DUCHESS OF YORK
Come, my old son, I pray God make thee new.
Exeunt.
5.4 Enter EXTON and Servants.
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?
SERVANT These were his very words.
EXTON
‘Have I no friend?’ quoth he. He spake it twice,
And urg’d it twice together, did he not?
5
SERVANT He did.
EXTON And, speaking it, he wishtly look’d 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.
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I am the king’s friend, and will rid his foe. Exeunt.
5.5 Enter RICHARD alone.
RICHARD 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.
5
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;
10
For no thought is contented. The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermix’d
With scruples, and do set the word itself
Against the word,
As thus: ‘Come, little ones’; and then again,
15
‘It is as hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a small needle’s eye’.
Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage thorough the flinty ribs
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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
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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 misfortunes on the back
Of such as have before indur’d the like.
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Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented. Sometimes am I king,
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am. Then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
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Then am I king’d again, and by and by
Think that I am unking’d by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing. But whate’er I be,
Nor I, nor any man that but man is,
With nothing shall be pleas’d, till he be eas’d
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With being nothing. [The music plays.]
Music do I hear?
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
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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 numb’ring clock;
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My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto 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
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Are clamorous groans which strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell – so sighs, and tears, and groans,
Show minutes, times, and hours. But my time
Runs posting on in Bolingbroke’s proud joy,
While I stand fooling here, his Jack of the clock.
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This music mads me. Let it sound no more;
For though it have holp mad men to their wits,
In me it seems it will make wise men mad.
Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me,
For ’tis a sign of love; and love to Richard
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Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.
Enter a Groom of the stable.
GROOM Hail, royal prince!
RICHARD Thanks, noble peer;
The cheapest of us is ten groats too dear.
What art thou? and how comest thou hither,
Where no man never comes, but that sad dog
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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 sometimes royal master’s face.
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O, how it ern’d 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 dress’d!
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RICHARD Rode he on Barbary? Tell me, gentle friend,
How went he under him?
GROOM So proudly as if he disdain’d the ground.
RICHARD So proud that Bolingbroke was on his back!
That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand;
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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,
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Since thou, created to be aw’d by man,
Wast born to bear? I was not made a horse,
And yet I bear a burthen like an ass,
Spurr’d, gall’d, and tir’d by jauncing Bolingbroke.
Enter One to Richard with meat.
KEEPER Fellow, give place; here is no longer stay.
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RICHARD If thou love me, ’tis time thou wert away.
GROOM
What my tongue dares not, that my heart shall say.
Exit Groom.
KEEPER My lord, will’t please you to fall to?
RICHARD Taste of it first as thou art wont to do.
KEEPER My lord, I dare not. Sir Pierce of Exton, who
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lately came from the king, commands the contrary.
RICHARD The devil take Henry of Lancaster, and thee!
Patience is stale, and I am weary of it.
[Strikes the Keeper.]
KEEPER Help, help, help!
The Murderers rush in.
RICHARD
How now! what means death in this rude assault?
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Villain, thy own hand yields thy death’s instrument.
Go thou and fill another room in hell.
[Here Exton strikes him down.]
That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire
That staggers thus my person. Exton, thy fierce hand
Hath with the king’s blood stain’d the king’s own land.
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Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up o
n high,
Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.
[Dies.]
EXTON As full of valour as of royal blood.
Both have I spill’d; O would the deed were good!
For now the devil that told me I did well
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Says that this deed is chronicled in hell.
This dead king to the living king I’ll bear.
Take hence the rest, and give them burial here.
Exeunt.
5.6 Flourish. Enter BOLINGBROKE, YORK, with other lords and attendants.
BOLINGBROKE
Kind uncle York, the latest news we hear,
Is that the rebels have consum’d with fire
Our town of Ciceter in Gloucestershire,
But whether they be ta’en or slain we hear not.
Enter NORTHUMBERLAND.
Welcome, my lord; what is the news?
5
NORTHUMBERLAND
First, to thy sacred state wish I all happiness.
The next news is, I have to London sent
The heads of Salisbury, Spencer, Blunt and Kent:
The manner of their taking may appear
At large discoursed in this paper here.
10
BOLINGBROKE
We thank thee, gentle Percy, for thy pains,
And to thy worth will add right worthy gains.
Enter FITZWATER.
FITZWATER
My lord, I have from Oxford sent to London
The heads of Broccas and Sir Bennet Seely,
Two of the dangerous consorted traitors
15
That sought at Oxford thy dire overthrow.
BOLINGBROKE Thy pains, Fitzwater, shall not be forgot;
Right noble is thy merit, well I wot.
Enter PERCY and the Bishop of CARLISLE.
PERCY The grand conspirator, Abbot of Westminster,
With clog of conscience and sour melancholy
20
Hath yielded up his body to the grave.
But here is Carlisle living, to abide
Thy kingly doom and sentence of his pride.
BOLINGBROKE Carlisle, this is your doom:
Choose out some secret place, some reverend room,
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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 the coffin.
EXTON Great king, within this coffin I present
30
Thy buried fear. Herein all breathless lies
The mightiest of thy greatest enemies,
Richard of Burdeaux, by me hither brought.
BOLINGBROKE
Exton, I thank thee not, for thou hast wrought
A deed of slander with thy fatal hand
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Upon my head and all this famous land.
EXTON
From your own mouth, my lord, did I this deed
BOLINGBROKE
They love not poison that do poison need,
Nor do I thee. Though I did wish him dead,
I hate the murtherer, love him murthered.
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The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labour,
But neither my good word nor princely favour;
With Cain go wander thorough shades of night,
And never show thy head by day nor light.
Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe
45
That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow.
Come mourn with me for what I do lament,
And put on sullen black incontinent.
I’ll make a voyage to the Holy Land,
To wash this blood off from my guilty hand.
50
March sadly after; grace my mournings here
In weeping after this untimely bier. Exeunt.
King Richard III
King Richard III was an early bestseller. Published first in 1597 as The Tragedy of King Richard the Third, it was reprinted five times before it appeared as the ninth of the histories in the First Folio in 1623. The Folio text differs significantly from the Quartos, including about 230 lines absent from them and cutting about 50 that they do print. The relation between the Quarto and Folio texts is complex: roughnesses in the Quarto have suggested either that it is based on a reconstruction of the play by actors or that it derives from an incompletely revised authorial draft; the Folio made use of the third and sixth Quartos (1602, 1622), but corrected them from an independent manuscript of a more complete and tidier version. Modern editions tend to be based on the Folio, while adopting some readings from the Quarto text, but Richard III remains among the most perplexing of Shakespearean textual puzzles.
Richard III is the earliest English play to have had continuous success on stage from its first performance to the present day. Frequent references indicate its popularity in Shakespeare’s time, when the title-role was taken by Richard Burbage. It was performed at Court on 16 November 1633. After the Restoration it retained its popularity, after 1700 in an adaptation by Colley Cibber, including lines from Shakespeare’s other histories, which held the stage until Henry Irving restored Shakespeare’s text for his 1877 production. Some of Cibber’s ‘improvements’ endured (a few can still be heard in Laurence Olivier’s 1955 film version).
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 304