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His captain, steward, deputy elect,
Anointed, crowned, planted many years,
Be judg'd by subject and inferior breath,
And he himself not present? O, forbid it, God,
That, in a Christian climate, souls refin'd
Should show so heinous, black, obscene a deed!
I speak to subjects, and a subject speaks,
Stirr'd up by heaven, thus boldly for his king.
My lord of Hereford here, whom you call king,
Is a foul traitor to proud Hereford's king:
And if you crown him, let me prophecy, -
The blood of English shall manure the ground,
And future ages groan for this foul act;
Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels,
And, in this seat of peace, tumultuous wars
Shall kin with kin, and kind with kind confound:
Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny

Shall here inhabit, and this land be call'd
The field of Golgotha, and dead men's sculls.
O, if you rear this house against this house,
It will the wofullest division prove,
That ever fell upon this cursed earth:
Prevent, resist it, let it not be so,

Lest child's child's children cry against you-woe!
North. Well have you argu'd, sir; and, for your

pains,

Of capital treason we arrest you here :-
My lord of Westminster, be it your charge
To keep him safely till his day of trial.--
May't please you, lords, to grant the commons'

suit.4

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rest,

[Exit.

our ar

Procure your sureties for your days of answer:Little are we beholden to your love, [TO CAR. And little look'd for at your helping hands.

Re-enter YORK, with KING RICHARD, and Officers bearing the Crown, &c.

K. Rich. Alack, why am I sent for to a king, Before I have shook off the regal thoughts Wherewith I reign'd? I hardly yet have learn'd To insinuate, flatter, bow, and bend my knee: Give sorrow leave a while to tutor me

To this submission. Yet I well remember

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ing be;

Therefore no no, for I resign to thee.
Now mark me how I will undo myself:-
I give this heavy weight from off my head,
And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,
The pride of kingly sway from out my heart;
With mine own tears I wash away my balm,
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duteous oaths :
All pomp and majesty I do forswear;

My manors, rents, revenues, I forego;

My acts, decrees, and statutes, I deny :
God pardon all oaths, that are broke to me!
God keep all vows unbroke, are made to thee!
Make me, that nothing have, with nothing griev'd;
And thou with all pleas'd, that hast all achiev'd!
Long mayst thou live in Richard's seat to sit,
And soon lie Richard in an earthly pit!
God save King Henry, unking'd Richard says,
And send him many years of sunshine days!
What more remains?

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The favours of these men: Were they not mine? My weav'd up follies? Gentle Northumberland,

Did they not sometime cry, all hail! to me?

So Judas did to Christ: but he, in twelve,

Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand,

none.

God save the king!-Will no man say, amen ?
Am I both priest and clerk? well then, amen.
God save the king! although I be not he:
And yet, amen, if heaven do think him me.-
To do what service am I sent for hither?

York. To do that office, of thine own good will,
Which tired majesty did make thee offer,-
The resignation of thy state and crown
To Henry Bolingbroke.

K. Rich. Give me the crown; -Here, cousin, seize the crown;

On this side, my hand; and on that side, yours. Now is this golden crown like a deep well,

If thy offences were upon record,
Would it not shame thee in so fair a troop,
To read a lecture of them? If thou would'st, 14
There should'st thou find one heinous article,-
Containing the deposing of a king,

And cracking the strong warrant of an oath,-
Mark'd with a blot, damn'din the book of heaven:-
Nay, all of you, that stand and look upon me,
Whilst that my wretchedness doth bait myself,-
Though some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands,
Showing an outward pity; yet you Pilates
Have here deliver'd me to my sour cross,
And water cannot wash away your sin.

North. My lord, despatch; read o'er these articles.

K. Rich. Mine eyes are full of tears, I cannot

see:

And yet salt water blinds them not so much,

ter. Even that 'cut-purse of the empire, Claudius, in Hamlet, affects to believe that

such divinity doth hedge a king."

1 The quarto reads forfend.

2 The quarto reads raise.

3 i. e. grandchildren. Pope altered it to 'children's children, and was followed by others. The old copies read, Lest child, childs children.'

4 What follows, almost to the end of the act, is not found in the first two quartos. The addition was made in the quarto of 1608. In the quarto, 1597, after the words his day of trial, the scene thus closes :

Bol. Let it be so and lo! on Wednesday next
We solemnly proclaim our coronation.
Louis, be ready all.

5 i. e. conductor.

6 The quarto reads limbs.

7 Countenances, features.

8 Owns.

9 Shakspeare often obscures his meaning by playing

with sounds. Richard seems to say here that his cares are not made less by the increase of Bolingbroke's cares; his grief is, that his regal cares are at an end, by the cessation of care to which he had been accus tomed."

10 Attend.

11 Oil of consecration.

12 The first quarto reads duty's rites.

13 Thus the folio. The quarto reads that swear. 14 That is, if thou would'st read over a list of the own deeds.

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An if my word be sterling yet in England,
Let it command a mirror hither straight;
That it may show me what a face I have,
Since it is bankrupt of his majesty.

Boling. Go some of you, and fetch a looking-
glass.
[Exit an Attendant.
North. Read o'er this paper, while the glass doth
K. Rich. Fiend! thou torment'st me ere I come
to hell.

come.

Boling. Urge it no more, my Lord Northumber-
land.
North. The commons will not then be satisfied.
K. Rich. They shall be satisfied: I'll read enough,
When I do see the very book indeed
Where all my sins are writ, and that's-myself.
Re-enter Attendant, with a Glass.
Give me that glass, and therein will I read.-
No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath sorrow struck
So many blows upon this face of mine,
And made no deeper wounds ?-O, flattering glass,
Like to my followers in prosperity,

Thou dost beguile me! Was this face the face,
That every day under his household roof

Did keep ten thousand men ? Was this the face,
That, like the sun, did make beholders wink: 5
Was this the face, that fac'd so many follies,
And was at last out-fac'd by Bolingbroke?
A brittle glory shineth in this face :

As brittle as the glory is the face;

[Dashes the Glass against the ground.

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Our coronation: lords, prepare yourselves.

[Exeunt all but the Abbot, Bishop of Carlisle,

and AUMERLE.

Abbot. A woful pageant have we here beheld.
Car. The woe's to come: the children yet un-
born

Shall feel this day as sharp to them as thorn.
Aum. You holy clergymen, is there no plot
To rid the realm of this pernicious blot?
Abbot. Before I freely speak my mind herein,
You shall not only take the sacrament
To bury mine intents, but also to effect
Whatever I shall happen to devise :-
I see your brows are full of discontent,
Your hearts of sorrow, and your eyes of tears;
Come home with me to supper; I will lay
A plot, shall show us all a merry day.

ACT V.

[Exeunt.

SCENE I. London. A Street leading to the Tower.
Enter Queen, and Ladies.

Queen. This way the king will come; this is the

way

To Julius Cæsar's ill-erected tower,
To whose flint bosom my condemned lord
Is doom'd a prisoner, by proud Bolingbroke:
Here let us rest, if this rebellious earth
Have any resting for her true king's queen.
Enter KING RICHARD, and Guards.

For there it is, crack'd in a hundred shivers.-
Mark, silent king, the moral of this sport,-
How soon my sorrow hath destroy'd my face.
Boling. The shadow of your sorrow hath de- My fair rose wither: Yet look up; behold;

stroy'd

The shadow of your face.

K. Rich.

Say that again.

The shadow of my sorrow? Ha! let's sce:-
Tis very true, my grief lies all within ;*
And these external manners of lament

Are merely shadows to the unseen grief,
That swells with silence in the tortur'd soul;
There lies the substance: and I thank thee, king,
For thy great bounty, that not only giv'st
Me cause to wail, but teachest me the way
How to lament the cause. I'll beg one boon,

1 A sort is a set or company.

2 i. e. haughty.

3 His for its. It was common in the poet's time to use the personal for the neutral pronoun.

4 To his household came every day to meate ten thousand men.- Chronicle History.

5 The quarto omits this line and the four preceding words.

6 But I have that within which passeth show.' These but the trappings and the suits of woe.' Hamlet.

7 To convey was formerly often used in an ill sense. Pistol says of stealing, convey the wise it call; and

،

to convey' is the word for slight of hand or juggling. Richard means that it is a term of contempt, jugglers are you all.

But soft, but see, or rather do not see,

That you in pity may dissolve to dew,

And wash him fresh again with true-love tears.-
Ah, thou, the model where old Troy did stand;
Thou map of honour; thou King Richard's tomb,
And not King Richard; thou most beauteous inn,
Why should hard-favour'd grief be lodg'd in thee,
When triumph is become an ale-house guest?

K. Rich. Join not with grief, fair woman, do

not so,

To make my end too sudden: learn, good soul
To think our former state a happy dream;
From which awak'd, the truth of what we are
Shows us but this; I am sworn brother, 12 sweet,

8 This is the last of the additional lines first printed in the quarto of 1608. In the first editions there is no personal appearance of King Richard.

9 By ill-erected is probably meant erected for evil purposes.

10 Model anciently signified, according to the dictionaries, 'the platform or form of any thing. And map is used for picture resemblance. In the Rape of Lucrece Shakspeare calls sleep the map of death."

11 Inn does not probably here mean a house of public entertainment, but a dwelling or lodging generally. In which sense the word was anciently used.

12 Sworn brother alludes to the fratres jurati, who in the age of adventure, bound themselves by mutu oaths to share fortunes together.

1

THE

PUBLIC LENARY

AUTOR, LENOX

TILDEN FOUND..LONS 1

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