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Like to a tenement, or pelting1 farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds;
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
O, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!

2

Enter KING RICHARD and Queen; AUMERLE, BUSHY,
GREEN, BAGOT, Ross, and WILLOUGHBY."

York. The king is come: deal mildly with his youth;
For young, hot colts, being raged," do rage the more.
Queen. How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster?
K. Rich. What comfort, man? How is't with aged
Gaunt?

Gaunt. O, how that name befits my composition!
Old Gaunt, indeed; and gaunt in being old.
Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast;
And who abstains from meat, that is not gaunt?
For sleeping England long time have I watched;
Watching breeds leanness; leanness is all gaunt.
The pleasure, that some fathers feed upon,
Is my strict fast, I mean-my children's looks;
And, therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt:
Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,
Whose hollow womb inhabits nought but bones.

1 "In this 22d yeare of King Richard, the common fame ranne that the king had letten to farme the realme unto Sir William Scrope, earle of Wiltshire, and then treasurer of England, to Syr John Bushey, Sir John Bagot, and Sir Henry Greene, Knightes.”—Fabian. Pelling is paltry, pitiful, petty.

2 Shakspeare has deviated from historical truth in the introduction of Richard's queen as a woman; for Anne, his first wife, was dead before the period at which the commencement of the play is laid; and Isabella, his second wife, was a child at the time of his death.

3 i. e. William lord Ross, of Hamlake, afterwards lord treasurer to Henry IV.

4 William lord Willoughby, of Eresby.

5 Ritson proposes to read:

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K. Rich. Can sick men play so nicely with their

names?

Gaunt. No; misery makes sport to mock itself:
Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me,
I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee.

K. Rich. Should dying men flatter with those that live?

Gaunt. No, no; men living, flatter those that die. K. Rich. Thou, now a dying, say'st-thou flatter'st

me.

Gaunt. O, no; thou diest, though I the sicker be. K. Rich. I am in health, I breathe, and see thee ill. Gaunt. Now, He that made me, knows I see thee ill; Ill in myself to see, and in thee, seeing ill. Thy deathbed is no lesser than thy land, Wherein thou liest in reputation sick; And thou, too careless patient as thou art, Committ'st thy anointed body to the cure Of those physicians that first wounded thee: A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown, Whose compass is no bigger than thy head; And yet, incaged in so small a verge, The waste is no whit lesser than thy land; O, had thy grandsire, with a prophet's eye, Seen how his son's son should destroy his sons, From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame, Deposing thee before thou wert possessed, Which art possessed' now to depose thyself. Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world, It were a shame to let this land by lease; But, for thy world, enjoying but this land, Is it not more than shame, to shame it so? Landlord of England art thou now, not king; Thy state of law is bondslave to the law; 2 And thou

K. Rich.

1 Mad.

-a lunatic, lean-witted fool,

2 "Thy legal state, that rank in the state and these large desmesnes, which the constitution allotted thee, are now bondslave to the law; being subject to the same legal restrictions as every ordinary, pelting farm that has been let on lease."

Presuming on an ague's privilege,
Dar'st with thy frozen admonition

Make pale our cheek; chasing the royal blood,
With fury, from his native residence.
Now, by my seat's right royal majesty,
Wert thou not brother to great Edward's son,
This tongue that runs so roundly in thy head,
Should run thy head from thy unreverent shoulders.
Gaunt. O, spare me not, my brother Edward's son,
For that I was his father Edward's son;

That blood already, like the pelican,

Hast thou tapped out, and drunkenly caroused.
My brother Gloster, plain, well-meaning soul,
(Whom fair befall in heaven 'mongst happy souls!)
May be a precedent and witness good,

That thou respect'st not spilling Edward's blood:
Join with the present sickness that I have,
And thy unkindness be like crooked age,
To crop at once a too-long withered flower.
Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!—
These words hereafter thy tormentors be!-
Convey me to my bed, then to my grave:
Love they' to live, that love and honor have

[Exit, borne out by his Attendants.
K. Rich. And let them die, that age and sullens have;
For both hast thou, and both become the grave.
York. I do beseech your majesty, impute his words
To wayward sickliness and age in him.

He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear

As Harry duke of Hereford, were he here.

K. Rich. Right; you say true; as Hereford's love, so his;

As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.

Enter NORTHUMBERLAND.

North. My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your majesty.

K. Rich. What says he?

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North. Nay, nothing; all is said:

His tongue is now a stringless instrument;
Words, life, and all, old Lancaster hath spent.

York. Be York the next that must be bankrupt so! Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.

K. Rich. The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he;
His time is spent; our pilgrimage must be:1
So much for that.--Now for our Irish wars.
We must supplant those rough, rug-headed kernes;
Which live like venom, where no venom else,
But only they, hath privilege to live.3

And, for these great affairs do ask some charge,
Towards our assistance, we do seize to us
The plate, coin, revenues, and movables,
Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possessed.

York. How long shall I be patient? Ah, how long Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?

Not Gloster's death, nor Hereford's banishment,
Not Gaunt's rebukes, nor England's private wrongs,
Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke
About his marriage, nor my own disgrace,
Have ever made me sour my patient cheek,
Or bend one wrinkle on my sovereign's face.-
I am the last of noble Edward's sons,

Of whom thy father, prince of Wales, was first;
In war, was never lion raged more fierce,
In peace, was never gentle lamb more mild,
Than was that young and princely gentleman.
His face thou hast, for even so looked he,
Accomplished with the number of thy hours;5
But, when he frowned, it was against the French,
And not against his friends; his noble hand
Did win what he did spend, and spent not that

1 That is, "our pilgrimage is yet to come."

2 Kernes were Irish peasantry, serving as light-armed foot-soldiers. 3 Alluding to the idea that no venomous reptiles live in Ireland.

4 When the duke of Hereford went into France, after his banishment, he was honorably entertained at that court, and would have obtained in marriage the only daughter of the duke of Berry, uncle to the French king, had not Richard prevented the match.

5 i. e. when he was of thy age.

Which his triumphant father's hand had won;
His hands were guilty of no kindred's blood,
But bloody with the enemies of his kin.
O, Richard! York is too far gone with grief,
Or else he never would compare between.
K. Rich. Why, uncle, what's the matter?
York.

O, my liege,

Pardon me, if you please; if not, I, pleased
Not to be pardoned, am content withal.
Seek you to seize, and gripe into your hands,
The royalties and rights of banished Hereford?
Is not Gaunt dead? and doth not Hereford live?
Was not Gaunt just? and is not Harry true?
Did not the one deserve to have an heir?
Is not his heir a well-deserving son?

Take Hereford's rights away, and take from time
His charters, and his customary rights;
Let not to-morrow then ensue to-day;
Be not thyself, for how art thou a king,
But by fair sequence and succession?
Now, afore God (God forbid, I say true!)
If you do wrongfully seize Hereford's rights,
Call in the letters patent that he hath
By his attorneys-general to sue

His livery,' and deny his offered homage,
You pluck a thousand dangers on your head,
You lose a thousand well-disposed hearts,
And prick my tender patience to those thoughts
Which honor and allegiance cannot think.

K. Rich. Think what you will; we seize into our hands His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands.

York. I'll not be by the while; my liege, farewell. What will ensue hereof, there's none can tell; But by bad courses may be understood, That their events can never fall out good.

[Exit.

1 On the death of every person who held by knight's service, his heir, if under age, became a ward of the king's; but if of age, he had a right to sue out a writ of ouster le main, i. e. livery, that the king's hand might be taken off, and the land delivered to him. To "deny his offered homage was to refuse to admit the homage by which he was to hold his lands.

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