To-day, to-day, unhappy day, too late,
O'erthrows thy joys, friends, fortune and thy state:
For all the Welshmen, hearing thou wert dead,
Are gone to Bolingbroke, dispersed and fled.

Aum. Comfort, my liege: why looks your grace
so pale?

K. Rich. But now the blood of twenty thousand

men

Did triumph in my face, and they are fled;
And, till so much blood thither come again,
Have I not reason to look pale and dead?
All souls that will be safe fly from my side,
For time hath set a blot upon my pride.

Aum. Comfort, my liege; remember who you

are.

K. Rich. I had forgot myself: am I not king?
Awake, thou coward majesty! thou sleepest.
Is not the king's name twenty thousand names?
Arm, arm, my name! a puny subject strikes
At thy great glory. Look not to the ground,
Ye favourites of a king: are we not high?
High be our thoughts: I know my uncle York
Hath power enough to serve our turn.

comes here?

Enter SCROOP.

But who

Scroop. More health and happiness betide my liege

Than can my care-tuned tongue deliver him!

K. Rich. Mine ear is open and my heart pre-
pared:

The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold.
Say, is my kingdom lost? why, 'twas my care;
And what loss is it to be rid of care?

Strives Bolingbroke to be as great as we?

92. care-tuned, tuned to a sorrowful note.

80

90

Greater he shall not be; if he serve God,
We'll serve Him too and be his fellow so:
Revolt our subjects? that we cannot mend;
They break their faith to God as well as us:
Cry woe, destruction, ruin and decay;

The worst is death, and death will have his day. Scroop. Glad am I that your highness is so arm'd

To bear the tidings of calamity.

Like an unseasonable stormy day,

Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores,
As if the world were all dissolved to tears,
So high above his limits swells the rage
Of Bolingbroke, covering your fearful land

With hard bright steel and hearts harder than

steel.

White-beards have arm'd their thin and hairless
scalps

Against thy majesty; boys, with women's voices,
Strive to speak big and clap their female joints
In stiff unwieldy arms against thy crown :
Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows
Of double-fatal yew against thy state;
Yea, distaff-women manage rusty bills
Against thy seat: both young and old rebel,
And all goes worse than I have power to tell.

K. Rich. Too well, too well thou tell'st a tale
so ill.

Where is the Earl of Wiltshire? where is Bagot?
What is become of Bushy? where is Green?
That they have let the dangerous enemy
Measure our confines with such peaceful steps?

112. thin and hairless, with thin hair or none.

116. beadsmen, the king's pensioners, who, as such, were VOL. VI

193

bound to pray for him.

100

110

120

117. double-fatal. The yew's leaves were held to be poison

ous.

If we prevail, their heads shall pay for it:

I warrant they have made peace with Bolingbroke. Scroop. Peace have they made with him indeed, my lord.

K. Rich. O villains, vipers, damn'd without
redemption !

Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man!
Snakes, in my heart-blood warm'd, that sting my
heart!

Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas!
Would they make peace? terrible hell make war
Upon their spotted souls for this offence!

Scroop. Sweet love, I see, changing his property,
Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate:
Again uncurse their souls; their peace is made
With heads, and not with hands: those whom you

curse

Have felt the worst of death's destroying wound
And lie full low, graved in the hollow ground.
Aum. Is Bushy, Green, and the Earl of Wilt-
shire dead?

Scroop. Ay, all of them at Bristol lost their
heads.

Aum. Where is the duke my father with his power?

K. Rich. No matter where; of comfort no man speak :

Let's talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs;

Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,

140. graved, buried.

146. Make dust our paper, write sorrow' in the dust.

130

140

150

And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been deposed; some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives; some sleeping
kill'd;

All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus,
Comes at the last and with a little pin

Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while :
I live with bread like you, feel want,

153. model of the barren earth. 'Model' in Shakespeare fluctuates between the two notions of an imitation (or plan) in little, and an impress or mould. Here the earth which the corpse can 'call its own' is a semblance of the earth at large, of which in filling the grave it may be said to take the mould.

156. sad stories of the death of kings; probably with a reference to the Mirror for Magistrates, the great Elizabethan repertory

160

170

of such stories, -a continuation of Boccaccio's more famous book the Falls of Princes (tr. by Lydgate), which closed shortly before the 'story' of Richard himself was complete.

162. antic, buffoon. 163. Scoffing, scoffing at. 164. breath, breathing-space. 166. self and vain conceit, vain self-conceit,

168. humour'd thus, (the king) having thus been humoured.

Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,

How can you say to me, I am a king?

Car. My lord, wise men ne'er sit and wail their
woes,

But presently prevent the ways to wail.
To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength,
Gives in your weakness strength unto your foe,
And so your follies fight against yourself.
Fear, and be slain; no worse can come to fight:
And fight and die is death destroying death;
Where fearing dying pays death servile breath.
Aum. My father hath a power; inquire of him,
And learn to make a body of a limb.

K. Rich. Thou chidest me well: proud Boling-
broke, I come

To change blows with thee for our day of doom.
This ague fit of fear is over-blown ;
An easy task it is to win our own.
Say, Scroop, where lies our uncle with his power?
Speak sweetly, man, although thy looks be sour.
Scroop. Men judge by the complexion of the
sky

The state and inclination of the day:

So may you by my dull and heavy eye,

My tongue hath but a heavier tale to say.

I play the torturer, by small and small

To lengthen out the worst that must be spoken :
Your uncle York is join'd with Bolingbroke,
And all your northern castles yielded up,
And all your southern gentlemen in arms

180

190

200

Upon his party.

K. Rich.

Thou hast said enough.

Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth

176. subjected, made a subject.

183. to fight, by fighting.

[To Aumerle.

185. fearing dying, to die

fearing.