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 Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul,
Whom fair befal 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 honour have.
[Exit, borne off 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.
North. My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your majesty.
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.
We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns,
Which live like venom where no venom else
But only they have privilege to live.
And for these great affairs do ask some charge,
Towards our assistance we do seize to us
The plate, coin, revenues and moveables,
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 Gloucester'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;
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
Which his triumphant father's hand had won;
His hands were guilty of no kindred 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.
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-disposéd hearts
And prick my tender patience to those thoughts
Which honour 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.
SCENE IV. Langley. The DUKE OF YORK's garden.
Enter the QUEEN and two Ladies.
HAT sport shall we devise here in this garden,
To drive away the heavy thought of care?
Lady. Madam, we'll play at bowls.
Queen. 'T will make me think the world is full of rubs, And that my fortune runs against the bias.
Lady. Madam, we'll dance.
Queen. My legs can keep no measure in delight,
When my poor heart no measure keeps in grief :
Therefore, no dancing, girl; some other sport.
Lady. Madam, we'll tell tales.
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.
Lady. Madam, I'll sing.
Queen.
'Tis well that thou hast cause;
But thou should'st please me better, wouldst thou weep.
Lady. I could weep, madam, would it do you good.
Queen. And I could sing,* would weeping do me good,
And never borrow any tear of thee.
Enter a Gardener and two Servants.
But stay, here come the gardeners:
Let's step into the shadow of these trees.
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 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,
*And I could sing. That is, if my sorrows were so light that they could be removed by weeping, I also could sing.
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 employed, I will go root away
The noisome weeds, which without profit suck
The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers.
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.
He that hath suffered this disordered spring
Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf:
The weeds which 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.
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 in 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: 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.
* Knots. The symmetrical beds in a garden were the knots.
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