Complete Plays, The
Page 164
For I have given here my soul’s consent
To undeck the pompous body of a king;
Made glory base and sovereignty a slave,
Proud majesty a subject, state a peasant.
Northumberland
My lord,—
King Richard II
No lord of thine, thou haught insulting man,
Nor no man’s lord; I have no name, no title,
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,
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away in water-drops!
Good king, great king, and yet not greatly good,
An if my word be sterling yet in England,
Let it command a mirror hither straight,
That it may show me what a face I have,
Since it is bankrupt of his majesty.
Henry Bolingbroke
Go some of you and fetch a looking-glass.
Exit an attendant
Northumberland
Read o’er this paper while the glass doth come.
King Richard II
Fiend, thou torment’st me ere I come to hell!
Henry Bolingbroke
Urge it no more, my Lord Northumberland.
Northumberland
The commons will not then be satisfied.
King Richard II
They shall be satisfied: I’ll read enough,
When I do see the very book indeed
Where all my sins are writ, and that’s myself.
Re-enter Attendant, with a glass
Give me the 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 flattering glass,
Like to my followers in prosperity,
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?
Was this the face that faced so many follies,
And was at last out-faced 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 a hundred shivers.
Mark, silent king, the moral of this sport,
How soon my sorrow hath destroy’d my face.
Henry Bolingbroke
The shadow of your sorrow hath destroy’d
The shadow or your face.
King Richard II
Say that again.
The shadow of my sorrow! ha! let’s see:
’Tis very true, my grief lies all within;
And these external manners of laments
Are merely shadows to the unseen grief
That swells with silence in the tortured soul;
There lies the substance: and I thank thee, king,
For thy great bounty, that not only givest
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?
Henry Bolingbroke
Name it, fair cousin.
King Richard II
‘Fair cousin’? I am greater than a king:
For when I was a king, my flatterers
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.
Henry Bolingbroke
Yet ask.
King Richard II
And shall I have?
Henry Bolingbroke
You shall.
King Richard II
Then give me leave to go.
Henry Bolingbroke
Whither?
King Richard II
Whither you will, so I were from your sights.
Henry Bolingbroke
Go, some of you convey him to the Tower.
King Richard II
O, good! convey? conveyers are you all,
That rise thus nimbly by a true king’s fall.
Exeunt King Richard II, some Lords, and a Guard
Henry Bolingbroke
On Wednesday next we solemnly set down
Our coronation: lords, prepare yourselves.
Exeunt all except the Bishop Of Carlisle, the Abbot of Westminster, and Duke Of Aumerle
Abbot
A woeful pageant have we here beheld.
Bishop Of Carlisle
The woe’s to come; the children yet unborn.
Shall feel this day as sharp to them as thorn.
Duke Of Aumerle
You holy clergymen, is there no plot
To rid the realm of this pernicious blot?
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.
I see your brows are full of discontent,
Your hearts of sorrow and your eyes of tears:
Come home with me to supper; and I’ll lay
A plot shall show us all a merry day.
Exeunt
ACT V
SCENE I. LONDON. A STREET LEADING TO THE TOWER.
Enter Queen and Ladies
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
Have any resting for her true king’s queen.
Enter King Richard II 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.
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 lodged in thee,
When triumph is become an alehouse guest?
King Richard II
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 awaked, the truth of what we are
Shows us but this: I am sworn brother, sweet,
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 stricken down.
Queen
What, is my Richard both in shape and mind
Transform’d and weaken’d? hath Bolingbroke deposed
Thine intellect? hath he been in thy heart?
The lion dying thrusteth forth his paw,
And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage
To be o’erpower’d; and wilt thou, pupil-like,
Take thy correction mildly, kiss the rod,
And fawn on rage with base humility,
Which art a lion and a king of beasts?
King Richard II
A king of beasts, indeed; if aught but beasts,
I had been still a happy king of men.
Good sometime 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
With good old folks and let them tell thee tales
Of woeful ages long ago betid;
And ere thou bid good night, to quit their griefs,
Tell thou the lamentable tale of me
And send the hearers weeping to their beds:
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.
Enter Northumberland and others
Northumberland
My lord, the mind of Bolingbroke is changed:
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.
King Richard II
Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal
The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne,
The time shall not be many hours of age
More than it is ere foul sin gathering head
Shalt break into corruption: thou shalt think,
Though he divide the realm and give thee half,
It is too little, helping him to all;
And he shall think that thou, which know’st the way
To plant unrightful kings, wilt know again,
Being ne’er so little urged, another way
To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne.
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.
King Richard II
Doubly divorced! Bad men, you violate
A twofold 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.
Part us, Northumberland; I toward 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 Hallowmas or short’st of day.
Queen
And must we be divided? must we part?
King Richard II
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.
King Richard II
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.
King Richard II
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;
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 might strive to kill it with a groan.
King Richard II
We make woe wanton with this fond delay:
Once more, adieu; the rest let sorrow say.
Exeunt
SCENE II. THE DUKE OF YORK’S PALACE.
Enter Duke Of York and Duchess Of York
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.
Duke Of York
Where did I leave?
Duchess Of York
At that sad stop, my lord,
Where rude misgovern’d hands from windows’ tops
Threw dust and rubbish on King Richard’s head.
Duke Of 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,
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
With painted imagery had said at once
‘Jesu preserve thee! welcome, Bolingbroke!’
Whilst he, from the one side to the other turning,
Bareheaded, lower than his proud steed’s neck,
Bespake them thus: ‘I thank you, countrymen:’
And thus still doing, thus he pass’d along.
Duchess Of York
Alack, poor Richard! where rode he the whilst?
Duke Of York
As in a theatre, the eyes of men,
After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
Thinking his prattle to be tedious;
Even so, or with much more contempt, men’s eyes
Did scowl on gentle Richard; no man cried ‘God save him!’
No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home:
But dust was thrown upon his sacred head:
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
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.
Duchess Of York
Here comes my son Aumerle.
Duke Of 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.
Enter Duke Of Aumerle
Duchess Of York
Welcome, my son: who are the violets now
That strew the green lap of the new come spring?
Duke Of Aumerle
Madam, I know not, nor I greatly care not:
God knows I had as lief be none as one.
Duke Of York
Well, bear you well in this new spring of time,
Lest you be cropp’d before you come to prime.
What news from Oxford? hold those justs and triumphs?
Duke Of Aumerle
For aught I know, my lord, they do.
Duke Of York
You will be there, I know.
Duke Of Aumerle
If God prevent not, I purpose so.
Duke Of York
What seal is that, that hangs without thy bosom?
Yea, look’st thou pale? let me see the writing.
Duke Of Aumerle
My lord, ’tis nothing.
Duke Of York
No matter, then, who see it;
I will be satisfied; let me see the writing.
Duke Of Aumerle
I do beseech your grace to pardon me:
It is a matter of small consequence,
Which for some reasons I would not have seen.
Duke Of 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 bond, that he is enter’d into
For gay apparel ’gainst the triumph day.
Duke Of 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.
Duke Of Aumerle
I do beseech you, pardon me; I may not show it.
Duke Of York
I will be satisfied; let me see it, I say.
He plucks it out of his bosom and reads it
Treason! foul treason! Villain! traitor! slave!
Duchess Of York
What is the matter, my lord?
Duke Of York
Ho! who is within there?
Enter a Servant
Saddle my horse.
God for his mercy, what treachery is here!
Duchess Of York
Why, what is it, my lord?
Duke Of York
Give me my boots, I say; saddle my horse.
Now, by mine honour, by my life, by my troth,
I will appeach the villain.
Duchess Of York
What is the matter?
Duke Of York
Peace, foolish woman.
Duchess Of York
I will not peace. What is the matter, Aumerle.
Duke Of Aumerle
Good mother, be content; it is no more
Than my poor life must answer.
Duchess Of York
Thy life answer!
Duke Of York
Bring me my boots: I will unto the king.
Re-enter Servant with boots
Duchess Of York
Strike him, Aumerle. Poor boy, thou art amazed.
Hence, villain! never more come in my sight.
Duke Of York
Give me my boots, I say.
Duchess Of York
Why, York, what wilt thou do?
Wilt thou not hide the trespass of thine own?
Have we more sons? or are we like to have?
Is not my teeming date drunk up with time?
And wilt thou pluck my fair son from mine age,
And rob me of a happy mother’s name?
Is he not like thee? is he not thine own?
Duke Of York
Thou fond mad woman,
Wilt thou conceal this dark conspiracy?
A dozen of them here have ta’en the sacrament,
And interchangeably set down their hands,
To kill the king at Oxford.
Duchess Of York
He shall be none;