Act IIScene I
London. An Apartment in Ely House
Gaunt on a couch; the Duke of York and Others standing by him.
Gaunt
Will the King come, that I may breathe my lastIn 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 menEnforce 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 moreThan 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 soundThe open ear of youth doth always listen;Report of fashions in proud Italy,Whose manners still our tardy-apish nationLimps 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 herselfAgainst 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 wallOr 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 JewryOf 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 siegeOf wat’ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame,With inky blots and rotten parchment bondsThat England that was wont to conquer othersHath made a shameful conquest of itself.Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,How happy then were my ensuing death!
Enter King Richard and Queen; Aumerle, Bushy, Green, Bagot, Ross and Willoughby.
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 uponIs 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 cureOf 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 eyeSeen 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 admonitionMake pale our cheek, chasing the royal bloodWith 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 headShould 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 goodThat thou respect’st not spilling Edward’s blood.Join with the present sickness that I have,And thy unkindness be like crooked ageTo 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.
Exit, borne off by his Attendants.
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 wordsTo wayward sickliness and age in him.He loves you, on my life, and holds you dearAs 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.
Enter Northumberland.
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 elseBut only they have privilege to live.And, for these great affairs do ask some charge,Towards our assistance we do seize to usThe plate, coin, revenues, and moveablesWhereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possessed.
York
How long shall I be patient? Ah, how longShall 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 BolingbrokeAbout 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 FrenchAnd not against his friends. His noble handDid win what he did spend, and spent not thatWhich 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, pleasedNot to be pardoned, am content withal.Seek you to seize and gripe into your handsThe 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 TimeHis charters and his customary rights;Let not tomorrow then ensue today;Be not thyself; for how art thou a kingBut 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 hathBy his attorneys-general to sueHis 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 thoughtsWhich honour and allegiance cannot think.
King Richard
Think what you will, we seize into our handsHis 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 understoodThat their events can never fall out good.
Exit.
King Richard
Go, Bushy, to the Earl of Wiltshire straight.Bid him repair to us to Ely HouseTo see this business. Tomorrow nextWe 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.
Exeunt King, Queen, Bushy, Aumerle, Green and Bagot.
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 silenceEre’t be disburdened with a liberal tongue.
Northumberland
Nay, speak thy mind, and let him ne’er speak moreThat 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 borneIn him, a royal prince, and many moeOf noble blood in this declining land.The King is not himself, but basely ledBy 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 finedFor 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 compromiseThat 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 nowFor suffering so the causes of our wrack.
Northumberland
Not so. Even through the hollow eyes of deathI spy life peering; but I dare not sayHow 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 bayIn Brittany, received intelligenceThat 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 BrittanyWith 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 stayThe 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.
Exeunt.