SCENE I. London. An Apartment in Ely House.

GAUNT

Will the King come, that I may breathe my last

In wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth?

YORK

Vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath,

For all in vain comes counsel to his ear.

GAUNT

O, but they say the tongues of dying men

Enforce attention like deep harmony.

Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,

For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.

He that no more must say is listened more

Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose.

More are men’s ends marked than their lives before.

The setting sun and music at the close,

As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,

Writ in remembrance more than things long past.

Though Richard my life’s counsel would not hear,

My death’s sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.

YORK

No, it is stopped with other flattering sounds,

As praises, of whose state the wise are fond;

Lascivious metres, to whose venom sound

The open ear of youth doth always listen;

Report of fashions in proud Italy,

Whose manners still our tardy-apish nation

Limps after in base imitation.

Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity—

So it be new, there’s no respect how vile—

That is not quickly buzzed into his ears?

Then all too late comes counsel to be heard,

Where will doth mutiny with wit’s regard.

Direct not him whose way himself will choose.

’Tis breath thou lack’st, and that breath wilt thou lose.

GAUNT

Methinks I am a prophet new inspired,

And thus expiring do foretell of him:

His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,

For violent fires soon burn out themselves;

Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;

He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;

With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder.

Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,

Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.

This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands;

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,

Feared by their breed, and famous by their birth,

Renowned for their deeds as far from home,

For Christian service and true chivalry,

As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry

Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son,

This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,

Dear for her reputation through the world,

Is now leased out—I die pronouncing it—

Like to a tenement or pelting farm.

England, bound in with the triumphant sea,

Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege

Of wat’ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame,

With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds

That England that was wont to conquer others

Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,

How happy then were my ensuing death!

YORK

The King is come. Deal mildly with his youth,

For young hot colts, being raged, do rage the more.

QUEEN

How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster?

KING RICHARD

What comfort, man? How is’t with aged Gaunt?

GAUNT

O, how that name befits my composition!

Old Gaunt indeed, and gaunt in being old.

Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast,

And who abstains from meat that is not gaunt?

For sleeping England long time have I watched;

Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt.

The pleasure that some fathers feed upon

Is my strict fast—I mean my children’s looks,

And therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt.

Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,

Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones.

KING RICHARD

Can sick men play so nicely with their names?

GAUNT

No, misery makes sport to mock itself.

Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me,

I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee.

KING RICHARD

Should dying men flatter with those that live?

GAUNT

No, no, men living flatter those that die.

KING RICHARD

Thou, now a-dying, sayest thou flatterest me.

GAUNT

O, no, thou diest, though I the sicker be.

KING RICHARD

I am in health, I breathe, and see thee ill.

GAUNT

Now, He that made me knows I see thee ill,

Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill.

Thy death-bed is no lesser than thy land,

Wherein thou liest in reputation sick;

And thou, too careless patient as thou art,

Committ’st thy anointed body to the cure

Of those physicians that first wounded thee.

A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,

Whose compass is no bigger than thy head;

And yet, encaged in so small a verge,

The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.

O, had thy grandsire with a prophet’s eye

Seen how his son’s son should destroy his sons,

From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame,

Deposing thee before thou wert possessed,

Which art possessed now to depose thyself.

Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world,

It were a shame to let this land by lease;

But for thy world enjoying but this land,

Is it not more than shame to shame it so?

Landlord of England art thou now, not king.

Thy state of law is bondslave to the law,

And thou—

KING RICHARD

A lunatic lean-witted fool,

Presuming on an ague’s privilege,

Darest with thy frozen admonition

Make pale our cheek, chasing the royal blood

With fury from his native residence.

Now, by my seat’s right royal majesty,

Wert thou not brother to great Edward’s son,

This tongue that runs so roundly in thy head

Should run thy head from thy unreverent shoulders.

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 befall 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.

KING RICHARD

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.

KING RICHARD

Right, you say true: as Hereford’s love, so his;

As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.

NORTHUMBERLAND

My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your Majesty.

KING RICHARD

What says he?

NORTHUMBERLAND

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.

KING RICHARD

The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he.

His time is spent; our pilgrimage must be.

So much for that. Now for our Irish wars:

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,

Nor 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’s 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.

KING RICHARD

Why, uncle, what’s the matter?

YORK

O my liege.

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 tomorrow then ensue today;

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 patents 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-disposed hearts,

And prick my tender patience to those thoughts

Which honour and allegiance cannot think.

KING RICHARD

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.

KING RICHARD

Go, Bushy, to the Earl of Wiltshire straight.

Bid him repair to us to Ely House

To see this business. Tomorrow next

We will for Ireland, and ’tis time, I trow.

And we create, in absence of ourself,

Our Uncle York Lord Governor of England,

For he is just, and always loved us well.

Come on, our queen. Tomorrow must we part;

Be merry, for our time of stay is short.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Well, lords, the Duke of Lancaster is dead.

ROSS

And living too, for now his son is Duke.

WILLOUGHBY

Barely in title, not in revenues.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Richly in both, if justice had her right.

ROSS

My heart is great, but it must break with silence

Ere’t be disburdened with a liberal tongue.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Nay, speak thy mind, and let him ne’er speak more

That speaks thy words again to do thee harm!

WILLOUGHBY

Tends that thou wouldst speak to the Duke of Hereford?

If it be so, out with it boldly, man.

Quick is mine ear to hear of good towards him.

ROSS

No good at all that I can do for him,

Unless you call it good to pity him,

Bereft and gelded of his patrimony.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Now, afore God, ’tis shame such wrongs are borne

In him, a royal prince, and many moe

Of noble blood in this declining land.

The King is not himself, but basely led

By flatterers; and what they will inform,

Merely in hate ’gainst any of us all,

That will the King severely prosecute

’Gainst us, our lives, our children, and our heirs.

ROSS

The commons hath he pilled with grievous taxes,

And quite lost their hearts. The nobles hath he fined

For ancient quarrels and quite lost their hearts.

WILLOUGHBY

And daily new exactions are devised,

As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what.

But what, i’ God’s name, doth become of this?

NORTHUMBERLAND

Wars hath not wasted it, for warred he hath not,

But basely yielded upon compromise

That which his ancestors achieved with blows.

More hath he spent in peace than they in wars.

ROSS

The Earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm.

WILLOUGHBY

The King’s grown bankrupt like a broken man.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Reproach and dissolution hangeth over him.

ROSS

He hath not money for these Irish wars,

His burdenous taxations notwithstanding,

But by the robbing of the banished Duke.

NORTHUMBERLAND

His noble kinsman. Most degenerate king!

But, lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing,

Yet seek no shelter to avoid the storm;

We see the wind sit sore upon our sails,

And yet we strike not, but securely perish.

ROSS

We see the very wrack that we must suffer;

And unavoided is the danger now

For suffering so the causes of our wrack.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Not so. Even through the hollow eyes of death

I spy life peering; but I dare not say

How near the tidings of our comfort is.

WILLOUGHBY

Nay, let us share thy thoughts as thou dost ours.

ROSS

Be confident to speak, Northumberland.

We three are but thyself, and, speaking so,

Thy words are but as thoughts. Therefore be bold.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Then thus: I have from Le Port Blanc, a bay

In Brittany, received intelligence

That Harry Duke of Hereford, Rainold Lord Cobham,

That late broke from the Duke of Exeter,

His brother, Archbishop late of Canterbury,

Sir Thomas Erpingham, Sir John Ramston,

Sir John Norbery, Sir Robert Waterton, and Francis Coint,

All these well furnished by the Duke of Brittany

With eight tall ships, three thousand men of war,

Are making hither with all due expedience,

And shortly mean to touch our northern shore.

Perhaps they had ere this, but that they stay

The first departing of the king for Ireland.

If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke,

Imp out our drooping country’s broken wing,

Redeem from broking pawn the blemished crown,

Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre’s gilt,

And make high majesty look like itself,

Away with me in post to Ravenspurgh.

But if you faint, as fearing to do so,

Stay and be secret, and myself will go.

ROSS

To horse, to horse! Urge doubts to them that fear.

WILLOUGHBY

Hold out my horse, and I will first be there.

ACT II

SCENE I. London. An Apartment in Ely House.