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The Coast of Wales. A Castle in view. | |
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Flourish: drums and trumpets. Enter KING RICHARD, the BISHOP OF CARLISLE, AUMERLE, and Soldiers. | |
| K. Rich. Barkloughly Castle call they this at hand? | |
| Aum. Yea, my lord. How brooks your Grace the air, | |
| After your late tossing on the breaking seas? | 5 |
| K. Rich. Needs must I like it well: I weep for joy | |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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 ravenous sense; | 15 |
| 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; | 20 |
| And when they from thy bosom pluck a flower, | |
| Guard it, I pray thee, with a lurking adder | |
| Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch | |
| Throw death upon thy sovereign’s enemies. | |
| Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords: | 25 |
| This earth shall have a feeling and these stones | |
| Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king | |
| Shall falter under foul rebellion’s arms. | |
| Car. Fear not, my lord: that power that made you king | |
| Hath power to keep you king in spite of all. | 30 |
| 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; | 35 |
| 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, | 40 |
| 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, | 45 |
| Then murders, treasons, and detested sins, | |
| The cloak of night being pluck’d from off their backs, | |
| Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves? | |
| So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke, | |
| Who all this while hath revell’d in the night | 50 |
| Whilst we were wandering with the antipodes, | |
| Shall see us rising in our throne, the east, | |
| His treasons will sit blushing in his face, | |
| Not able to endure the sight of day, | |
| But self-affrighted tremble at his sin. | 55 |
| Not all the water in the rough rude sea | |
| Can wash the balm from an anointed king; | |
| The breath of worldly men cannot depose | |
| The deputy elected by the Lord. | |
| For every man that Bolingbroke hath press’d | 60 |
| 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. | |
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Enter SALISBURY. | 65 |
| 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 me, noble lord, | 70 |
| 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; | 75 |
| 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; | 80 |
| 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. | |
| Aum. Comfort, my liege! remember who you are. | 85 |
| K. Rich. I had forgot myself. Am I not king? | |
| Awake, thou sluggard majesty! thou sleepest. | |
| Is not the king’s name twenty thousand names? | |
| Arm, arm, my name! a puny subject strikes | |
| At thy great glory. Look not to the ground, | 90 |
| Ye favourites of a king: are we not high? | |
| High be our thoughts: I know my uncle York | |
| Hath power enough to serve our turn. But who comes here? | |
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Enter SIR STEPHEN SCROOP. | |
| Scroop. More health and happiness betide my liege | 95 |
| 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? | 100 |
| 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: | 105 |
| 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 | 110 |
| Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores, | |
| As if the world were all dissolv’d 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. | 115 |
| White-beards have arm’d their thin and hairless scalps | |
| Against thy majesty; and 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 | 120 |
| 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. | 125 |
| 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. | 130 |
| 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! | |
| Snakes, in my heart-blood warm’d, that sting my heart! | 135 |
| Three Judases, 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. | 140 |
| 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. | |
| Aum. Is Bushy, Green, and the Earl of Wiltshire dead? | 145 |
| 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 | 150 |
| 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, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke’s, | 155 |
| 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 God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground | |
| And tell sad stories of the death of kings: | 160 |
| How some have been depos’d, some slain in war, | |
| Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos’d, | |
| 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 | 165 |
| Keeps Death his court, and there the antick sits, | |
| 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 | 170 |
| 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 | 175 |
| 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, | 180 |
| How can you say to me I am a king? | |
| Car. My lord, wise men ne’er sit and wail their woes, | |
| But presently prevent the ways to wail. | |
| To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength, | |
| Gives in your weakness strength unto your foe, | 185 |
| 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; inquire of him | 190 |
| And learn to make a body of a limb. | |
| K. Rich. Thou chid’st me well. Proud Bolingbroke, 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.— | 195 |
| Say, Scroop, where lies our uncle with his power? | |
| Speak sweetly, man, although thy looks be sour. | |
| 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, | 200 |
| 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 is join’d with Bolingbroke, | |
| And all your northern castles yielded up, | 205 |
| And all your southern gentlemen in arms | |
| Upon his party. | |
| K. Rich. Thou hast said enough. | |
| [To AUMERLE.] Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth | |
| Of that sweet way I was in to despair! | 210 |
| 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. | 215 |
| 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. | 220 |
| 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. | |
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