The Tragedy of King Richard II by William Shakespeare (distant reading txt) 📕

too old to fawn upon a nurse,
Too far in years to be a pupil now:
What is thy sentence, then, but speechless death,
Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?

KING RICHARD.
It boots thee not to be compassionate:
After our sentence plaining comes too late.

MOWBRAY.
Then thus I turn me from my country's light,
To dwell in solemn shades of endless night.

[Retiring.]

KING RICHARD.
Return again, and take an oath with thee.
Lay on our royal sword your banish'd hands;
Swear by the duty that you owe to God, -
Our part therein we banish with yourselves -
To keep the oath that we administer:
You never shall, so help you truth and God! -
Embrace each other's love in banishment;
Nor never look upon each other's face;
Nor never write, regreet, nor reconcile
This louring tempest of your home-bred hate;
Nor never by advised purpose meet
To plot, contrive, or complot any ill
'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.

BOLINGBROKE.
I swear.

MOWBRAY.
And I, to keep all this.

BOLINGBROKE.
Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy: -
By this time, had the king permitted us,
One of our souls had wand'red in the air,
Banish'd this frail sepulchre of our flesh,
As now our flesh is banish'd from this land:
Confess thy treasons ere thou fly the realm;
Since thou hast far to go, bear not along
The clogging burden of a guilty soul.

MOWBRAY.
No, Bolingbroke: if ever I were traitor,
My name be blotted from the book of life,
And I from heaven banish'd as from hence!
But what thou art, God, thou, and I, do know;
And all too soon, I fear, the king shall rue.
Farewell, my liege. Now no way can I stray;
Save back to England, all the world's my way.

[Exit.]

KING RICHARD.
Uncle, even in the glasses of thine eyes
I see thy grieved heart: thy sad aspect
Hath from the number of his banish'd years
Pluck'd four away. - [To BOLINGBROKE.] Six frozen winters spent,
Return with welcome home from banishment.

BOLINGBROKE.
How long a time lies in one little word!
Four lagging winters and four wanton springs
End in a word: such is the breath of kings.

GAUNT.
I thank my liege that in regard of me
He shortens four years of my son's exile;
But little vantage shall I reap thereby:
For, ere the six years that he hath to spend
Can change their moons and bring their times about,
My oil-dried lamp and time-bewasted light
Shall be extinct with age and endless night;
My inch of taper will be burnt and done,
And blindfold death not let me see my son.

KING RICHARD.
Why, uncle, thou hast many years to live.

GAUNT.
But not a minute, king, that thou canst give:
Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow,
And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow;
Thou can'st help time to furrow me with age,
But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage;
Thy word is current with him for my death,
But dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath.

KING RICHARD.
Thy son is banish'd upon good advice,
Whereto thy tongue a party-verdict gave.
Why at our justice seem'st thou then to lower?

GAUNT.
Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.
You urg'd me as a judge; but I had rather
You would have bid me argue like a father.
O! had it been a stranger, not my child,
To smooth his fault I should have been more mild.:
A partial slander sought I to avoid,
And in the sentence my own life destroy'd.
Alas! I look'd when some of you should say
I was too strict to make mine own away;
But you gave leave to my unwilling tongue
Against my will to do myself this wrong.

KING RICHARD.
Cousin, farewell; and, uncle, bid him so:
Six years we banish him, and he shall go.

[Flourish. Exit KING RICHARD and Train.]

AUMERLE.
Cousin, farewell: what presence must not know,
From where you do remain let paper show.

MARSHAL.
My lord, no leave take I; for I will ride,
As far as land will let me, by your side.

GAUNT.
O! to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words,
That thou return'st no greeting to thy friends?

BOLINGBROKE.
I have too few to take my leave of you,
When the tongue's office should be prodigal
To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart.

GAUNT.
Thy grief is but thy absence for a time.

BOLINGBROKE.
Joy absent, grief is present for that time.

GAUNT.
What is six winters? They are quickly gone.

BOLINGBROKE.
To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten.

GAUNT.
Call it a travel that thou tak'st for pleasure.

BOLINGBROKE.
My heart will sigh when I miscall it so,
Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage.

GAUNT.
The sullen passage of thy weary steps
Esteem as foil wherein thou art to set
The precious jewel of thy home return.

BOLINGBROKE.
Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make
Will but remember me what a deal of world
I wander from the jewels that I love.
Must I not serve a long apprenticehood
To foreign passages, and in the end,
Having my freedom, boast of nothing else
But that I was a journeyman to grief?

GAUNT.
All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
Teach thy necessity to reason thus;
There is no virtue like necessity.
Think not the king did banish thee,
But thou the king. Woe doth the heavier sit,
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.
Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honour,
And not the King exil'd thee; or suppose
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air,
And thou art flying to a fresher clime.
Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it
To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou com'st.
Suppose the singing birds musicians,
The grass whereon thou tread'st the presence strew'd,
The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more
Than a delightful measure or a dance;
For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite
The man that mocks at it and sets it light.

BOLINGBROKE.
O! who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?
O, no! the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse:
Fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more
Than when it bites, but lanceth not the sore.

GAUNT.
Come, come, my son, I'll bring thee on thy way.
Had I thy youth and cause, I would not stay.

BOLINGBROKE.
Then, England's ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu;
My mother, and my nurse, that bears me yet!
Where'er I wander, boast of this I can,
Though banish'd, yet a true-born Englishman.

[Exeunt.]


SCENE IV. London. A Room in the King's Castle

[Enter KING RICHARD, BAGOT, and GREEN, at one door;
AUMERLE at another.]

KING RICHARD.
We did observe. Cousin Aumerle,
How far brought you high Hereford on his way?

AUMERLE.
I brought high Hereford, if you call him so,
But to the next highway, and there I left him.

KING RICHARD.
And say, what store of parting tears were shed?

AUMERLE.
Faith, none for me; except the north-east wind,
Which then blew bitterly against our faces,
Awak'd the sleeping rheum, and so by chance
Did grace our hollow parting with a tear.

KING RICHARD.
What said our cousin when you parted with him?

AUMERLE.
'Farewell:'
And, for my heart disdained that my tongue
Should so profane the word, that taught me craft
To counterfeit oppression of such grief
That words seem'd buried in my sorrow's grave.
Marry, would the word 'farewell' have lengthen'd hours
And added years to his short banishment,
He should have had a volume of farewells;
But since it would not, he had none of me.

KING RICHARD.
He is our cousin, cousin; but 'tis doubt,
When time shall call him home from banishment,
Whether our kinsman come to see his friends.
Ourself, and Bushy, Bagot here and Green,
Observ'd his courtship to the common people,
How he did seem to dive into their hearts
With humble and familiar courtesy,
What reverence he did throw away on slaves,
Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles
And patient underbearing of his fortune,
As 'twere to banish their affects with him.
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;
A brace of draymen bid God speed him well,
And had the tribute of his supple knee,
With 'Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends';
As were our England in reversion his,
And he our subjects' next degree in hope.

GREEN.
Well, he is gone; and with him go these thoughts.
Now for the rebels which stand out in Ireland;
Expedient manage must be made, my liege,
Ere further leisure yield them further means
For their advantage and your highness' loss.

KING RICHARD.
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
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, what news?

BUSHY.
Old John of Gaunt is grievous sick, my lord,
Suddenly taken, and hath sent poste-haste
To entreat your Majesty to visit him.

KING RICHARD.
Where lies he?

BUSHY.
At Ely House.

KING RICHARD.
Now put it, God, in his 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.]


ACT 2

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.

GAUNT.
O! but they say the tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony:
Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
He that no more must say is listen'd more
Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose;
More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before:
The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,
Writ in remembrance more than things long past:
Though Richard my life's counsel would not hear,
My death's sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.

YORK.
No; it is stopp'd with other flattering sounds,
As praises of his state: then there are fond,
Lascivious metres, to whose venom sound
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,