Complete Plays, The

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Complete Plays, The Page 159

by William Shakespeare


  Ourself and Bushy, Bagot here and Green

  Observed his courtship to the common people;

  How he did seem to dive into their hearts

  With humble and familiar courtesy,

  What reverence he did throw away on slaves,

  Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles

  And patient underbearing of his fortune,

  As ’twere to banish their affects with him.

  Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;

  A brace of draymen bid God speed him well

  And had the tribute of his supple knee,

  With ‘Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends;’

  As were our England in reversion his,

  And he our subjects’ next degree in hope.

  Green

  Well, he is gone; and with him go these thoughts.

  Now for the rebels which stand out in Ireland,

  Expedient manage must be made, my liege,

  Ere further leisure yield them further means

  For their advantage and your highness’ loss.

  King Richard II

  We will ourself in person to this war:

  And, for our coffers, with too great a court

  And liberal largess, are grown somewhat light,

  We are inforced to farm our royal realm;

  The revenue whereof shall furnish us

  For our affairs in hand: if that come short,

  Our substitutes at home shall have blank charters;

  Whereto, when they shall know what men are rich,

  They shall subscribe them for large sums of gold

  And send them after to supply our wants;

  For we will make for Ireland presently.

  Enter Bushy

  Bushy, what news?

  Bushy

  Old John of Gaunt is grievous sick, my lord,

  Suddenly taken; and hath sent post haste

  To entreat your majesty to visit him.

  King Richard II

  Where lies he?

  Bushy

  At Ely House.

  King Richard II

  Now put it, God, in the physician’s mind

  To help him to his grave immediately!

  The lining of his coffers shall make coats

  To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars.

  Come, gentlemen, let’s all go visit him:

  Pray God we may make haste, and come too late!

  All

  Amen.

  Exeunt

  ACT II

  SCENE I. ELY HOUSE.

  Enter John Of Gaunt sick, with the Duke Of York, & c

  John Of Gaunt

  Will the king come, that I may breathe my last

  In wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth?

  Duke Of York

  Vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath;

  For all in vain comes counsel to his ear.

  John Of Gaunt

  O, but they say the tongues of dying men

  Enforce attention like deep harmony:

  Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,

  For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.

  He that no more must say is listen’d more

  Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose;

  More are men’s ends mark’d than their lives before:

  The setting sun, and music at the close,

  As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,

  Writ in remembrance more than things long past:

  Though Richard my life’s counsel would not hear,

  My death’s sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.

  Duke Of York

  No; it is stopp’d with other flattering sounds,

  As praises, of whose taste the wise are fond,

  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 scepter’d 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 blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

  This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,

  Fear’d 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 watery 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 II and Queen, Duke Of Aumerle, Bushy, Green, Bagot, Lord Ross, and Lord Willoughby

  Duke Of York

  The king is come: deal mildly with his youth;

  For young hot colts being raged do rage the more.

  Queen

  How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster?

  King Richard II

  What comfort, man? how is’t with aged Gaunt?

  John Of Gaunt

  O how that name befits my composition!

  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 watch’d;

  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 nought but bones.

  King Richard II

  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 II

/>   Should dying men flatter with those that live?

  John Of Gaunt

  No, no, men living flatter those that die.

  King Richard II

  Thou, now a-dying, say’st thou flatterest me.

  John Of Gaunt

  O, no! thou diest, though I the sicker be.

  King Richard II

  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 death-bed is no lesser than thy land

  Wherein thou liest in reputation sick;

  And thou, too careless patient as thou art,

  Commit’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, incaged 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 possess’d,

  Which art possess’d 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 thou —

  King Richard II

  A lunatic lean-witted fool,

  Presuming on an ague’s privilege,

  Darest 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 tapp’d out and drunkenly caroused:

  My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul,

  Whom fair befal 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 wither’d flower.

  Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!

  These words hereafter thy tormentors be!

  Convey me to my bed, then to my grave:

  Love they to live that love and honour have.

  Exit, borne off by his Attendants

  King Richard II

  And let them die that age and sullens have;

  For both hast thou, and both become the grave.

  Duke Of 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 II

  Right, you say true: as Hereford’s love, so his;

  As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.

  Enter Northumberland

  Northumberland

  My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your majesty.

  King Richard II

  What says he?

  Northumberland

  Nay, nothing; all is said

  His tongue is now a stringless instrument;

  Words, life and all, old Lancaster hath spent.

  Duke Of York

  Be York the next that must be bankrupt so!

  Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.

  King Richard II

  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, corn, revenues and moveables,

  Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possess’d.

  Duke Of 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

  Not 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 look’d he,

  Accomplish’d with the number of thy hours;

  But when he frown’d, it was against the French

  And not against his friends; his noble hand

  Did will 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 II

  Why, uncle, what’s the matter?

  Duke Of York

  O my liege,

  Pardon me, if you please; if n ot, I, pleased

  Not to be pardon’d, am content withal.

  Seek you to seize and gripe into your hands

  The royalties and rights of banish’d 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 to-morrow then ensue to-day;

  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 patent that he hath

  By his attorneys-general to sue

  His livery, and deny his offer’d 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 II

  Think what you will, we seize into our hands

  His plate, his goods, his money and his lands.

  Duke Of 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 II

  Go, Bushy, to the Earl of Wiltshire straight:

  Bid him repair to us to Ely House

  To see this business. To-morrow next

  W
e 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: to-morrow must we part;

  Be merry, for our time of stay is short

  Flourish. Exeunt King Richard II, Queen, Duke Of Aumerle, Bushy, Green, and Bagot

  Northumberland

  Well, lords, the Duke of Lancaster is dead.

  Lord Ross

  And living too; for now his son is duke.

  Lord Willoughby

  Barely in title, not in revenue.

  Northumberland

  Richly in both, if justice had her right.

  Lord Ross

  My heart is great; but it must break with silence,

  Ere’t be disburden’d 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!

  Lord Willoughby

  Tends 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.

  Lord 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 moe

  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.

  Lord Ross

  The commons hath he pill’d with grievous taxes,

  And quite lost their hearts: the nobles hath he fined

  For ancient quarrels, and quite lost their hearts.

  Lord Willoughby

  And daily new exactions are devised,

  As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what:

  But what, o’ God’s name, doth become of this?

  Northumberland

  Wars have not wasted it, for warr’d he hath not,

  But basely yielded upon compromise

  That which his noble ancestors achieved with blows:

  More hath he spent in peace than they in wars.

  Lord Ross

  The Earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm.

  Lord Willoughby

  The king’s grown bankrupt, like a broken man.

  Northumberland

  Reproach and dissolution hangeth over him.

  Lord Ross

  He hath not money for these Irish wars,

  His burthenous taxations notwithstanding,

  But by the robbing of the banish’d duke.

  Northumberland

  His noble kinsman: most degenerate king!

 

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