Shakespeare's Henriad (Book 1-4). William Hazlitt

      SCENE V.

       Pomfret. The dungeon of the Castle.

       Table of Contents

      [Enter KING RICHARD.]

      KING RICHARD.

       I have been studying how I may compare

       This prison where I live unto the world

       And for because the world is populous,

       And here is not a creature but myself,

       I cannot do it; yet I’ll hammer it out.

       My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul;

       My soul the father: and these two beget

       A generation of still-breeding thoughts,

       And these same thoughts people this little world,

       In humours like the people of this world,

       For no thought is contented. The better sort,

       As thoughts of things divine, are intermix’d

       With scruples, and do set the word itself

       Against the word:

       As thus: ‘Come, little ones’; and then again,

       ‘It is as hard to come as for a camel

       To thread the postern of a needle’s eye.’

       Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot

       Unlikely wonders; how these vain weak nails

       May tear a passage through the flinty ribs

       Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls;

       And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.

       Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves

       That they are not the first of fortune’s slaves,

       Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars

       Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame,

       That many have and others must sit there:

       And in this thought they find a kind of ease,

       Bearing their own misfortunes on the back

       Of such as have before endur’d the like.

       Thus play I in one person many people,

       And none contented: sometimes am I king;

       Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,

       And so I am: then crushing penury

       Persuades me I was better when a king;

       Then am I king’d again; and by and by

       Think that I am unking’d by Bolingbroke,

       And straight am nothing: but whate’er I be,

       Nor I, nor any man that but man is

       With nothing shall be pleas’d till he be eas’d

       With being nothing.

       Music do I hear? [Music.]

       Ha, ha! keep time. How sour sweet music is

       When time is broke and no proportion kept!

       So is it in the music of men’s lives.

       And here have I the daintiness of ear

       To check time broke in a disorder’d string;

       But, for the concord of my state and time,

       Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.

       I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;

       For now hath time made me his numbering clock:

       My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar

       Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,

       Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point,

       Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.

       Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is

       Are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart,

       Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans

       Show minutes, times, and hours; but my time

       Runs posting on in Bolingbroke’s proud joy,

       While I stand fooling here, his Jack o’ the clock.

       This music mads me; let it sound no more;

       For though it have holp madmen to their wits,

       In me it seems it will make wise men mad.

       Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me!

       For ‘tis a sign of love; and love to Richard

       Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.

      [Enter a Groom of the stable.]

      GROOM.

       Hail, royal Prince!

      KING RICHARD.

       Thanks, noble peer;

       The cheapest of us is ten groats too dear.

       What art thou? and how comest thou hither, man,

       Where no man never comes but that sad dog

       That brings me food to make misfortune live?

      GROOM.

       I was a poor groom of thy stable, king,

       When thou wert king; who, travelling towards York,

       With much ado at length have gotten leave

       To look upon my sometimes royal master’s face.

       O! how it yearn’d my heart when I beheld,

       In London streets, that coronation day,

       When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary,

       That horse that thou so often hast bestrid,