Were then but subjects; being now a subject,
I have a king here to my flatterer.
Being so great, I have no need to beg.
BOLINGBROKE Yet ask.
310
RICHARD And shall I have?
BOLINGBROKE You shall.
RICHARD Then give me leave to go.
BOLINGBROKE Whither?
RICHARD
Whither you will, so I were from your sights.
315
BOLINGBROKE
Go some of you, convey him to the Tower.
RICHARD O, good! Convey! Conveyers are you all,
That rise thus nimbly by a true king’s fall.
Exeunt Richard and Guard.
BOLINGBROKE
On Wednesday next we solemnly set down
Our coronation. Lords, prepare yourselves.
320
Exeunt all except the Bishop of Carlisle, the Abbot of Westminster and Aumerle.
ABBOT A woeful pageant have we here beheld.
CARLISLE The woe’s to come; the children yet unborn
Shall feel this day as sharp to them as thorn.
AUMERLE You holy clergymen, is there no plot
To rid the realm of this pernicious blot?
325
ABBOT My lord,
Before I freely speak my mind herein,
You shall not only take the sacrament
To bury mine intents, but also to effect
Whatever I shall happen to devise.
330
I see your brows are full of discontent,
Your hearts of sorrow, and your eyes of tears.
Come home with me to supper; I will lay
A plot shall show us all a merry day. Exeunt
5.1 Enter the QUEEN with her attendants.
QUEEN This way the king will come; this is the way
To Julius Caesar’s ill-erected tower,
To whose flint bosom my condemned lord
Is doom’d a prisoner by proud Bolingbroke.
Here let us rest, if this rebellious earth
5
Have any resting for her true king’s queen.
Enter RICHARD and guard.
But soft, but see, or rather do not see,
My fair rose wither – yet look up, behold,
That you in pity may dissolve to dew,
And wash him fresh again with true-love tears.
10
Ah, thou, the model where old Troy did stand!
Thou map of honour, thou King Richard’s tomb,
And not King Richard! Thou most beauteous inn,
Why should hard-favour’d grief be lodg’d in thee,
When triumph is become an alehouse guest?
15
RICHARD Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so,
To make my end too sudden. Learn, good soul,
To think our former state a happy dream;
From which awak’d, the truth of what we are
Shows us but this. I am sworn brother, sweet,
20
To grim Necessity, and he and I
Will keep a league till death. Hie thee to France
And cloister thee in some religious house.
Our holy lives must win a new world’s crown
Which our profane hours here have thrown down.
25
QUEEN What, is my Richard both in shape and mind
Transform’d and weak’ned? hath Bolingbroke depos’d
Thine intellect? hath he been in thy heart?
The lion dying thrusteth forth his paw
And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage
30
To be o’erpow’r’d, and wilt thou, pupil-like,
Take the correction mildly, kiss the rod,
And fawn on rage with base humility,
Which art a lion and the king of beasts?
RICHARD A king of beasts, indeed – if aught but beasts,
35
I had been still a happy king of men.
Good sometimes queen, prepare thee hence for France.
Think I am dead, and that even here thou takest,
As from my death-bed, thy last living leave.
In winter’s tedious nights sit by the fire
40
With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales
Of woeful ages long ago betid;
And ere thou bid good night, to quite their griefs
Tell thou the lamentable tale of me,
And send the hearers weeping to their beds;
45
For why, the senseless brands will sympathize
The heavy accent of thy moving tongue,
And in compassion weep the fire out,
And some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black,
For the deposing of a rightful king.
50
Enter NORTHUMBERLAND.
NORTHUMBERLAND
My lord, the mind of Bolingbroke is chang’d;
You must to Pomfret, not unto the Tower.
And, madam, there is order ta’en for you:
With all swift speed you must away to France.
RICHARD Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal
55
The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne,
The time shall not be many hours of age
More than it is, ere foul sin gathering head
Shall break into corruption: thou shalt think,
Though he divide the realm and give thee half,
60
It is too little, helping him to all;
He shall think that thou, which knowest the way
To plant unrightful kings, wilt know again,
Being ne’er so little urg’d, another way
To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne.
65
The love of wicked men converts to fear,
That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both
To worthy danger and deserved death.
NORTHUMBERLAND
My guilt be on my head, and there an end.
Take leave and part, for you must part forthwith.
70
RICHARD Doubly divorc’d! Bad men, you violate
A two-fold marriage – ’twixt my crown and me,
And then betwixt me and my married wife.
Let me unkiss the oath ’twixt thee and me;
And yet not so, for with a kiss ’twas made.
75
Part us, Northumberland: I towards the north,
Where shivering cold and sickness pines the clime;
My wife to France, from whence set forth in pomp,
She came adorned hither like sweet May,
Sent back like Hollowmas or short’st of day.
80
QUEEN And must we be divided? must we part?
RICHARD
Ay, hand from hand, my love, and heart from heart.
QUEEN Banish us both, and send the king with me.
NORTHUMBERLAND
That were some love, but little policy.
QUEEN Then whither he goes, thither let me go.
85
RICHARD So two, together weeping, make one woe.
Weep thou for me in France, I for thee here;
Better far off than, near, be ne’er the near.
Go count thy way with sighs; I mine with groans.
QUEEN So longest way shall have the longest moans.
90
RICHARD
Twice for one step I’ll groan, the way being short,
And piece the way out with a heavy heart.
Come, come, in wooing sorrow let’s be brief,
Since, wedding it, there is such length in grief:
One kiss shall stop our mouths, and dumbly part;
95
Thus give I mine, and thus take I thy heart.
QUEEN Give me mine own again; ’twere no good part
To take on me to keep and kill thy heart.
; So, now I have mine own again, be gone,
That I may strive to kill it with a groan.
100
RICHARD We make woe wanton with this fond delay.
Once more, adieu; the rest let sorrow say. Exeunt.
5.2 Enter DUKE OF YORK and the DUCHESS.
DUCHESS OF YORK
My lord, you told me you would tell the rest,
When weeping made you break the story off,
Of our two cousins’ coming into London.
YORK Where did I leave?
DUCHESSOF YORK At that sad stop, my lord,
Where rude misgoverned hands from windows’ tops
5
Threw dust and rubbish on King Richard’s head.
YORK Then, as I said, the Duke, great Bolingbroke,
Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed
Which his aspiring rider seem’d to know,
With slow but stately pace kept on his course,
10
Whilst all tongues cried ‘God save thee, Bolingbroke!’
You would have thought the very windows spake,
So many greedy looks of young and old
Through casements darted their desiring eyes
Upon his visage; and that all the walls
15
With painted imagery had said at once
‘Jesu preserve thee! Welcome, Bolingbroke!’
Whilst he, from one side to the other turning,
Bare-headed, lower than his proud steed’s neck,
Bespake them thus, ‘I thank you, countrymen’.
20
And thus still doing, thus he pass’d along.
DUCHESS OF YORK
Alack, poor Richard! where rode he the whilst?
YORK As in a theatre the eyes of men,
After a well-grac’d actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
25
Thinking his prattle to be tedious;
Even so, or with much more contempt, men’s eyes
Did scowl on Richard. No man cried ‘God save him!’
No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home,
But dust was thrown upon his sacred head;
30
Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off,
His face still combating with tears and smiles,
The badges of his grief and patience,
That had not God for some strong purpose steel’d
The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted,
35
And barbarism itself have pitied him.
But heaven hath a hand in these events,
To whose high will we bound our calm contents.
To Bolingbroke are we sworn subjects now,
Whose state and honour I for aye allow.
40
Enter AUMERLE.
DUCHESS OF YORK Here comes my son Aumerle.
YORK Aumerle that was,
But that is lost for being Richard’s friend,
And, madam, you must call him Rutland now.
I am in parliament pledge for his truth
And lasting fealty to the new-made king.
45
DUCHESS OF YORK
Welcome, my son. Who are the violets now
That strew the green lap of the new-come spring?
AUMERLE Madam, I know not, nor I greatly care not;
God knows I had as lief be none as one.
YORK Well, bear you well in this new spring of time,
50
Lest you be cropp’d before you come to prime.
What news from Oxford? Do these justs and triumphs hold?
AUMERLE For aught I know, my lord, they do.
YORK You will be there, I know.
AUMERLE If God prevent it not, I purpose so.
55
YORK What seal is that that hangs without thy bosom?
Yea, look’st thou pale? Let me see the writing.
AUMERLE My lord, ’tis nothing.
YORK No matter, then, who see it.
I will be satisfied; let me see the writing.
AUMERLE I do beseech your grace to pardon me;
60
It is a matter of small consequence,
Which for some reasons I would not have seen.
YORK Which for some reasons, sir, I mean to see.
I fear, I fear –
DUCHESS OF YORK What should you fear?
’Tis nothing but some band that he is ent’red into
65
For gay apparel ’gainst the triumph day.
YORK Bound to himself? What doth he with a bond
That he is bound to? Wife, thou art a fool.
Boy, let me see the writing.
AUMERLE
I do beseech you, pardon me; I may not show it.
70
GAUNT I will be satisfied; let me see it, I say.
[He plucks it out of his bosom and reads it.]
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 302