Now for the rebels which stand out in Ireland;
Expedient manage must be made, my liege,
Ere further leisure yield them further means 40
For their advantage and your highness' loss.
K. Rich. 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 enforc'd to farm our royal realm;
The revenue whereof shall furnish us
Green. Well, he is gone; and with him go | Lascivious metres, to whose venom sound
these thoughts.
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 buzz'd 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.
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. Old John of Gaunt is grievous sick,
my lord,
Suddenly taken, and hath sent post-haste
To entreat your majesty to visit him.
K. Rich. Where lies he?
Bushy. At Ely House.
Gaunt. Methinks I am a prophet new inspir'd,
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, 40
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,
60 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,
K. Rich. 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.
SCENE I.-London. An Apartment in Ely House.
GAUNT on a couch; the Duke of YORK and
Others standing by him.
Gaunt. Will the king come, that I may breathe
my last
In wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth? York. Vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath;
For all in vain comes counsel to his ear.
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 leas'd 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 :
Gaunt. O! but they say the tongues of dying 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 QUEEN; AUMERLE,
BUSHY, GREEN, BAGOT, Ross, and WIL-
Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt. The pleasure that some fathers feed upon
Is my strict fast, I mean my children's looks; 80 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. K. Rich. Can sick men play so nicely with their names?
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. K. Rich. Should dying men flatter with those that live?
Gaunt. No, no; men living flatter those that die.
K. Rich. Thou, now a-dying, say'st thou flatter'st me.
Gaunt. O! no, thou diest, though I the sicker be. K. Rich. I am in health, I breathe, and see thee ill.
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,
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, 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 bond slave to the law,
And thou-
K. Rich. A lunatic lean-witted fool,
Presuming on an agne's privilege,
Dar'st with thy frozen admonition
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.
K. Rich. Right, you say true: as Hereford's love, so his ;
As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.
Enter NORTHUMBERLAND.
North. My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your majesty.
K. Rich. What says he?
North.
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.
K. Rich. 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 hath 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 moveables,
Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possess'd.
York. How long shall I be patient? Ah!
how long
Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?
Not Gloucester's death, nor Hereford's banish-
Not Gaunt's rebukes, nor England's private
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 rag'd 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 190
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.
K. Rich. Why, uncle, what's the matter?
York.
O! my liege
Pardon me, if you please; if not, I, pleas'd
Not to be pardon'd, am content withal.
Seek you to seize and gripe into your hands 196
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?
North. Wars have not wasted it, for warr'd he hath not,
Take Hereford's rights away, and take from Time But basely yielded upon compromise
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.
K. Rich. Think what you will: we seize into
our hands
That which his ancestors achiev'd with blows.
More hath he spent in peace than they in wars.
Ross. The Earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in
farm.
Willo. The king's grown bankrupt, like a
broken man.
North. 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 banish'd duke.
North. 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.
North. 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.
Willo. 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. North. Then thus: I have from Port le Blanc, a bay
In Brittany, receiv'd intelligence
That Harry Duke of Hereford, Rainold Lord
Cobham,
Flourish. Exeunt KING, QUEEN, BUSHY, AUMERLE, GREEN, and BAGOT. North. Well, lords, the Duke of Lancaster is dead. Ross. And living too; for now his son is duke. That late broke from the Duke of Exeter, Willo. Barely in title, not in revenue. His brother, Archbishop late of Canterbury, North. Richly in both, if justice had her right. Sir Thomas Erpingham, Sir John Ramston, Ross. My heart is great; but it must break Sir John Norbery, Sir Robert Waterton, and with silence Francis Quoint,
Ere't be disburden'd with a liberal tongue.
North. Nay, speak thy mind; and let him
ne'er speak more
That speaks thy words again to do thee harm!
Willo. Tends that thou'dst 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.
North. 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 pill'd with grievous
taxes,
And lost their hearts: the nobles hath he fin'd
For ancient quarrels, and quite lost their hearts.
Willo. And daily new exactions are devis'd;
As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what :
But what, o' God's name, doth become of this?
All these well furnish'd by the Duke of Bretagne,
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 blemish'd 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.
Willo. Hold out my horse, and I will first be there. Exeunt.
SCENE II.-The Same. A Room in the Palace.
Enter the QUEEN, BUSHY, and BAGOT. Bushy. Madam, your majesty is too much sad: You promis'd, 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, 10 Is coming towards me, and my inward soul With nothing trembles; at some thing it grieves More than with parting from my lord the king. Bushy. Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,
Which show like grief itself, but are not so.
For sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire to many objects;
Like perspectives, which rightly gaz'd upon
Show nothing but confusion, eyed awry
Distinguish form: so your sweet majesty,
Looking awry upon your lord's departure,
Finds shapes of grief more than himself to wail;
Which, look'd on as it is, is nought but shadows
Of what it is not. Then, thrice-gracious queen,
More than your lord's departure weep not:
more's not seen;
Or if it be, 'tis with false sorrow's eye,
Which for things true weeps things imaginary.
Queen. It may be so; but yet my inward soul
Persuades me it is otherwise: howe'er it be,
I cannot but be sad, so heavy sad
As, though in thinking on no thought I think, Makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink. Bushy. 'Tis nothing but conceit, my gracious lady.
Queen. 'Tis nothing less: conceit is still deriv'd From some forefather grief; mine is not so, For nothing hath begot my something grief; Or something hath the nothing that I grieve: 'Tis in reversion that I do possess ; But what it is, that is not yet known; what I cannot name; 'tis nameless woe, I wot.
Green. Here comes the Duke of York. Queen. With signs of war about his aged neck: O full of careful business are his looks.
Uncle, for God's sake, speak comfortable words. York. Should I do so, I should belie my thoughts:
Comfort's in heaven; and we are on the earth,
Where nothing lives but crosses, cares, and grief.
Your husband, he is gone to save far off,
Whilst others come to make him lose at home:
Here am I left to underprop his land,
Who, weak with age, cannot support myself.
Now comes the sick hour that his surfeit made;
Now shall he try his friends that flatter'd him.
Enter a Servant.
Serv. My lord, your son was gone before I came. York. He was? Why, so! Go all which way it will!
The nobles they are fled, the commons they are cold,
And will, I fear, revolt on Hereford's side. Sirrah, get thee to Plashy, to my sister Gloucester;
Bid her send me presently a thousand pound. Hold, take my ring.
Serv. My lord, I had forgot to tell your lordship:
To-day, as I came by, I called there;
But I shall grieve you to report the rest.
York. What is 't, knave?
Serv. An hour before I came the duchess died. York. God for his mercy! what a tide of woes Comes rushing on this woeful land at once! I know not what to do: I would to God, So my untruth had not provok'd him to it, The king had cut off my head with my brother's. What! are there no posts dispatch'd for Ireland? How shall we do for money for these wars ? Come, sister; cousin, I would say: pray, pardon
Go, fellow, get thee home; provide some carts And bring away the armour that is there.
Exit Servant. Gentlemen, will you go muster men? If I know How or which way to order these affairs Thus thrust disorderly into my hands, Never believe me. Both are my kinsmen: The one is my sovereign, whom both my oath And duty bids defend; the other again Is my kinsman, whom the king hath wrong'd, Whom conscience and my kindred bids to right. Well, somewhat we must do. Come, cousin, I'll dispose of you. Gentlemen, go muster up
Bagot. If judgment lie in them, then so do we, Because we ever have been near the king.
Green. Well, I'll for refuge straight to Bristol castle;
The Earl of Wiltshire is already there.
Bushy. Thither will I with you; for little office
The hateful commons will perform for us,
Except like curs to tear us all to pieces.
Will you go along with us?
Bagot. No: I will to Ireland to his majesty.
Farewell: if heart's presages be not vain,
We three here part that ne'er shall meet again.
Bushy. That's as York thrives to beat back
Bolingbroke.
Green. Alas! poor duke, the task he undertakes
Is numbering sands and drinking oceans dry:
Where one on his side fights, thousands will fly.
Farewell at once; for once, for all, and ever.
Bushy. Well, we may meet again.
Bagot.
I fear me, never.
SCENE III.-The Wolds in Gloucestershire.
Enter BOLINGBROKE and NORTHUMBERLAND,
But he, my lord, is gone to Ravenspurgh,
To offer service to the Duke of Hereford,
And sent me over by Berkeley, to discover
What power the Duke of York had levied there;
Then with direction to repair to Ravenspurgh.
North. Have you forgot the Duke of Hereford,
boy?
Percy. No, my good lord; for that is not forgot
Which ne'er I did remember: to my knowledge
I never in my life did look on him.
North. Then learn to know him now; this is the duke.
North. How far is it to Berkeley? and what stir
Keeps good old York there with his men of war?
Percy. There stands the castle, by yon tuft of
trees,
Mann'd with three hundred men, as I have heard;
And in it are the Lords of York, Berkeley, and
Seymour;
Boling. How far is it, my lord, to Berkeley None else of name and noble estimate.
North. Believe me, noble lord,
I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire :
These high wild hills and rough uneven ways
Draw out our miles and make them wearisome;
And yet your fair discourse hath been as sugar,
Making the hard way sweet and delectable.
But I bethink me what a weary way
From Ravenspurgh to Cotswold will be found
In Ross and Willoughby, wanting your company,
Which, I protest, hath very much beguil'd
The tediousness and process of my travel:
But theirs is sweeten'd with the hope to have
The present benefit which I possess ;
And hope to joy is little less in joy
Than hope enjoy'd by this the weary lords
Shall make their way seem short, as mine hath
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