By you unhappied and disfigur'd clean.
You have, in manner, with your sinful hours,
Made a divorce betwixt his queen and him;
Broke the possession of a royal bed,
And stain'd the beauty of a fair queen's cheeks
With tears drawn from her eyes by your foul wrongs.
Myself-a prince, by fortune of my birth;
Near to the king in blood; and near in love,
Till you did make him misinterpret me, ———
Have stoop'd my neck under your injuries,
And sigh'd my English breath in foreign clouds,
Eating the bitter bread cf banishment :
Whilst you have fed upon my seignories,
Dispark'd my parks, and fell'd my forest woods;
From my own windows torn my household coat,
Raz'd out my impress, leaving me no sign
Save men's opinions, and my living blood,
To show the world I am a gentleman,
This, and much more, much more than twice all
this,
Condemns you to the death: See them deliver'd

over

To execution and the hand of death.

And plague injustice with the pains of hell. Boling. My lord Northumberland, see them despatch'd.

[Exeunt NORTHUMBERLAND and others, with
Prisoners.

Uncle, you say, the queen is at your house :
For heaven's sake, fairly let her be entreated:
Tell her, I send to her my kind commends;
Take special care my greetings be deliver❜d.

York. A gentleman of mine I have despatch'd With letters of your love to her at large.

Bishop. Fear not, my lord; that Power, that made you king,

Hath power to keep you king, in spite of all.
The means that heaven yields must be embrac'd,
And not neglected; else, if heaven would,
And we will not, heaven's offer we refuse;
The proffer'd means of succour and redress.
Aum. He means, my lord, that we are too remiss;
Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security,
Grows strong and great, in substance, and in friends.
K. Rich. Discomfortable cousin! know'st thou
not,

That when the searching eye of heaven is hid
Behind the globe, and lights the lower world,
Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen,
In murders, and in outrage, bloody here;
But when, from under this terrestrial ball,
He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines,
And darts his light through every guilty hole,
Then murders, treasons, and detested sins,
The cloak of night being pluck'd from off their
backs,

Flourish: Drums and Trumpets. Enter KING RICHARD, BISHOP OF CARLISLE, AUMERLE, and Soldiers.

K. Rich. Barkloughly castle call you this at hand? Aum. Yea, my lord. How brooks your grace the air,

After late tossing on the breaking seas?

K. Rich. Needs must I like it well; I weep joy,

for

To stand upon my kingdom once again.
Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand,
Though rebels wound thee with their horses' hoofs:
As a long parted mother with her child
Plays fondly with her tears, and smiles in meeting;
So, weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth,
And do thee favour with my royal hands.
Feed not thy sovereign's foe, my gentle earth,
Nor with thy sweets comfort his rav'nous sense:
But let thy spiders, that suck up thy venom,
And heavy-gaited toads, lie in their way;
Doing annoyance to the treacherous feet,
Which with usurping steps do trample thee.
Yield stinging nettles to mine enemies :

And when they from thy bosom pluck a flower,

The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord:

For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd,
To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown,
God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay
A glorious angel: then, if angels fight,
Weak men must fall; for heaven still guards the
right.

Enter SALISBURY.
Welcome, my lord; How far off lies your power?

Sal. Nor near, nor further off, my gracious lord, Than this weak arm: Discomfort guides my tongue, And bids me speak of nothing but despair. One day too late, I fear, my noble lord, Hath clouded all thy happy days on earth: O, call back yesterday, bid time return, And thou shalt have twelve thousand fighting men To-day, to-day, unhappy day, too late, O'erthrows thy joys, friends, fortune, and thy state; For all the Welshmen, hearing thou wert dead, Are gone to Bolingbroke, dispers'd and fled.

Aum. Comfort, my liege: why looks your grace so pale?

K. Rich. But now, the blood of twenty thousand

men

Did triumph in my face, and they are fled; And, till so much blood thither come again,

Have I not reason to look pale and dead? All souls that will be safe, fly from my side; For time hath set a blot upon my pride.

Scroop. More health and happiness betide my liege,

Than can my care-tun'd tongue deliver him.

K. Rich. Mine ear is open, and my heart prepar'd;

The worst is worldly loss, thou canst unfold.
Say, is my kingdom lost? why, 'twas my care;
And what loss is it, to be rid of care?
Strives Bolingbroke to be as great as we?
Greater he shall not be; if he serve God,
We'll serve him too, and be his fellow so:
Revolt our subjects? that we cannot mend;
They break their faith to God, as well as us:
Cry, woe, destruction, ruin, loss, decay;
The worst is death, and death will have his day.
Scroop. Glad am I, that your highness is so arm'd
To bear the tidings of calamity.

Like an unseasonable stormy day,

Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores,
As if the world were all dissolved to tears;
So high above his limits swells the rage
Of Bolingbroke, covering your fearful land
With hard bright steel, and hearts harder than steel.
White beards have arm'd their thin and hairless
scalps

Against thy majesty; boys, with women's voices,
Strive to speak big, and clap their female joints
In stiff unwieldy arms against thy crown:
Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows
Of double-fatal yew against thy state;
Yea, distaff-women manage rusty bills
Against thy seat: both young and old rebel,
And all goes worse than I have power to tell.

K. Rich. Too well, too well, thou tell'st a tale so ill.

Where is the earl of Wiltshire? where is Bagot?
What is become of Bushy? where is Green?
That they have let the dangerous enemy
Measure our confines with such peaceful steps?
If we prevail, their heads shall pay for it.

I warrant they have made peace with Bolingbroke. Scroop. Peace have they made with him, indeed, my lord.

K. Rich. O villains, vipers, damn'd without redemption !

Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man!

Aum. Is Bushy, Green, and the earl of Wiltshire, dead?

Scroop. Yea, all of them at Bristol lost their heads.

Aum. Where is the duke my father with his

power?

K. Rich. No matter where; of comfort no man

speak :

Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
Let's choose executors, and talk of wills:
And yet not so, - for what can we bequeath,
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, or lives, and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own, but death;
And that small model of the barren earth,
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For heaven's sake, let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been depos'd, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd:· For within the hollow crown,
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,

Keeps death his court: and there the antick site.
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene

To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and, humour'd thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and — farewell king!
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence; throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while :
I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief,
Need friends: - Subjected thus,

How can you say to me — - I am a king?

Car. My lord, wise men ne'er wail their present

woes,

But presently prevent the ways to wail.

To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength, | Gives, in your weakness, strength unto your foe, And so your follies fight against yourself.

Fear, and be slain; no worse can come, to fight: And fight and die, is death destroying death; Where fearing dying, pays death servile breath.

Aum. My father hath a power, enquire of him; And learn to make a body of a limb.

K. Rich. Thou chid'st me well :-Proud Boling-
broke, I come

To change blows with thee for our day of doom.
This ague-fit of fear is over-blown ;
An easy task it is, to win our own.

Say, Scroop, where lies our uncle with his power?

heart!

Three Judasses, each one thrice worse than Judas! Would they make peace? terrible hell make war Upon their spotted souls for this offence!

Scroop. Sweet love, I see, changing his property, Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate : Again uncurse their souls; their peace is made With heads, and not with hands: those whom you

curse,

Have felt the worst of death's destroying wound, And lie full low, grav'd in the hollow ground.

Scroop. Men judge by the complexion of the sky
The state and inclination of the day:

So may you by my dull and heavy eye,
My tongue hath but a heavier tale to say.

I play the torturer, by small and small,
To lengthen out the worst that must be spoken:
Your uncle York hath join'd with Bolingbroke;
And all your northern castles yielded up,
And all your southern gentlemen in arms
Upon his party.

K. Rich.

Thou hast said enough.

If not, I'll use the advantage of my power,
And lay the summer's dust with showers of blood,
Rain'd from the wounds of slaughter'd Englishmen :
The which, how far off from the mind of Bolingbroke
It is, such crimson tempest should bedrench
The fresh green lap of fair king Richard's land,
My stooping duty tenderly shall show.
Go, signify as much; while here we march
Upon the grassy carpet of this plain.

Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth
[To AUMERIE.
Of that sweet way I was in to despair!
What say you now? What comfort have we now?
By heaven, I'll hate him everlastingly,
That bids me be of comfort any more.
Go to Flint castle; there I'll pine away;
A king, woe's slave, shall kingly woe obey.
That power I have, discharge; and let them go
To ear the land that hath some hope to grow,
For I have none: - Let no man speak again
To alter this, for counsel is but vain.

Aum. My liege, one word.
K. Rich.
He does me double wrong,
That wounds me with the flatteries of his tongue.
Discharge my followers, let them hence; Away,
From Richard's night, to Bolingbroke's fair day.
[Exeunt.

SCENE III. - Wales. Before Flint Castle. Enter, with drum and colours, BOLINGBROKE and Forces; YORK, NORTHUMBERLAND, and others. Boling. So that by this intelligence we learn, The Welshmen are dispers'd; and Salisbury Is gone to meet the king, who lately landed, With some few private friends, upon this coast. North. The news is very fair, and good, my lord; Richard, not far from hence, hath hid his head.

York. It would beseem the lord Northumberland, To say king Richard: - Alack the heavy day, When such a sacred king should hide his head! North. Your grace mistakes me; only to be brief, Left I his title out.

York. The time hath been, Would you have been so brief with him, he would Have been so brief with you, to shorten you, For taking so the head, your whole head's length. Boling. Mistake not, uncle, further than you should.

York. Take not, good cousin, further than you should,

Lest you mis-take: The heavens are o'er your head. Boling. I know it, uncle; and oppose not Myself against their will. - But who comes here?

1

[NORTHUMBERLAND advances to the castle,
with a trumpet.

Let's march without the noise of threat'ning drum,
That from the castle's totter'd battlements
Our fair appointments may be well perus'd.
Methinks, king Richard and myself should meet
With no less terror than the elements

Of fire and water, when their thund'ring shock
At meeting tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven.
Be he the fire, I'll be the yielding water:
The rage be his, while on the earth I rain
My waters; on the earth, and not on him.
March on, and mark king Richard how he looks.
A parle sounded, and answered by another trumpet
within. Flourish. Enter on the walls KING
RICHARD, the BISHOP OF CARLISLE, AUMERLE,
SCROOP, and SALISBURY.

York. See, see, king Richard doth himself appear,
As doth the blushing discontented sun,
From out the fiery portal of the east ;
When he perceives the envious clouds are bent
To dim his glory, and to stain the track
Of his bright passage to the occident.
Yet looks he like a king; behold, his eye,
As bright as is the eagle's, lightens forth
Controuling majesty; Alack, alack, for woe,
That any harm should stain so fair a show!
K. Rich. We are amaz'd; and thus long have we
stood

To watch the fearful bending of thy knee,
To NORTHUMBErland.
Because we thought ourself thy lawful king :
And if we be, how dare thy joints forget
To pay their awful duty to our presence?
If we be not, show us the hand of God
That hath dismiss'd us from our stewardship;
For well we know, no hand of blood and bone
Can gripe the sacred handle of our scepter,
Unless he do profane, steal, or usurp.
And though you think, that all, as you have done
Have torn their souls, by turning them from us,
And we are barren, and bereft of friends;
Yet know,-
my master, God omnipotent,
Is mustering in his clouds, on our behalf,
Armies of pestilence; and they shall strike
Your children yet unborn, and unbegot,
That lift your vassal hands against my head,
And threat the glory of my precious crown.
Tell Bolingbroke, (for yond', methinks, he is,)
That every stride he makes upon my land,
Is dangerous treason: He is come to ope
The purple testament of bleeding war;
But ere the crown he looks for live in peace,
Ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers' sons
Shall ill become the flower of England's face;
Change the complexion of her maid-pale peace
To scarlet indignation, and bedew
Her pastures' grass with faithful English blood.
North. The king of heaven forbid, our lord the

king

Should so with civil and uncivil rins

Be rush'd upon! Thy thrice-noble cousin,
Harry Bolingbroke, doth humbly kiss thy hand;
And by the honourable tomb he swears,
That stands upon thy royal grandsire's bones;
And by the royalties of both your bloods,
Currents that spring from one most gracious head;
And by the buried hand of warlike Gaunt;
And by the worth and honour of himself,
Comprising all that may be sworn or said, -
His coming hither hath no further scope,
Than for his lineal royalties, and to beg
Enfranchisement immediate on his knees;
Which on thy royal party granted once,
His glittering arms he will commend to rust,
His barbed steeds to stables, and his heart
To faithful service of your majesty.
This swears he, as he is a prince, is just;
And, as I am a gentleman, I credit him.
K. Rich. Northumberland, say,

returns;

thus the king

K. Rich. O God! O God! that e'er this tongue of mine,

That laid the sentence of dread banishment
On yon proud man, should take it off again
With words of sooth! O, that I were as great
As is my grief, or lesser than my name!
Or that I could forget what I have been!
Or not remember what I must be now!

Swell'st thou, proud heart? I'll give thee scope to beat,

Since foes have scope to beat both thee and me.

Aum. Northumberland comes back from Boling

broke.

K. Rich. What must the king do now? Must he submit?

The king shall do it. Must he be depos'd?
The king shall be contented: Must he lose
The name of king? o'God's name, let it go:
I'll give my jewels, for a set of beads;
My gorgeous palace, for a hermitage;
My gay apparel, for an alms-man's gown;
My figur'd goblets, for a dish of wood;
My scepter, for a palmer's walking-staff;
My subjects, for a pair of carved saints;
And my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little little grave, an obscure grave:
Or I'll be buried in the king's highway,
Some way of common trade, where subjects' feet
May hourly trample on their sovereign's head:
For on my heart they tread, now whilst I live;
And, buried once, why not upon my head?.
Aumerle, thou weep'st; My tender-hearted cou-
sin! -

We'll make foul weather with despised tears;
Our sighs, and they, shall lodge the summer corn,

There lies

And make a dear in this revolting land.
Or shall we play the wantons with our woes,
And make some pretty match with shedding tears.
As thus ; To drop them still upon one place,
Till they have fretted us a pair of graves
Within the earth; and, therein laid,
Two kinsmen, digg'd their graves with weeping eyes?
Would not this ill do well? Well, well, I see
I talk but idly, and you mock at me. —
Most mighty prince, my lord Northumberland,
What says king Bolingbroke? will his majesty
Give Richard leave to live till Richard die?
You make a leg, and Bolingbroke says — -ay.
North. My lord, in the base court he doth attend
To speak with you; may't please you to come

down?

K. Rich. Down, down, I come; like glistering

Phaeton,

Wanting the manage of unruly jades.

[NORTH. retires to BOLING. In the base court? Base court, where kings grow

Sorrow and grief of heart Makes him speak fondly, like a frantick man : Yet he is come.

Enter KING RICHARD, and his Attendants below. And show fair duty to his majesty. Boling. Stand all apart,

My gracious lord,

[Kneeling.

K. Rich. Fair cousin, you debase your princely

knee,

To make the base earth proud with kissing it:
Me rather had, my heart might feel your love,
Than my unpleas'd eye see your courtesy.
Up, cousin, up; your heart is up, I know,
Thus high at least, [touching his own head.] although
your knee be low.

Boling. My gracious lord, I come but for mine

own.

K. Rich. Your own is yours, and I am yours, and all.

Boling. So far be mine, my most redoubted lord, As my true service shall deserve your love.

K. Rich. Well you deserve: - They well deserve

to have,

That know the strong'st and surest way to get.
Uncle, give me your hand: nay, dry your eyes;
Tears show their love, but want their remedies.
Cousin, I am too young to be your father,
Though you are old enough to be my heir.
What you will have, I'll give, and willing too;
For do we must, what force will have us do.
Set on towards London: Cousin, is it so?
Boling. Yea, my good lord.
K. Rich.