* To bury mine intents, but to effect
Whatever I shall happen to devife.

I fee, your brows are full of difcontent,
Your hearts of forrow, and your eyes of tears.
Come home with me to fupper, and I'll lay
A Plot, fhall fhew us all a merry day

[Exeunt.

ACT VS CEN E I.

TH

A Street in LONDON.

Enter Queen, and Ladies.

QUEEN.

HIS way the King will come: this is the way
7 To Julius Cæfar's ill-erected Tower;

To whose flint-bofom my condemned lord
Is doom'd a prifoner, by proud Bolingbroke.
Here let us reft, if this rebellious earth
Have any Refting for her true King's Queen.
Enter King Richard, and Guards.
But foft, but fee, or rather do not fee,
My fair rofe wither; yet look up; behold,
That you in pity may diffolve to dew,
And wash him frefh again with true-love tears.
O thou, the model where old Troy did ftand,

[To K. Richard. Thou,

*To bury, to conceal; to keep faid to have been the work of

fecret.

9 In the first edition there is no perfonal appearance of King Richard, fo that all to the line at which he leaves the stage was inferted afterwards.

7 To Julius Cæfar's, &c.] The Tower of London is traditionally

Julius Cafar.

8 Here let us reft, if, &c.] Here reft, if any reft can harbour here. MILTON. 9 O thou, the model where

old Troy did ftand.] The Queen ufes comparative terms abfolutely. Inftead of saying,

Thou

Thou map of honour, thou King Richard's tomb,
And not King Richard; thou most beauteous Inn,
Why fhould hard-favour'd grief be lodg'd in thee,
When Triumph is become an ale-house Gueft?

*

K. Rich. Join not with grief, fair Woman, do not fo,
To make my End too fudden. Learn, good foul,
To think our former ftate a happy dream,

From which awak'd, the truth of what we are
Shews us but this. I am fworn brother, Sweet,
To grim Neceffity; and he and I

Will keep a league till death. Hye thee to France,
And cloister thee in fome Religious House;
Our holy lives must win a new world's Crown,
Which our profane hours here have ftricken down.
Queen. What, is my Richard both in shape and mind
Transform'd and weak? hath Bolingbroke depos'd
Thine intellect? hath he been in thy heart?
The Lion, dying, thrusteth forth his paw,
And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage
To be o'erpower'd: and wilt thou, pupil-like,
Take thy correction mildly, kifs the rod,
And fawn on rage with bafe humility,
Which art a Lion and a King of beasts?

K. Rich. A King of beafts, indeed-if aught but
beafts,

I had been still a happy King of men.

Good fometime Queen, prepare thee hence for France; Think, I am dead; and that ev'n here thou tak'st,

As from my death-bed, my last living Leave.
In winter's tedious nights fit by the fire
With good old folks, and let them tell thee Tales
Of woeful ages, long ago betid; ad

And ere thou bid good Night, to quit their grief,
Tell thou the lamentable Fall of me, Cas
And fend the hearers weeping to their beds."
For why the fenfelefs brands will fympathize
The heavy accent of thy moving tongue,
And in compaffion weep the fire out;

And fome will mourn in afhes, fome coal-black,
For the depofing of a rightful King.

Enter Northumberland attended.

North. My lord, the mind of Bolingbroke is chang'd; You must to Pomfret, not unto the Tower.

And, Madam, there is order ta'en for you,
With all swift-speed, you must away to France.

K. Rich. Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal
The mounting Bolingbroke afcends my Throne,
The time fhall not be many hours of age
More than it is, ere foul fin, gath'ring head,
Shall break into corruption; thou fhalt think,
Though he divide the Realm, and give thee half,
It is too little, helping him to all;

And he fhall think, that thou, which know'ft the
way
To plant unrightful Kings, wilt know again,
Being ne'er fo little urg'd, another way
To pluck him headlong from th' ufurped Throne.
The love of wicked friends converts to fear;
That fear to hate; and hate turns one, or both,

2

to quit their grief.] To retaliate their mournful stories.

3 For awhy? ] The poet fhould have ended this

fpeech with the foregoing line, and have fpared his childish pratile about the fire.

Τα

To worthy danger, and deferved death.

**

North. My guilt be on my head, and there's an end. Take leave and part, for you must part forthwith. K. Rich. Doubly divorc'd? Bad men, ye violate A two-fold marriage; 'twixt my crown and me; And then betwixt me and my married wife, Let me unkifs the oath 'twixt thee and me.

[To the Queen. -And yet not fo, for with a kifs 'twas made. Part us, Northumberland. I, towards the North, Where fhiv'ring cold and fickness pines the clime; My Queen to France, from whence, set forth in pomp, She came adorned hither like fweet May;

Sent back like Hollowvmas, or fhortest day.

Queen. And must we be divided? muft we part? K. Rich. Ay, hand from hand, my Love, and heart from heart.

3

r

Queen. Banish us both, and fend the King with me.
North. That were fome Love, but little Policy.
Queen. Then whither he goes, thither let me go.
K. Rich. So two together weeping, make one woe."
Weep thou for me in France; I for thee here:
Better far off; than near, be ne'er the near 4.
Go, count thy way with fighs, I mine with groans:
Queen. So longeft way fhall have the longest moans.
K. Rich. Twice for one step I'll groan, the way be-,
ing fhort,

And piece the way out with a heavy heart.
Come, come, in wooing forrow let's be brief;
Since, wedding it, there is fuch length in grief.
One kifs shall stop our mouths, and dumbly part;
Thus give I mine, and thus take I thy heart. [They kifs.

2 Better far off, than near, be ne'er the near,] To be never the nigher, or as it is commonly spoken in the mid land

counties, ne'er the ne'er, is, to make no advance towards the good defired.

G 4

Queen.

Queen. Give me mine own again; 'twere no good

To take on me to keep, and kill thy heart. [Kifs again. So, now I have mine own again, be gone,

That I may strive to kill it with a groan.

K. Rich. We make woe wanton with this fond delay: Once more, adieu; the reft let forrow fay [Exeunt.

SCENE III.

The Duke of YORK's Palace.

Enter York, and bis Dutchefs

Dutch. MY

Y lord, you told me, you would tell the
reft,

When Weeping made you break the ftory off,
Of our two Coufins coming into London.
Fork. Where did I leave?

Dutch. At that fad ftop, my lord,

Where rude mif-govern'd hands, from window-tops, Threw duft and rubbish on King Richard's head. York. Then, as I faid, the Duke, great Bolingbroke, Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed,

Which his afpiring Rider feem'd to know,

With flow, but stately pace, kept on his courfe;
While all tongues cry'd, God fave thee, Bolingbroke!
You wou'd have thought, the very windows fpake,
So many greedy looks of young and old
Through cafements darted their defiring eyes
Upon his vifage; and that all the walls
With painted imag'ry had faid at once,
Jefu, preferve thee! welcome, Bolingbroke!
Whilft he, from one fide to the other turning,
Bare-headed, lower than his proud fteed's neck,
Bespoke them thus; I thank you, Countrymen;
And thus ftill doing, thus he past along.

Dutch