That hath dismissed us from our stewardship:
For well we know no hand of blood and bone
Can gripe the sacred handle of our sceptre,
Unless he do profane, steal, or usurp.
And though you think that all, as you have done,
Have torn their souls by turning them from us,
And we are barren and bereft of friends;
Yet know, my master, God omnipotent,
Is mustering in His clouds, on our behalf,
Armies of pestilence; and they shall strike
Your children yet unborn and unbegot,
That lift your vassal hands against my head,
And threat the glory of my precious crown.
Tell Bolingbroke (for yond' methinks he is)
That every stride he makes upon my land
Is dangerous treason. He is come to ope

The purple testament of bleeding war:
But ere the crown he looks for live in peace,
Ten thousand bloody crowns of mother's sons
Shall ill become the flower of England's face;
Change the complexion of her maid-pale peace
To scarlet indignation, and bedew

Her pastures' grass with faithful English blood. North. The King of Heaven forbid our lord the King

Should so with civil and uncivil arms
Be rushed upon! Thy thrice-noble cousin,
Harry Bolingbroke, doth humbly kiss thy hand:
And by the honourable tomb he swears
That stands upon thy royal grandsire's bones;
And by the royalties of both your bloods,
Currents that spring from one most gracious head;

And by the buried hand of warlike Gaunt;
And by the worth and honour of himself
(Comprising all that may be sworn or said),
His coming hither hath no further scope
Than for his lineal royalties, and to beg
Enfranchisement immediate on his knees:

Which on thy royal party granted once,
His glittering arms he will commend to rust,
His barbéd steeds to stables, and his heart
To faithful service of your majesty.
This swears he, as he is a prince, is just:
And, as I am a gentleman, I credit him.

K. Rich. Northumberland, say, thus the King

returns:

His noble cousin is right welcome hither;
And all the number of his fair demands
Shall be accomplished without contradiction.
With all the gracious utterance thou hast,
Speak to his gentle hearing kind commends.-
We do debase ourself, cousin, do we not,
[TO AUMERLE.
To look so poorly and to speak so fair?
Shall we call back Northumberland, and send
Defiance to the traitor, and so die?

Aum. No, good my lord: let's fight with gentle words,

Till time lend friends, and friends their helpful swords.

K. Rich. O God, O God! that e'er this tongue of mine,

That laid the sentence of dread banishment
On yon proud man, should take it off again
With words of sooth! O that I were as great
As is my grief, or lesser than my name!
Or that I could forget what I have been,
Or not remember what I must be now!
Swell'st thou, proud heart? I'll give thee scope
to beat,

Since foes have scope to beat both thee and me. Aum. Northumberland comes back from Bolingbroke.

K. Rich. What must the King do now? Must he submit?

The King shall do it. Must he be deposed?
The King shall be contented. Must he lose
The name of King? O' God's name, let it go.
I'll give my jewels for a set of beads;
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage;
My gay apparel for an almsman's gown;
My figured goblets for a dish of wood;
My sceptre for a palmer's walking-staff;
My subjects for a pair of carvéd saints;
And my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little little grave, an obscure grave:
Or I'll be buried in the king's highway,
Some way of common trade, where subjects' feet
May hourly trample on their sovereign's head:

For on my heart they tread now whilst I live:
And, buried once, why not upon my head?—
Aumerle, thou weep'st: my tender-hearted cousin!
We'll make foul weather with despised tears:
Our sighs and they shall lodge the summer corn,
And make a dearth in this revolting land.
Or shall we play the wantons with our woes,
And make some pretty match with shedding tears?
As thus:-to drop them still upon one place,
Till they have fretted us a pair of graves
Within the earth: and therein laid, "There lies
Two kinsmen, digged their graves with weeping
eyes!"

Would not this ill do well?-Well, well, I see
I talk but idly, and you mock at me.-
Most mighty prince, my lord Northumberland,
What says King Bolingbroke? will his majesty
Give Richard leave to live till Richard die?
You make a leg, and Bolingbroke says "ay."

North. My lord, in the base court he doth attend To speak with you: may't please you to come down? K. Rich. Down, down, I come; like glistering Phaeton,

Wanting the manage of unruly jades.

[NORTHUMBERLAND retires to BOLINGBROKE. "In the base court?" Base court, where kings

grow base,

To come at traitors' calls, and do them grace. 66 In the base court?" "Come down?" Down court; down king!

For night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing. [Exeunt from above.

Boling. What says his majesty?

North.
Makes him speak fondly, like a frantic man :
Yet he is come.

Sorrow and grief of heart

Enter KING RICHARD and his Attendants, below.
Boling. Stand all apart,

And shew fair duty to his majesty.-
My gracious lord,—

[Kneeling.

K. Rich. Fair cousin, you debase your princely

knee

To make the base earth proud with kissing it:
Me rather had my heart might feel your love,
Than my unpleased eye see your courtesy.
Up, cousin, up: your heart is up, I know,
Thus high at least [touching his own head], al-
though your knee be low.

Boling. My gracious lord, I come but for mine own.
K. Rich. Your own is yours; and I am yours,

and all.

Boling. So far be mine, my most redoubted lord, As my true service shall deserve your love. K. Rich. Well you deserve:-they well de

serve to have,

That know the strong'st and surest way to get.—

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.
1st Lady. Madam, I'll sing.

Queen.

"Tis well that thou hast cause:

But thou shouldst please me better wouldst thou weep.

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

Queen. And I could weep, 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 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 the commonwealth:
All must be even in our government.—
You thus employed, I will go root away
The noisome weeds that without profit suck
The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers.

1st Serv. Why should we, in the compass of a pale,

Keep law, and form, and due proportion,
Shewing, as in a model, our firm estate,
When our sea-walléd 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?

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. 1st 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.
1st Serv. What, think you, then, the King
shall be deposed?

Gard. Depressed he is already; and deposed '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 likeness, [coming from her concealment.

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. Gard. Poor queen! so that thy state might

be no worse,

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

[Exeunt.

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 valour stand on sympathies, There is my gage, Aumerle, in gage to thine. By that fair sun that shews 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 forgéd, with my rapier's point. Aum. Thou dar'st not, coward, live to see that

day.

Fitz. Now, by my soul, I would it were this hour. Aum. Fitzwater, thou art damned to hell for this. Percy. Aumerle, thou liest: his honour is as true In this appeal as thou art all unjust. And that thou art so, there I throw my gage To prove it on thee to the extremest point Of mortal breathing: seize it if thou dar'st.

Aum. And if I do not, may my hands rot off, And never brandish more revengeful steel Over the glittering helmet of my foe!

Lord. I task the earth to the like, forsworn
Aumerle;

And spur thee on with full as many lies
As may be holla'd in thy treacherous ear
From sun to sun. There is my honour's pawn:
Engage it to the trial if thou dar'st.

Aum. Who sets me else? By heaven, I'll throw at all:

I have a thousand spirits in one breast,
To answer twenty thousand such as you.