The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works
Page 119
My death’s sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.
YORK
No, it is stopped with other, flattering sounds,
As praises of whose taste the wise are feared,
Lascivious metres to whose venom sound
The open ear of youth doth always listen,
Report of fashions in proud Italy,
Whose manners still our tardy-apish nation
Limps after in base imitation.
Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity—
So it be new there’s no respect how vile—
That is not quickly buzzed into his ears?
Then all too late comes counsel, to be heard
Where will doth mutiny with wit’s regard.
Direct not him whose way himself will choose:
’Tis breath thou lack’st, and that breath wilt thou lose.
JOHN OF GAUNT
Methinks I am a prophet new-inspired,
And thus, expiring, do foretell of him.
His rash, fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
For violent fires soon burn out themselves.
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short.
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes.
With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder.
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessèd plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Feared by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home
For Christian service and true chivalry
As is the sepulchre, in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s son;
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out—I die pronouncing it—
Like to a tenement or pelting farm.
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of wat’ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds.
That England that was wont to conquer others
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!
Enter King Richard and the Queen; ⌈the Duke of Aumerle,⌉ Bushy, ⌈Green, Bagot,⌉ Lord Ross, and Lord Willoughby
YORK
The King is come. Deal mildly with his youth,
For young hot colts, being reined, do rage the more.
QUEEN
How fares our noble uncle Lancaster?
KING RICHARD
What comfort, man? How is’t with aged Gaunt?
JOHN OF GAUNT
O, how that name befits my composition I
Old Gaunt indeed, and gaunt in being old.
Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast,
And who abstains from meat that is not gaunt?
For sleeping England long time have I watched.
Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt.
The pleasure that some fathers feed upon
Is my strict fast: I mean my children’s looks.
And therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt.
Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,
Whose hollow womb inherits naught but bones.
KING RICHARD
Can sick men play so nicely with their names?
JOHN OF GAUNT
No, misery makes sport to mock itself.
Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me,
I mock my name, great King, to flatter thee.
KING RICHARD
Should dying men flatter with those that live?
JOHN OF GAUNT
No, no, men living flatter those that die.
KING RICHARD
Thou now a-dying sayst thou flatt’rest me.
JOHN OF GAUNT
O no: thou diest, though I the sicker be.
KING RICHARD
I am in health; I breathe, and see thee ill.
JOHN OF GAUNT
Now He that made me knows I see thee ill:
Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill.
Thy deathbed is no lesser than thy land,
Wherein thou liest in reputation sick;
And thou, too careless patient as thou art,
Committ’st thy anointed body to the cure
Of those physicians that first wounded thee.
A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,
Whose compass is no bigger than thy head,
And yet, encagèd in so small a verge,
The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.
O, had thy grandsire with a prophet’s eye
Seen how his son’s son should destroy his sons,
From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame,
Deposing thee before thou wert possessed,
Which art possessed now to depose thyself.
Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world
It were a shame to let this land by lease.
But, for thy world, enjoying but this land,
Is it not more than shame to shame it so?
Landlord of England art thou now, not king.
Thy state of law is bondslave to the law,
And—
KING RICHARD
And thou, a lunatic lean-witted fool,
Presuming on an ague’s privilege,
Dar’st with thy frozen admonition
Make pale our cheek, chasing the royal blood
With fury from his native residence.
Now by my seat’s right royal majesty,
Wert thou not brother to great Edward’s son,
This tongue that runs so roundly in thy head
Should run thy head from thy unreverent shoulders.
JOHN OF GAUNT
O, spare me not, my brother Edward’s son,
For that I was his father Edward’s son.
That blood already, like the pelican,
Hast thou tapped out and drunkenly caroused.
My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul—
Whom fair befall in heaven ‘mongst happy souls—
May be a precedent and witness good
That thou respect’st not spilling Edward’s blood.
Join with the present sickness that I have,
And thy unkindness be like crooked age,
To crop at once a too-long withered flower.
Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee.
These words hereafter thy tormentors be.
(To attendants) Convey me to my bed, then to my grave.
Love they to live that love and honour have.
Exit, [carried in the chair]
KING RICHARD
And let them die that age and sullens have,
For both hast thou, and both become the grave.
YORK
I do beseech your majesty impute his words
To wayward sickliness and age in him.
He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear
As Harry Duke of Hereford, were he here.
KING RICHARD
Right, you say true: as Hereford’s love, so his.
As theirs, so mine; an
d all be as it is.
Enter the Earl of Northumberland
NORTHUMBERLAND
My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your majesty.
KING RICHARD
What says he?
NORTHUMBERLAND Nay, nothing: all is said.
His tongue is now a stringless instrument.
Words, life, and all, old Lancaster hath spent.
YORK
Be York the next that must be bankrupt so!
Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.
KING RICHARD
The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he.
His time is spent; our pilgrimage must be.
So much for that. Now for our Irish wars.
We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns,
Which live like venom where no venom else
But only they have privilege to live.
And for these great affairs do ask some charge,
Towards our assistance we do seize to us
The plate, coin, revenues, and movables
Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possessed.
YORK
How long shall I be patient? Ah, how long
Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?
Not Gloucester’s death, nor Hereford’s banishment,
Nor Gaunt’s rebukes, nor England’s private wrongs,
Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke
About his marriage, nor my own disgrace,
Have ever made me sour my patient cheek,
Or bend one wrinkle on my sovereign’s face.
I am the last of noble Edward’s sons,
Of whom thy father, Prince of Wales, was first.
In war was never lion raged more fierce,
In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,
Than was that young and princely gentleman.
His face thou hast, for even so looked he,
Accomplished with the number of thy hours.
But when he frowned it was against the French,
And not against his friends. His noble hand
Did win what he did spend, and spent not that
Which his triumphant father’s hand had won.
His hands were guilty of no kindred blood,
But bloody with the enemies of his kin.
O, Richard, York is too far gone with grief,
Or else he never would compare between.
KING RICHARD
Why uncle, what’s the matter?
YORK O my liege,
Pardon me if you please; if not, I, pleased
Not to be pardoned, am content withal.
Seek you to seize and grip into your hands
The royalties and rights of banished Hereford?
Is not Gaunt dead? And doth not Hereford live?
Was not Gaunt just? And is not Harry true?
Did not the one deserve to have an heir?
Is not his heir a well-deserving son?
Take Hereford’s rights away, and take from Time
His charters and his customary rights:
Let not tomorrow then ensue today;
Be not thyself, for how art thou a king
But by fair sequence and succession?
Now afore God—God forbid I say true!—
If you do wrongfully seize Hereford’s rights,
Call in the letters patents that he hath
By his attorneys general to sue
His livery, and deny his offered homage,
You pluck a thousand dangers on your head,
You lose a thousand well-disposed hearts,
And prick my tender patience to those thoughts
Which honour and allegiance cannot think.
KING RICHARD
Think what you will, we seize into our hands
His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands.
YORK
I’ll not be by the while. My liege, farewell.
What will ensue hereof there’s none can tell.
But by bad courses may be understood
That their events can never fall out good.
Exit
KING RICHARD
Go, Bushy, to the Earl of Wiltshire straight.
Bid him repair to us to Ely House
To see this business. Tomorrow next
We will for Ireland, and ’tis time, I trow.
And we create, in absence of ourself,
Our uncle York Lord Governor of England;
For he is just and always loved us well.—
Come on, our Queen; tomorrow must we part.
Be merry, for our time of stay is short.
⌈Flourish.⌉ Exeunt ⌈Bushy at one door; King Richard, the Queen, Aumerle, Green, and Bagot at another door⌉. Northumberland, Willoughby, and Ross remain
NORTHUMBERLAND
Well, lords, the Duke of Lancaster is dead.
ROSS
And living too, for now his son is Duke.
WILLOUGHBY
Barely in title, not in revenues.
NORTHUMBERLAND
Richly in both, if justice had her right.
ROSS
My heart is great, but it must break with silence
Ere’t be disburdened with a liberal tongue.
NORTHUMBERLAND
Nay, speak thy mind, and let him ne’er speak more
That speaks thy words again to do thee harm.
WILLOUGHBY
Tends that that thou wouldst speak to the Duke of Hereford?
If it be so, out with it boldly, man.
Quick is mine ear to hear of good towards him.
ROSS
No good at all that I can do for him,
Unless you call it good to pity him,
Bereft and gelded of his patrimony.
NORTHUMBERLAND
Now afore God, ‘tis shame such wrongs are borne
In him, a royal prince, and many more
Of noble blood in this declining land.
The King is not himself, but basely led
By flatterers; and what they will inform
Merely in hate ’gainst any of us all,
That will the King severely prosecute
’Gainst us, our lives, our children, and our heirs.
ROSS
The commons hath he pilled with grievous taxes,
And quite lost their hearts. The nobles hath he fined
For ancient quarrels, and quite lost their hearts.
WILLOUGHBY
And daily new exactions are devised,
As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what.
But what, a’ God’s name, doth become of this?
NORTHUMBERLAND
Wars hath not wasted it; for warred he hath not,
But basely yielded upon compromise
That which his ancestors achieved with blows.
More hath he spent in peace than they in wars.
ROSS
The Earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm.
WILLOUGHBY
The King’s grown bankrupt like a broken man.
NORTHUMBERLAND
Reproach and dissolution hangeth over him.
ROSS
He hath not money for these Irish wars,
His burdenous taxations notwithstanding,
But by the robbing of the banished Duke.
NORTHUMBERLAND
His noble kinsman. Most degenerate King!
But, lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing,
Yet seek no shelter to avoid the storm.
We see the wind sit sore upon our sails,
And yet we strike not, but securely perish.
ROSS
We see the very wreck that we must suffer,
And unavoided is the danger now
For suffering so the causes of our wreck.
NORTHUMBERLAND
Not so: even through the hollow eyes of death
I spy life peering; but I dare not say
How near the tidings of our comfort is.
Nay, let us share thy thoughts, as thou dost ours.
ROSS
Be confident to speak, Northumberland.
We three are but thyself, and, speaking so,
Thy words are but as thoughts. Therefore be bold.
NORTHUMBERLAND
Then thus. I have from Port le Blanc,
A bay in Brittaine, received intelligence
That Harry Duke of Hereford, Reinold Lord Cobham,
Thomas son and heir to the Earl of Arundel
That late broke from the Duke of Exeter,
His brother, Archbishop late of Canterbury,
Sir Thomas Erpingham, Sir Thomas Ramston,
Sir John Norbery,
Sir Robert Waterton, and Francis Coint,
All these well furnished by the Duke of Brittaine
With eight tall ships, three thousand men of war,
Are making hither with all due expedience,
And shortly mean to touch our northern shore.
Perhaps they had ere this, but that they stay
The first departing of the King for Ireland.
If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke,
Imp out our drooping country’s broken wing,
Redeem from broking pawn the blemished crown,
Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre’s gilt,
And make high majesty look like itself,
Away with me in post to Ravenspurgh.
But if you faint, as fearing to do so,
Stay, and be secret, and myself will go.
ROSS
To horse, to horse! Urge doubts to them that fear.
WILLOUGHBY
Hold out my horse, and I will first be there.
Exeunt
2.2 Enter the Queen, Bushy, and Bagot
BUSHY
Madam, your majesty is too much sad.
You promised when you parted with the King
To lay aside life-harming heaviness
And entertain a cheerful disposition.
QUEEN
To please the King I did; to please myself
I cannot do it. Yet I know no cause
Why I should welcome such a guest as grief,
Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest
As my sweet Richard. Yet again, methinks
Some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune’s womb,
Is coming towards me; and my inward soul
At nothing trembles. With something it grieves
More than with parting from my lord the King.
BUSHY
Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows
Which shows like grief itself but is not so.
For sorrow’s eye, glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire to many objects—
Like perspectives, which, rightly gazed upon,
Show nothing but confusion; eyed awry,
Distinguish form. So your sweet majesty,