Enter a Gardener, and two Servants.

Gard. Go, bind thou up yond' dangling apricocks,
Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight:
Give some supportance to the bending twigs.
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 employ'd, I will go root away
The noisome weeds, that without profit suck
The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers.

1 Serv. 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-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds; her fairest flowers chok'd up,
Her fruit-trees all unprun'd, her hedges ruin'd,
Her knots disorder'd, and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars?

Gard.

5

Hold thy peace.
He that hath suffer'd this disorder'd spring,

Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf:
The weeds that his broad-spreading leaves did shelter,
That seem'd in eating him to hold him up,
Are pluck'd up, root and all, by Bolingbroke;
I mean, the earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green.
1 Serv. What! are they dead?

dom to be filled with rumours of sorrow when any great disaster is impending.

The regular, symmetrical beds of a garden were called knots. Thus in Milton's description of Eden:

"Flowers worthy Paradise, which not nice art
In beds and curious knots, but nature boon
Pour'd forth."

Gard. Hath seiz'd the wasteful king. -O! what pity is it, That he had not so trimm'd and dress'd 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 liv'd 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.

They are; and Bolingbroke

1 Serv. What! think you, then, the king shall be depos'd?

Gard. Depress'd he is already; and depos'd, 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. [Coming forward.] O! I am press'd to death, through want of speaking.

8

So the first quarto; the other old copies have "with sap and blood." The second we in two lines before is wanting in all the old copies, but is evidently required by the sense.

H.

7 So in all the quartos: the 1632 folio inserts all before superfluous. The pause seems better in itself than the word, besides having better authority. Three lines after, the folio has "waste and idle hours.". Coleridge thus comments on this charming scene: "See here the skill and judgment of our Poet in giving reality and individual life, by the introduction of accidents in his historic plays, and thereby making them dramas, and not histories. How beautiful an islet of repose a melancholy repose indeed - is this scene with the Gardener and his Servant! And how truly affecting and realizing is the very horse Barbary, in the scene with the Groom in the last act!"

H.

"The

8 Malone's explanation of this passage is probably right. Poet alludes to the ancient legal punishment called peine forte et dure, which was inflicted on those persons who, being arraigned

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 depos'd?
Dar'st thou, thou little better thing than earth,
Divine his downfall?

Say, where, when, and how,

Cam'st thou by these ill tidings? speak, thou wretch.
Gard. Pardon me, madam: little joy have I,
To breathe these news, yet what I say is true.
King Richard, he is in the mighty hold

Of Bolingbroke: their fortunes both are weigh'd'
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'll find it so;
I speak no more than every one 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? — Gardener, for telling me these news of woe, 'Pray God, the plants thou graft'st may never grow. [Exeunt Queen and Ladies.

Gard. Poor queen! so that thy state might be no

worse,

refused to plead, remaining obstinately silent.

They were pressea

to death by a heavy weight laid on their stomach."

H.

10

I would my skill were subject to thy curse.
Here did she fall' a tear; here, in this place,
I'll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace:
Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen,
In the remembrance of a weeping queen. [Exeunt

ACT IV.

SCENE 1. London.

Westminster Hall.'

'The Lords spiritual on the right side of the Throne; the Lords temporal on the left; the Commons below. Enter BOLINGBROKE, AUMERLE, SURREY, NORTHUMBERLAND, PERCY, FITZWATER, another Lord, the Bishop of CARLISLE, the Abbot of WESTMIN STER, and Attendants. Officers behind, with BAGOT. Bol. Call forth Bagot.

Now, Bagot, freely speak thy mind,

What thou dost know of noble Gloster's death; Who wrought it with the king, and who perform'd The bloody office of his timeless end."

Bag. Then set before my face the lord Aumerle.

So in the first quarto: the other old copies have drop instead of fall. Shakespeare often uses fall transitively; as in Othello, Act iv. sc. 1: "Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile." And in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act v. sc. 1: “ And, as she fled, her mantle she did fall."

H.

10 Rue was often called herb of grace, and sometimes herbgrace for brevity. See The Winter's Tale, Act iv. sc. 3, note 5.

H.

''The rebuilding of Westminster Hall, which Richard had begun in 1397, being finished in 1399, the first meeting of parliament ir the new edifice was for the purpose of deposing him.

That is, untime y.

Bol. Cousin, stand forth, and look upon that man. Bag. My lord Aumerle, I know your daring tongue Scorns to unsay what once it hath deliver'd. In that dead time when Gloster's death was plotted, Is not my arm of length,

I heard you say,

That reacheth from the restful English court
As far as Calais, to my uncle's head?"
Amongst much other talk, that very time,
I heard you say that you had rather refuse
The offer of a hundred thousand crowns,
Than Bolingbroke's return to England;
Adding, withal, how blest this land would be
In this your cousin's death.

Aum.

Princes, and noble iords, What answer shall I make to this base man? Shall I so much dishonour my fair stars,3 On equal terms to give him chastisement? Either I must, or have mine honour soil'd With the attainder of his sland'rous lips. There is my gage, the manual seal of death, That marks thee out for hell: I say thou liest, And will maintain what thou hast said is false, In thy heart-blood, though being all too base To stain the temper of my knightly sword.

Bol. Bagot, forbear; thou shalt not take it up. Aum. Excepting one, I would he were the best In all this presence, that hath mov'd me so.

Fitz. If that thy valour stand on sympathies,*

3 Poetry, and even common speech, still retains traces of the old notion that men's fortunes were signified or governed by the stars under which they were born, the fairest and brightest stars belonging to the rich and great.

H.

4 That is, on equality of blood or rank. By the old laws of chivalry a man was not bound to fight with an adversary of lower rank, because a nobler life might not be staked in duel against a baser. Sympathy being an affection incident at once to two