base, and sovereignty a slave;
Proud majesty a subject, state a peasant.
NORTHUMBERLAND My lord –
RICHARD No lord of thine, thou haught insulting man;
Nor no man’s lord. I have no name, no title;
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No, not that name was given me at the font,
But ’tis usurp’d. Alack the heavy day,
That I have worn so many winters out,
And know not now what name to call myself!
O that I were a mockery king of snow,
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Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away in water-drops!
Good king, great king, and yet not greatly good,
And if my word be sterling yet in England,
Let it command a mirror hither straight,
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That it may show me what a face I have
Since it is bankrupt of his majesty.
BOLINGBROKE
Go some of you, and fetch a looking-glass.
Exit an attendant.
NORTHUMBERLAND
Read o’er this paper while the glass doth come.
RICHARD Fiend, thou torments me ere I come to hell.
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BOLINGBROKE
Urge it no more, my Lord Northumberland.
NORTHUMBERLAND
The commons will not then be satisfi’d.
RICHARD They shall be satisfi’d. I’ll read enough
When I do see the very book indeed
Where all my sins are writ, and that’s myself.
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Enter one with a glass.
Give me that glass, and therein will I read.
No deeper wrinkles yet? hath sorrow struck
So many blows upon this face of mine
And made no deeper wounds? O flatt’ring glass,
Like to my followers in prosperity,
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Thou dost beguile me. Was this face the face
That every day under his household roof
Did keep ten thousand men? Was this the face
That like the sun did make beholders wink?
Is this the face which fac’d so many follies,
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That was at last out-fac’d by Bolingbroke?
A brittle glory shineth in this face;
As brittle as the glory is the face,
[Dashes the glass against the ground.]
For there it is, crack’d in an hundred shivers.
Mark, silent king, the moral of this sport –
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How soon my sorrow hath destroy’d my face.
BOLINGBROKE
The shadow of your sorrow hath destroy’d
The shadow of your face.
RICHARD Say that again.
The shadow of my sorrow? ha! let’s see –
’Tis very true, my grief lies all within,
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And these external manners of lament
Are merely shadows to the unseen grief
That swells with silence in the tortur’d soul.
There lies the substance. And I thank thee, king,
For thy great bounty, that not only giv’st
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Me cause to wail, but teachest me the way
How to lament the cause. I’ll beg one boon,
And then be gone, and trouble you no more.
Shall I obtain it?
BOLINGBROKE Name it, fair cousin.
RICHARD Fair cousin! I am greater than a king;
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For when I was a king, my flatterers