Act IIIScene IV
Langley. The Duke of York’s garden
Enter the Queen and two Ladies.
Queen
What sport shall we devise here in this gardenTo drive away the heavy thought of care?
Lady
Madam, we’ll play at bowls.
Queen
’Twill make me think the world is full of rubsAnd that my fortune runs against the bias.
Lady
Madam, we’ll dance.
Queen
My legs can keep no measure in delightWhen my poor heart no measure keeps in grief.Therefore no dancing, girl; some other sport.
Lady
Madam, we’ll tell tales.
Queen
Of sorrow or of joy?
Lady
Of either, madam.
Queen
Of neither, girl.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 shouldst 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.But stay, here come the gardeners.Let’s step into the shadow of these trees.My wretchedness unto a row of pins,They will talk of state, for everyone doth soAgainst a change; woe is forerun with woe.
Queen and Ladies retire.
Enter a Gardener and two Servants.
Gardener
Go, bind thou up young dangling apricocks,Which, like unruly children, make their sireStoop with oppression of their prodigal weight.Give some supportance to the bending twigs.Go thou, and like an executionerCut off the heads of too fast-growing spraysThat look too lofty in our commonwealth.All must be even in our government.You thus employed, I will go root awayThe noisome weeds which without profit suckThe soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.
Servant
Why should we in the compass of a paleKeep 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 herbsSwarming with caterpillars?
Gardener
Hold thy peace.He that hath suffered this disordered springHath 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.
Servant
What, are they dead?
Gardener
They are. And BolingbrokeHath seized the wasteful King. O, what pity is itThat he had not so trimmed and dressed his landAs we this garden! We at time of yearDo 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 tasteTheir fruits of duty. Superfluous branchesWe lop away, that bearing boughs may live.Had he done so, himself had home the crown,Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.
Servant
What, think you the King shall be deposed?
Gardener
Depressed he is already, and deposed’Tis doubt he will be. Letters came last nightTo a dear friend of the good Duke of York’sThat tell black tidings.
Queen
O, I am pressed to death through want of speaking!
Coming forward.
Thou, old Adam’s likeness, set to dress this garden,How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news?What Eve, what serpent, hath suggested theeTo 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 this ill tidings? Speak, thou wretch!
Gardener
Pardon me, madam. Little joy have ITo breathe this news; yet what I say is true.King Richard, he is in the mighty holdOf 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 will find it so.I speak no more than everyone 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 thinkestTo serve me last that I may longest keepThy sorrow in my breast. Come, ladies, goTo meet at London London’s king in woe.What, was I born to this, that my sad lookShould grace the triumph of great Bolingbroke?Gard’ner, for telling me these news of woe,Pray God the plants thou graft’st may never grow!
Exeunt Queen and Ladies.
Gardener
Poor Queen, so that thy state might be no worse,I would my skill were subject to thy curse.Here did she fall a tear. Here in this placeI’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace.Rue even for ruth here shortly shall be seenIn the remembrance of a weeping queen.
Exeunt.