SCENE IV.

Enter EXTON, and a Servant.

Exton. Didst thou not mark the king, what wòrds he spake?

Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?
Was it not so?

Serv.

Those were his very words.

Exton. Have I no friend? quoth he; he spake it twice,

And urg'd it twice together; did he not?

Serv. He did.

Exton. And, speaking it, he wistfully look'd on me; As who should say,- -I would, thou wert the man That would divorce this terror from my heart; Meaning, the king at Pomfret. Come, let's go; I am the king's friend, and will rid1 his foe.

Pomfret.

SCENE V.

[Exeunt.

The Dungcon of the Castle.

Enter KING RICHARD.

K. Rich. 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

6

1 To rid and to dispatch were formerly synonymous, as may be seen in the old Dictionaries, To ridde or dispatche himself of any man.'- To dispatche or ridde one quickly.' Vide Baret's Alvearie, 1576, in Ridde and Dispatche. So in King Henry VI. Part II.

'As deathsmen you have rid this sweet young prince.'

A generation of still-breeding thoughts,

And these same thoughts people this little world1;
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 2:

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 misfortune on the back
Of such as have before endur'd the like:
Thus play I, in one person, many people 3,
And none contented: Sometimes am I king:
Then treason makes me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: Then crushing penury

1i. e. his own body. So in King Lear :

'Strives in this little world of man outscorn

The to and fro conflicting wind and rain."

3

2 By the word is meant the Holy Scriptures. The folio reads the faith itself against the faith.

3 This is the reading of the quarto, 1597; alluding, perhaps, to the custom of our early theatres. The title pages of some of our Moralities show that three or four characters were frequently represented by one person. The folio, and other copies, read 'in one prison.'

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 am,
Nor I, nor any man, that but man is,

With nothing shall be pleas'd, till he be eas'd
With being nothing.-Musick do I hear? [Musick.
Ha, ha! keep time:-How sour sweet musick is,
When time is broke, and no proportion kept!
So is it in the musick 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 numb'ring clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and, with sighs, they jar 5
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 7,

4 The folio reads to hear?'

5 Tick.

6 It should be recollected that there are three ways in which a clock notices the progress of time, viz. by the libration of the pendulum, the index on the dial, and the striking of the hour. To these the king, in his comparison, severally alludes; his sighs corresponding to the jarring or ticking of the pendulum, which at the same time that it watches or numbers the seconds, marks also their progress in minutes on the dial-plate, or outward watch, to which the king compares his eyes; and their want of figures is supplied by a succession of tears (or minute drops, to use an expression of Milton), his finger, by as regularly wiping these away, performs the office of the dial's point: his clamorous groans are the sounds that tell the hour. In King Henry IV. Part II. tears are used in a similar manner :

'But Harry lives that shall convert those tears
By number into hours of happiness.'

7 Should we not read :

Now, sir, the sounds that tell what hour it is
Are clamorous groans?' &c.

Are clamorous groans, that 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 8.
This musick mads me, let it sound no more;
For, though it have holpe madmen to their wits9,
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 10 in this all-hating world.
Enter Groom.

Groom. Hail, royal prince!

K. Rich. Thanks, noble peer; The cheapest of us is ten groats too dear. What art thou? and how comest thou hither, 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 11 royal master's face. O, how it yern'd my heart, when I beheld, In London streets, that coronation day,

11

8 That is, I strike for him. One of these automatons is alluded to in King Richard III. Act iv. Sc. 3:

'Because that, like a Jack, thou keep'st the stroke

Between thy begging and my meditation.'

Again, in an old comedy, entitled, If this be not a good Play the Devil is in it, 1612:

And we their Jacks o'the clockhouse."

9 See Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, part ii. sect. 2. 10 Brooch, an ornamented buckle, and also a jewel in general, here figuratively used for jewel.

11 Sometimes was used for former, as well as sometime. Aliquando.

When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary!
That horse, that thou so often hast bestrid;
That horse, that I so carefully have dress'd!

K. Rich. Rode he on Barbary? Tell me, gentle friend,

How went he under him?

Groom. So proudly, as if he disdain'd the ground 12. K. Rich. So proud that Bolingbroke was on his back!

That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand;
This hand hath made him proud with clapping him.
Would he not stumble? Would he not fall down
(Since pride must have a fall), and break the neck
Of that proud man that did usurp his back?
Forgiveness, horse! why do I rail on thee,
Since thou, created to be aw'd by man,
Wast born to bear? I was not made a horse;
And yet I bear a burden like an ass,

Spur-gall'd, and tir'd, by jauncing 13 Bolingbroke.

Enter Keeper, with a Dish.

Keep. Fellow, give place; here is no longer stay. [To the Groom. K. Rich. If thou love me, 'tis time thou wert away. Groom. What my tongue dares not, that my heart

shall say.

[Exit. Keep. My lord, will't please you to fall to? K. Rich. Taste of it first, as thou art wont to do. Keep. My lord, I dare not; Sir Pierce of Exton, who Lately came from the king, commands the contrary.

12 Froissart relates a yet more silly tale of a greyhound of King Richard's,' who was wont to leape upon the king, but left the king and came to the erle of Derby, duke of Lancastre, and made to him the same frendly countenance and chere as he was wont to do to the king.'-Froissart, by Berners, v. 11. fo. cccxxx.

13 Jancing is hard riding, from the old French word jancer, which Cotgrave explains To stir a horse in the stable till he sweat withall; or (as our) to jaunt.'