The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, William Shakespeare [book recommendations based on other books txt] 📗

our wants; For we will make for Ireland presently.

 

Enter BUSHY

 

Bushy, what news?

BUSHY. Old John of Gaunt is grievous sick, my lord, Suddenly taken; and hath sent poste-haste To entreat your Majesty to visit him.

KING RICHARD. Where lies he?

BUSHY. At Ely House.

KING RICHARD. Now put it, God, in the physician’s mind To help him to his grave immediately!

The lining of his coffers shall make coats To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars.

Come, gentlemen, let’s all go visit him.

Pray God we may make haste, and come too late!

ALL. Amen. Exeunt

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ACT II. SCENE I.

London. Ely House

 

Enter JOHN OF GAUNT, sick, with the DUKE OF YORK, etc.

 

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 listen’d more Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose; More are men’s ends mark’d 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 stopp’d with other flattering sounds, As praises, of whose taste 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 buzz’d 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 inspir’d, 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 scept’red 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, Fear’d 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 leas’d 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!

 

Enter KING and QUEEN, AUMERLE, BUSHY, GREEN, BAGOT, Ross, and WILLOUGHBY

 

YORK. The King is come; deal mildly with his youth, For young hot colts being rag’d 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 watch’d; Watching breeds leanness, leanness is an 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 deathbed is no lesser than thy land Wherein thou liest in reputation sick; And thou, too careless patient as thou art, Commit’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, incaged 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 possess’d, Which art possess’d 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 tapp’d out, and drunkenly carous’d.

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.

Exit, borne out 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 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.

 

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 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 possess’d.

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 rag’d more fierce, In peace was never gentle lamb more mild, Than was that young and princely gentleman.

His face thou hast, for even so look’d he, Accomplish’d with the number of thy hours; But when he frown’d, 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 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, pleas’d Not to be pardoned, am content withal.

Seek you to seize and gripe into your hands The royalties and rights of banish’d 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 to-day;

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 off’red 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. Exit 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 lov’d us well.