London. A Street leading to the Tower. | |
| |
Enter the QUEEN and LADIES. | |
| Queen. This way the king will come; this is the way | |
| To Julius Cæsar’s ill-erected tower, | 4 |
| 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. | 8 |
| |
Enter KING RICHARD 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, | 12 |
| 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, | 16 |
| Why should hard-favour’d grief be lodg’d in thee, | |
| When triumph is become an alehouse guest? | |
| K. Rich. Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so, | |
| To make my end too sudden: learn, good soul, | 20 |
| To think our former state a happy dream; | |
| From which awak’d, the truth of what we are | |
| Shows us but this. I am sworn brother, sweet, | |
| To grim Necessity, and he and I | 24 |
| 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. | 28 |
| Queen. What! is my Richard both in shape and mind | |
| Transform’d and weaken’d! Hath Bolingbroke depos’d | |
| Thine intellect? hath he been in thy heart? | |
| The lion dying thrusteth forth his paw | 32 |
| 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, | 36 |
| Which art a lion and a king of beasts? | |
| K. Rich. 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, | 40 |
| Think I am dead, and that even here thou tak’st, | |
| As from my death-bed, my last living leave. | |
| In winter’s tedious nights sit by the fire | |
| With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales | 44 |
| Of woeful ages, long ago betid; | |
| And ere thou bid good night, to quit their grief, | |
| Tell thou the lamentable tale of me, | |
| And send the hearers weeping to their beds: | 48 |
| 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, | 52 |
| For the deposing of a rightful king. | |
| |
Enter NORTHUMBERLAND, attended. | |
| North. My lord, the mind of Bolingbroke is chang’d; | |
| You must to Pomfret, not unto the Tower. | 56 |
| And, madam, there is order ta’en for you; | |
| With all swift speed you must away to France. | |
| K. Rich. Northumberland, thou ladder where-withal | |
| The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne, | 60 |
| The time shall not be many hours of age | |
| More than it is, ere foul sin gathering head | |
| Shall break into corruption. Thou shalt think, | |
| Though he divide the realm and give thee half, | 64 |
| 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 urg’d, another way | 68 |
| To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne. | |
| The love of wicked friends converts to fear; | |
| That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both | |
| To worthy danger and deserved death. | 72 |
| North. My guilt be on my head, and there an end. | |
| Take leave and part; for you must part forthwith. | |
| K. Rich. Doubly divorc’d! Bad men, ye violate | |
| A two-fold marriage; ’twixt my crown and me, | 76 |
| 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 towards the north, | 80 |
| 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. | 84 |
| Queen. And must we be divided? must we part? | |
| K. Rich. Ay, hand from hand, my love, and heart from heart. | |
| Queen. Banish us both and send the king with me. | |
| North. That were some love but little policy. | 88 |
| Queen. Then whither he goes, thither let me go. | |
| K. Rich. 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. | 92 |
| Go, count thy way with sighs, I mine with groans. | |
| Queen. So longest way shall have the longest moans. | |
| K. Rich. Twice for one step I’ll groan, the way being short, | |
| And piece the way out with a heavy heart. | 96 |
| 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. [They kiss. | 100 |
| Queen. Give me mine own again; ’twere no good part | |
| To take on me to keep and kill thy heart. [They kiss again. | |
| So, now I have mine own again, be gone, | |
| That I may strive to kill it with a groan. | 104 |
| K. Rich. We make woe wanton with this fond delay: | |
| Once more, adieu; the rest let sorrow say. [Exeunt. | |
