The Complete Historical Plays of William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare
The shadow of your sorrow hath destroy’d
The shadow of your face.
KING RICHARD.
Say that again.
The shadow of my sorrow! Ha! let’s see:
‘Tis very true: my grief lies all within;
And these external manner of laments
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 givest
Me cause to wail, but teachest me the way
How to lament the cause. I’ll beg one boon,
And then be gone and trouble you no more.
Shall I obtain it?
BOLINGBROKE.
Name it, fair cousin.
KING RICHARD.
‘Fair cousin’! I am greater than a king;
For when I was a king, my flatterers
Were then but subjects; being now a subject,
I have a king here to my flatterer.
Being so great, I have no need to beg.
BOLINGBROKE.
Yet ask.
KING RICHARD.
And shall I have?
BOLINGBROKE.
You shall.
KING RICHARD.
Then give me leave to go.
BOLINGBROKE.
Whither?
KING RICHARD.
Whither you will, so I were from your sights.
BOLINGBROKE.
Go, some of you convey him to the Tower.
KING RICHARD.
O, good! convey? conveyers are you all,
That rise thus nimbly by a true king’s fall.
[Exeunt KING RICHARD and Guard.]
BOLINGBROKE.
On Wednesday next we solemnly set down
Our coronation: lords, prepare yourselves.
[Exeunt all but the BISHOP OF CARLISLE, the ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER, and AUMERLE.]
ABBOT.
A woeful pageant have we here beheld.
CARLISLE.
The woe’s to come; the children yet unborn
Shall feel this day as sharp to them as thorn.
AUMERLE.
You holy clergymen, is there no plot
To rid the realm of this pernicious blot?
ABBOT.
My lord,
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.
[Exeunt.]
ACT 5
SCENE I. London. A street leading to the Tower.
[Enter the QUEEN and ladies.]
QUEEN.
This way the King will come; this is the way
To Julius Caesar’s illerected 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 Guard.]
But soft, but see, or rather do not see,
My fair rose wither; yet look up, behold,
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 alehouse guest?
KING RICHARD.
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, sweet,
To grim Necessity; and he and
Will keep a league till death. Hie thee to France,
And cloister thee in some religious house:
Our holy lives must win a new world’s crown,
Which our profane hours here have thrown down.
QUEEN.
What! is my Richard both in shape and mind
Transform’d and weaken’d! Hath Bolingbroke depos’d
Thine intellect? Hath he been in thy heart?
The lion dying thrusteth forth his paw
And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage
To be o’erpower’d; and wilt thou, pupil-like,
Take the correction mildly, kiss the rod,
And fawn on rage with base humility,
Which art a lion and the king of beasts?
KING RICHARD.
A king of beasts, indeed; if aught but beasts,
I had been still a happy king of men.
Good sometimes queen, prepare thee hence for France.
Think I am dead, and that even here thou tak’st,
As from my deathbed, thy last living leave.
In winter’s tedious nights sit by the fire
With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales
Of woeful ages long ago betid;
And ere thou bid good night, to quit their griefs
Tell thou the lamentable tale of me,
And send the hearers weeping to their beds;
For why, the senseless brands will sympathize
The heavy accent of thy moving tongue,
And in compassion weep the fire out;
And some will mourn in ashes, some coalblack,
For the deposing of a rightful king.
[Enter NORTHUMBERLAND, attended.]
NORTHUMBERLAND.
My lord, the mind of Bolingbroke is chang’d;
You must to Pomfret, not unto the Tower.