1 Lady. Madam, we'll tell tales. Queen.

1 Lady. Of either, madam.

Of sorrow, or of joy?1

Queen.
Of neither, girl,
For if of joy, being altogether wanting,
It doth remember me the more of sorrow;
Or if of grief, being altogether had,

It adds more sorrow to my want of joy.
For what I have, I need not to repeat;
And what I want, it boots not to complain.2
1 Lady. Madam, I'll sing.

Queen.

'Tis well, that thou hast cause; But thou shouldst please me better, wouldst thou

weep.

1 Lady. I could weep, madam, would it do you

good.

Queen. And I could weep,3 would weeping do me

good,

And never borrow any tear of thee.

But stay, here come the gardeners.

Let's step into the shadow of these trees.

Enter a Gardener and two Servants.

My wretchedness unto a row of pins,
They'll talk of state; for every one doth so
Against a change: woe is forerun with woe.

[Queen and Ladies retire.
Gard. Go, bind thou up yon' dangling apricots,
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.

1 All the old copies read, " Of sorrow or of grief." Pope made the necessary alteration.

2 See note on Act i. Sc. 2.

3 The old copies read, " And I could sing." The emendation is Pope's.

You thus employed, 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 choked up, Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined, Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs Swarming with caterpillars?

Gard.

Hold thy peace!— He that hath suffered this disordered spring,

Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf.

The weeds, that his broad-spreading leaves did shelter,
That seemed in eating him to hold him up,
Are plucked up, root and all, by Bolingbroke;
I mean the earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green.
1 Serv. What, are they dead?
Gard.

They are; and Bolingbroke
Hath seized the wasteful king.-O! what pity is it,
That he had not so trimmed and dressed 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 with sap and blood,
With too much riches it confound itself.
Had he done so to great and growing men,
They might have lived to bear, and he to taste
Their fruits of duty. All 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.
1 Serv. What, think you, then, the king shall be
deposed?

Gard. Depressed he is already; and deposed,

1 Knots are figures planted in box, the lines of which frequently intersected each other, in the old fashion of gardening.

2 We is not in the old copy. It was added by Malone.

'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.

O, I am pressed to death,

Through want of speaking!-Thou, old Adam's like[Coming from her concealment.

ness,

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 deposed?
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 this news; yet what I say is true.
King Richard he is in the mighty hold

Of Bolingbroke; their fortunes both are weighed.
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 this news of woe,

I would the plants thou graft'st may never grow.
[Exeunt Queen and Ladies.

1 This uncommon phraseology has already occurred in the present

play.

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

worse,

I would my skill were subject to thy curse.

Here did she drop1 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 I. London. Wesminster Hall.2 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, Bishop of Carlisle, Abbot of Westminster, and Attendants. Officers behind, with BAGOT.

Boling. 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 performed
The bloody office of his timeless end.

4

Bagot. Then set before my face the lord Aumerle.
Boling. Cousin, stand forth, and look upon that man.
Bagot. My lord Aumerle, I know, your daring
tongue

1 The quarto of 1597 reads fall. The quarto of 1598 and the folio read drop: The rebuilding of Westminster hall, which Richard had begun in 1397, being finished in 1399, the first meeting of parliament in the new edifice was for the purpose of deposing him.

3 Thomas Holland, earl of Kent, brother to John Holland, earl of Exeter, was created duke of Surrey in 1597. He was half-brother to the king, by his mother Joan, who married Edward the Black Prince after the death of her second husband, Thomas lord Holland.

4 i. e. untimely.

Scorns to unsay what once it hath delivered.

In that dead time when Gloster's death was plotted,
I heard you say,-Is not my arm of length,
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 blessed this land would be,
In this your cousin's death.

Aum.

Princes, and noble lords, What answer shall I make to this base man? Shall I so much dishonor my fair stars,' On equal terms to give him chastisement? Either I must, or have mine honor soiled With the attainder of his slanderous 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.

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

Fitz. If that thy valor stand on sympathies,2 There is my gage, Aumerle, in gage to thine. By that fair sun that shows me where thou stand'st, I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak'st it, That thou wert cause of noble Gloster's death. If thou deny'st it, twenty times thou liest ; And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart, Where it was forged, with my rapier's point.

1 The birth is supposed to be influenced by stars, therefore the Poet takes stars for birth.

2 Fitzwater throws down his gage as a pledge of battle, and tells Aumerle that if he stands upon sympathies, that is, upon equality of blood, the combat is now offered him by a man of rank not inferior to his own. Sympathy is an affection incident at once to two subjects. This community of affection implies a likeness or equality of nature; and hence the Poet transferred the term to equality of blood.