(As thoughts of things divine) are intermixed With scruples, and do set the word itself Against the word: As thus-"Come, little ones;" and then again,— Their watches on to mine eyes, the outward watch, groans, Shew minutes, times, and hours!—but my time The cheapest of us is ten groats too dear. With much ado, at length have gotten leave How went he under him? Groom. So proudly as if he had disdained the ground. K. Rich. So proud that Bolingbroke was on his back! That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand : This hand hath made him proud with clapping him. Would he not stumble; would he not fall down Enter Keeper with a dish. Keep. Fellow, give place: here is no longer stay. [To the Groom. K. Rich. If thou love me, 't is time thou wert away. Groom. What my tongue dares not, that my heart shall say. [Exit. Keep. My lord, wilt please you to fall to? ton, who Lately came from the King, commands the contrary. K. Rich. The devil take Henry of Lancaster and thee! Patience is stale, and I am weary of it. [Beats the Keeper. Keep. Help, help, help! Enter EXTON and Servants, armed. K. Rich. How now! what means death in this rude assault? Villain, thine own hand yields thy death's instru ment. [Snatching a weapon, and killing one. Go thou, and fill another room in hell.[He kills another, then ExTON strikes him down. That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire That staggers thus my person!-Exton, thy fierce hand Hath with the King's blood stained the King's own land. Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high; Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die. [Dies. Exton. As full of valour as of royal blood! Both have I spilt.-O would the deed were good! For now the devil, that told me I did well, Says that this deed is chronicled in hell.This dead king to the living king I'll bear: Take hence the rest, and give them burial here. [Exeunt. SCENE VI.-Windsor. A Room in the Castle. Flourish. Enter BOLINGBROKE and YORK, with Lords and Attendants. Boling. Kind uncle York, the latest news we hear Is that the rebels have consumed with fire Welcome, my lord: what is the news? North. First, to thy sacred state wish I all happiness: The next news is, I have to London sent Kent. The manner of their taking may appear At large discourséd in this paper here. [Presenting a paper. Boling. We thank thee, gentle Percy, for thy pains; And to thy worth will add right worthy gains. Enter FITZWATER. Fitz. My lord, I have from Oxford sent to The heads of Brocas and Sir Bennet Seely; Right noble is thy merit, well I wot. Enter PERCY, with the BISHOP OF CARLISLE. Percy. The grand conspirator, abbot of Westminster, With clog of conscience and sour melancholy, Enter EXTON, with Attendants bearing a coffin. A deed of slander, with thy fatal hand, Boling. They love not poison that do poison need ; Nor do I thee: though I did wish him dead, [Exeunt. NOTES. "Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster, Hast thou, according to thy oath and band, Brought hither Henry Hereford, thy bold son?" Act I., Scene 1. When public challenges were accepted, each combatant found a pledge for his appearance at the time and place appointed." Band" and "bond" were formerly synony mous. Bolingbroke's original title of Hereford, is in old documents written "Herford" and "Harford," and was no doubt pronounced as a word of two syllables. "Re-enter Attendants, with BOLINGBROKE and NORFOLK." Act I., Scene 1. It appears that the Duke of Hereford, afterwards Henry IV., was not called Bolingbroke until after his accession to the throne. He was so designated from having been born in the town of that name in Lincolnshire, about 1366. "That he did plot the Duke of Gloster's death." Act I., Scene 1. The Duke of Gloster alluded to was Thomas of Woodstock, youngest son of Edward III. He was murdered at Calais in 1397. "For that my sovereign liege was in my debt, Since last I went to France to fetch his queen." The Duke of Norfolk was joined in commission with Edward Earl of Rutland (the Aumerle of this play), to go to France, in the year 1395, to demand in marriage Isabel, eldest daughter of Charles VI. (the princess was then between seven and eight years of age). Richard was married to his young consort in November, 1396, at Calais: his first wife, Anne, daughter of Charles IV., Emperor of Germany, died on Whit-Sunday, 1394. The marriage with Isabella was of course merely political: it was accompanied with an agreement for a thirty-years' truce between England and France. no subterraneous rooms till about the middle of the reign of Charles I.). When dinner had been set on the board by the ewers, the proper officers attended in each of these offices. Sometimes, on great occasions, they were all thrown open, and unlimited license given to all comers to eat and drink at their pleasure. The duchess therefore laments, that in consequence of the murder of her husband, all the hospitality of plenty is at an end:-"the walls are unfurnished, the lodging-rooms empty, and the offices unpeopled. All is solitude and silence: her groans are the only cheer that her guests can expect." "GAUNT on a Couch, the DUKE OF YORK and others standing by him."-Act II., Scene 1. The Duke of York here introduced was the fifth son of Edward III.; he was born, in 1441, at Langley, near St. Albans, and was hence called Edmund of Langley." He was of an indolent disposition, a lover of pleasure, and averse to business; easily prevailed upon to lie still and consult his own quiet, and never acting with spirit upon any occasion." -LOWTH. "Now for our Irish wars: We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns." Act II., Scene 1. The kerns were Irish peasantry, serving as light-armed foot soldiers. "Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke About his marriage."-Act II., Scene 1. The Duke of Hereford, on his banishment, went into France, and was honourably entertained at that court. But for the interference of Richard, he would have obtained in marriage the only daughter of the Duke of Berry, uncle to the French king. If you do wrongfully seize Hereford's rights, By his attorneys-general to sue His livery, and deny his offered homage, 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. "And daily new exactions are devised: As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what." It is recorded by Stowe, that Richard "compelled all the religious, gentlemen, and commons, to set their seals to blanks, to the end he might, if it pleased him, oppress them severally, or all at once: some of the commons paid him one thousand marks, some one thousand pounds," &c. "The bay-trees in our country are all withered, And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven." Act II., Scene IV. This enumeration of prodigies is in the highest degree poetical and striking.-JOHNSON. The hint is in Holinshed:-" In this year, in a manner, throughout all the realm of England, old bay-trees withered." -This tree was supposed to possess many virtues in warding off evils, both bodily and supernatural. "Mine ear is open and my heart prepared: It seems to be the design of the poet to raise Richard to esteem in his fall, and consequently to interest the reader in his favour. He gives him only passive fortitude, the virtue of a confessor rather than of a king. In his prosperity we saw him imperious and oppressive; but in his distress he is wise, patient, and pious.-JOHNSON. "The very beadsmen learn to bend their bows Act III., Scene 2. Yew is called "double-fatal" on account of the poisonous quality of the leaves, and because the wood was used for instruments of death. It appears that every Englishman, while archery was practised, was obliged to keep in his house a bow, either of yew or some other wood. It is probable that the yew-tree was planted in churchyards, not only to defend the edifices from the winds, but also on account of their warlike use; while, from being secured in consecrated places, their poisonous quality was prevented from injuring cattle. the Duke of Gloster's son and to the Earl of Arundel's son (that loved him but little, for he had put their fathers to death), who led him straight to the castle.-STOWE. (From a manuscript account by a person who was present). "My wretchednesss unto a row of pins, The poet, according to the common doctrine of prognostication, supposes dejection to forerun calamity, and a kingdom to be filled with rumours of sorrow when any great disaster is impending. The sense is, that public evils are always presignified by public pensiveness and plaintive conversation. -JOHNSON. "London.-Westminster Hall."-Act IV., Scene 1. Richard finished the re-building of Westminster Hall in 1399. The first meeting of Parliament in the new edifice was for the purpose of deposing him. "Was this face the face That every day under his household roof Did keep ten thousand men?"-Act IV., Scene 1. Shakspere is here not quite accurate. Our old chronicles only say, that," to his household came every day, to meat, ten thousand men."-MALONE. "O good! Convey?—Conveyers are you all, That rise thus nimbly by a true king's fall." Act IV., Scene 1. "To convey" is a term often used in an ill sense. Pistol says of stealing, "convey the wise it call." Richard appears to use the word "conveyers" in the sense of " "jugglers." "This way the King will come: this is the way To Julius Cæsar's ill-erected tower." Act V., Scene 1. The most ancient part of the Tower is traditionally said to have been built by Julius Cæsar.-By "ill-erected" is meant -erected for evil purposes. "I am sworn brother, sweet, To grim necessity."-Act V., Scene 1. The term "sworn brother" alludes to those persons who, in the age of adventure, bound themselves by mutual oaths to share fortunes together.-The meaning is, "I have reconciled myself to necessity: I am in a state of amity with the constraint which I have sustained." "Enter YORK and his DUCHESS."-Act V., Scene 2. The first wife of Edward Duke of York was Isabella, daughter of Peter the Cruel, King of Castile and Leon. He married her in 1372, and had by her the Duke of Aumerle (or Albemarle) and all his other children. The introduction of the Duchess in this place is an anachronism, as she died in 1394, four or five years before the events related in the present play. "That all the walls, With painted imagery, had said at once, The allusion here is, probably, to the painted cloths that were hung in the streets during the pageants: in these the figures sometimes had labels issuing from their mouths, containing sentences of gratulation. |