For taking so the head, your whole head’s length.
BOLINGBROKE
Mistake not, uncle, further than you should.
YORK
Take not, good cousin, further than you should,
Lest you mistake the heavens are over our heads.
BOLINGBROKE
I know it, uncle, and oppose not myself
Against their will.
Enter Harry Percy ⌈and a trumpeter⌉
But who comes here?
Welcome, Harry. What, will not this castle yield?
HARRY PERCY
The castle royally is manned, my lord,
Against thy entrance.
BOLINGBROKE Royally?
Why, it contains no king.
HARRY PERCY
Yes, my good lord,
It doth contain a king. King Richard lies
Within the limits of yon lime and stone,
And with him are the Lord Aumerle, Lord Salisbury,
Sir Stephen Scrope, besides a clergyman
Of holy reverence; who, I cannot learn.
NORTHUMBERLAND
O, belike it is the Bishop of Carlisle.
BOLINGBROKE (to Northumberland) Noble lord,
Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle;
Through brazen trumpet send the breath of parley
Into his ruined ears, and thus deliver.
Henry Bolingbroke
Upon his knees doth kiss King Richard’s hand,
And sends allegiance and true faith of heart
To his most royal person, hither come
Even at his feet to lay my arms and power,
Provided that my banishment repealed
And lands restored again be freely granted.
If not, I’ll use the advantage of my power,
And lay the summer’s dust with showers of blood
Rained from the wounds of slaughtered 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.
Let’s march without the noise of threat‘ning drum,
That from this castle’s tottered battlements
Our fair appointments may be well perused.
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, whilst on the earth I rain
My waters: on the earth, and not on him.—
March on, and mark King Richard, how he looks.
⌈They march about the stage; then Bolingbroke, York, Percy, and soldiers stand at a distance from the walls; Northumberland and trumpeter advance to the walls.⌉ The trumpets sound Fa parley without, and an answer within; then a flourish within.⌉ King Richard appeareth on the walls, with the Bishop of Carlisle, the Duke of Aumerle, ⌈Scrope, and the Earl of Salisbury⌉
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.
YORK
Yet looks he like a king. Behold, his eye,
As bright as is the eagle’s, lightens forth
Controlling majesty. Alack, alack for woe
That any harm should stain so fair a show!
KING RICHARD (to Northumberland)
We are amazed; and thus long have we stood
To watch the fearful bending of thy knee,
Because we thought ourself thy lawful king.
An if we be, how dare thy joints forget
To pay their aweful duty to our presence?
If we be not, show us the hand of God
That hath dismissed us from our stewardship.
For well we know no hand of blood and bone
Can grip the sacred handle of our sceptre,
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 yon methinks he is,
That every stride he makes upon my land
Is dangerous treason. He is come to open
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.
NORTHUMBERLAND ⌈kneeling⌉
The King of heaven forbid our lord the King
Should so with civil and uncivil arms
Be rushed upon. Thy thrice-noble cousin
Harry Bolingbroke doth humbly kiss thy hand,
And by the honourable tomb he swears,
That stands upon your 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, no
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 and just,
And as I am a gentleman I credit him.
KING RICHARD
Northumberland, say thus the King returns:
His noble cousin is right welcome hither,
And all the number of his fair demands
Shall be accomplished without contradiction.
With all the gracious utterance thou hast,
Speak to his gentle hearing kind commends.
Northumberland and the trumpeter return to Bolingbroke
(To Aumerle) We do debase ourself, cousin, do we not,
To look so poorly and to speak so fair?
Shall we call back Northumberland, and send
Defiance to the traitor, and so die?
AUMERLE
No, good my lord, let’s fight with gentle words
Till time lend friends, and friends their helpful swords.
KING RICHARD
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.
Northumberland advances to the walls
AUMERLE
&
nbsp; Northumberland comes back from Bolingbroke.
KING RICHARD
What must the King do now? Must he submit?
The King shall do it. Must he be deposed?
The King shall be contented. Must he lose
The name of King? A 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 almsman’s gown,
My figured goblets for a dish of wood,
My sceptre 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 cousin.
We’ll make foul weather with despised tears.
Our sighs and they shall lodge the summer corn,
And make a dearth 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? ‘There lies
Two kinsmen digged 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’.
NORTHUMBERLAND
My lord, in the base court he doth attend
To speak with you. May it please you to come down?
KING RICHARD
Down, down I come like glist’ring Phaethon,
Wanting the manage of unruly jades.
In the base court: base court where kings grow base
To come at traitors’ calls, and do them grace.
In the base court, come down: down court, down
King,
For night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing.
Exeunt King Richard and his party
Northumberland returns to Bolingbroke
BOLINGBROKE
What says his majesty?
NORTHUMBERLAND Sorrow and grief of heart
Makes him speak fondly, like a frantic man.
Enter King Richard ⌈and his party⌉ below
Yet he is come.
BOLINGBROKE Stand all apart,
And show fair duty to his majesty.
He kneels down
My gracious lord.
KING RICHARD
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 unpleased eye see your courtesy.
Up, cousin, up. Your heart is up, I know,
Thus high at least, although your knee be low.
BOLINGBROKE
My gracious lord, I come but for mine own.
KING RICHARD
Your own is yours, and I am yours, and all.
BOLINGBROKE
So far be mine, my most redoubted lord,
As my true service shall deserve your love.
KING RICHARD
Well you deserve. They well deserve to have
That know the strong’st and surest way to get.
⌈Bolingbroke rises⌉
(To York) Uncle, give me your hands. Nay, dry your
eyes.
Tears show their love, but want their remedies.
(To Bolingbroke) 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?
BOLINGBROKE
Yea, my good lord.
KING RICHARD Then I must not say no.
Flourish. Exeunt
3.4 Enter the Queen, with her two Ladies
QUEEN
What sport shall we devise here in this garden,
To drive away the heavy thought of care?
⌈first⌉ LADY Madam, we’ll play at bowls.
QUEEN
’Twill make me think the world is full of rubs,
And that my fortune runs against the bias.
⌈SECOND⌉ LADY Madam, we’ll dance.
QUEEN
My legs can keep no measure in delight
When my poor heart no measure keeps in grief;
Therefore no dancing, girl. Some other sport.
⌈FIRST⌉ LADY Madam, we’ll tell tales.
QUEEN Of sorrow or of joy?
⌈FIRST⌉ LADY Of either, madam.
QUEEN Of neither, girl.
For if of joy, being altogether wanting,
It doth remember me the more of sorrow.
Or if of grief, being altogether had,
It adds more sorrow to my want of joy.
For what I have I need not to repeat,
And what I want it boots not to complain.
⌈SECOND⌉ LADY
Madam, I’ll sing.
QUEEN
’Tis well that thou hast cause;
But thou shouldst please me better wouldst thou weep.
⌈SECOND⌉ LADY
I could weep, madam, would it do you good.
QUEEN
And I could sing, would weeping do me good,
And never borrow any tear of thee.
Enter a Gardener and two Men
But stay; here come the gardeners.
Let’s step into the shadow of these trees.
My wretchedness unto a row of pins
They will talk of state, for everyone doth so
Against a change. Woe is forerun with woe.
The Queen and her Ladies stand apart
GARDENER ⌈to First Man⌉
Go, bind thou up young dangling apricots
Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight.
Give some supportance to the bending twigs.
⌈To Second Man⌉ Go thou, and, like an executioner,
Cut off the heads of too fast-growing sprays
That look too lofty in our commonwealth.
All must be even in our government.
You thus employed, I will go root away
The noisome weeds which without profit suck
The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.
⌈FIRST⌉ MAN
Why should we, in the compass of a pale,
Keep law and form and due proportion,
Showing as in a model our firm estate,
When our sea-wallèd garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up,
Her fruit trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined,
Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars?
GARDENER Hold thy peace.
He that hath suffered this disordered spring
Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf.
The weeds which his broad spreading leaves did
shelter,
That seemed in eating him to hold him up,
Are plucked up, root and all, by Bolingbroke—
I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green.
⌈SECOND⌉ MAN
What, are they dead?
GARDENER They are; and Bolingbroke
Hath seized the wasteful K
ing. O, what pity is it
That he had not so trimmed and dressed his land
As we this garden! We at time of year
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees,
Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood,
With too much riches it confound itself.
Had he done so to great and growing men,
They might have lived to bear, and he to taste,
Their fruits of duty. Superfluous branches
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live.
Had he done so, himself had borne the crown,
Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.
⌈FIRST⌉ MAN
What, think you then the King shall be deposed?
GARDENER
Depressed he is already, and deposed
’Tis doubt he will be. Letters came last night
To a dear friend of the good Duke of York’s
That tell black tidings.
QUEEN
O, I am pressed to death through want of speaking!
She comes forward
Thou, old Adam’s likeness, set to dress this garden,
How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news?
What Eve, what serpent hath suggested thee
To make a second fall of cursed man?
Why dost thou say King Richard is deposed?
Dar‘st thou, thou little better thing than earth,
Divine his downfall? Say where, when, and how
Cam’st thou by this ill tidings? Speak, thou wretch!
GARDENER
Pardon me, madam. Little joy have I
To breathe this news, yet what I say is true.
King Richard he is in the mighty hold
Of Bolingbroke. Their fortunes both are weighed.
In your lord’s scale is nothing but himself
And some few vanities that make him light.
But in the balance of great Bolingbroke,
Besides himself, are all the English peers,
And with that odds he weighs King Richard down.
Post you to London and you will find it so.
I speak no more than everyone doth know.
QUEEN
Nimble mischance that art so light of foot,
Doth not thy embassage belong to me,
And am I last that knows it? O, thou think‘st
To serve me last, that I may longest keep
Thy sorrow in my breast. Come, ladies, go
To meet at London London’s king in woe.
What, was I born to this, that my sad look
Should grace the triumph of great Bolingbroke?
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 122
