Is gone to meet the king, who lately landed,
With some few private friends, upon this coast.
North. The news is very fair and good, my lord;
Richard, not far from hence, hath hid his head.

York. It would beseem the lord Northumberland, To say-King Richard:-Alack the heavy day, When such a sacred king should hide his head! North. Your grace mistakes me1; only to be brief, Left I his title out.

York. The time hath been, Would you have been so brief with him, he would Have been so brief with you, to shorten you For taking so the head, your whole head's length. Boling. Mistake not, uncle,further than you should. York. Take not, good cousin, further than you should,

Lest you mis-take: The heavens are o'er your head. Boling. I know it, uncle; and oppose not Myself against their will.-But who comes here?

Enter PERCY.

Well, Harry; what, will not this castle yield?
Percy. The castle royally is mann'd, my lord,
Against thy entrance.

Boling. Royally!

Why, it contains no king?

Percy.

Yes, my good lord,

It doth contain a king: King Richard lies.

Within the limits of yon lime and stone:

And with him are the Lord Aumerle, Lord Salisbury,
Sir Stephen Scroop; besides a clergyman
Of holy reverence; who, I cannot learn.

North. Belike, it is the bishop of Carlisle.

1 The word me, which is wanting in the old copies, was supplied by Hanmer.

2 The old copy reads Welcome, Harry:' the emendation is Hanmer's.

Boling. Noble lord3,

[To NORTH.

Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle;

Through brazen trumpet send the breath of parle
Into his ruin'd ears, and thus deliver:

Harry Bolingbroke

power;

On both his knees doth kiss King Richard's hand;
And sends allegiance, and true faith of heart,
To his most royal person: hither come
Even at his feet to lay my arms and
Provided that, my banishment repeal'd,
And lands restor'd again, be freely granted:
If not, I'll use the advantage of my power,
And lay the summer's dust with showers of blood,
Rain'd from the wounds of slaughter'd Englishmen :
The which, how far off from the mind of Bolingbroke
It is, such crimson tempest should bedrench
The fresh green lap of fair King Richard's land,
My stooping duty tenderly shall show.

Go, signify as much; while here we march
Upon the grassy carpet of this plain.—

[NORTHUMBERLAND advances to the
Castle, with a Trumpet.

Let's march without the noise of threat'ning drum,
That from the castle's totter'd battlements
Our fair appointments may be well perus'd.
Methinks, King Richard and myself should meet
With no less terror than the elements

Of fire and water, when their thund'ring shock
At meeting tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven.
Be he the fire, I'll be the yielding water:
The rage be his, while on the earth I rain

3 Shakspeare frequently, in his addresses to persons, begins with an hemistich; and sometimes blends short prosaic sentences with his metrical dialogues.

4 Totter'd, the reading of the two first quartos, is here probably used for tottering, according to a frequent usage of our poet. The other copies read tatter'd.

My waters; on the earth, and not on him.
March on, and mark King Richard how he looks.

A Parley sounded, and answered by another Trumpet within. Flourish. Enter on the walls KING RICHARD, the Bishop of Carlisle, AUMERLE, SCROOP, and SALISBURY.

York. See, see, King Richard doth himself appear3,
As doth the blushing discontented sun
From out the fiery portal of the east;

When he perceives the envious clouds are bent
To dim his glory, and to stain the track
Of his bright passage to the occident.
Yet looks he like a king; behold, his eye,
As bright as is the eagle's, lightens forth
Controlling majesty; Alack, alack, for woe,
That any harm should stain so fair a show!

K. Rich. We are amaz'd; and thus long have we stood

To watch the fearful bending of thy knee,

[To NORTHUMBERLAND.
Because we thought ourself thy lawful king:
And if we be, how dare thy joints forget
To pay their awful duty to our presence?
If we be not, show us the hand of God
That hath dismiss'd us from our stewardship;
For well we know, no hand of blood and bone
Can gripe the sacred handle of our sceptre,
Unless he do profane, steal, or usurp.

And though you think, that all, as you have done,
Have torn their souls, by turning them from us,
And we are barren, and bereft of friends;
Yet know, my master, God omnipotent,
Is must'ring in his clouds, on our behalf,

5 The six first lines of this speech are erroneously given to Bolingbroke in the old copies.

Armies of pestilence; and they shall strike
Your children yet unborn, and unbegot,
That lift your vassal hands against my head,
And threat the glory of my precious crown.
Tell Bolingbroke (for yond', methinks, he is),
That every stride he makes upon my land,
Is dangerous treason; He is come to ope
The purple testament of bleeding war;
But ere the crown he looks for live in peace,
Ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers' sons
Shall ill become the flower of England's face7;
Change the complexion of her maid-pale peace
To scarlet indignation, and bedew

Her pastures' grass with faithful English blood.
North. The king of heaven forbid, our lord the king
Should so with civil and uncivil arms

Be rush'd upon! Thy thrice-noble cousin,
Harry Bolingbroke, doth humbly kiss thy hand;
And by the honourable tomb he swears,
That stands upon thy royal grandsire's bones;
And by the royalties of both your bloods,
Currents that spring from one most gracious head;
And by the buried hand of warlike Gaunt;

6 Shakspeare uses the word testament in its legal sense. Bolingbroke come to open the testament of war, that he may peruse what is decreed there in his favour. Purple is an epithet referring to the future effusion of blood. Thus in Julius Cæsar:

'Now while your purpled hands do reek and smoke.'

7 i. e. England's flowery face, the flowery surface of England's soil. The same mode of expression is used in Sidney's Arcadia, p. 2: Opening the cherry of her lips,' i. e. her cherry lips. Again, p. 240, ed. 1633:-' The sweet and beautiful flower of her face. And Drayton, in Mortimer's Epistle to Queen Isabel :And in the field advance our plumy crest,

And march upon fair England's flow'ry breast.' There is a similar image in the first part of King Henry IV. Sc. 1:

No more the thirsty entrance of the soil

Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood.'

And by the worth and honour of himself,
Comprising all that may be sworn or said,—
His coming hither hath no further scope,
Than for his lineal royalties, and to beg
Enfranchisement immediate on his knees:
Which on thy royal party granted once,
His glittering arms he will commend to rust,
His barbed steeds to stables, and his heart
To faithful service of your majesty.

This swears he, as he is a prince, is just;
And, as I am a gentleman, I credit him.

K. Rich. Northumberland, say,-thus the king
returns;

His noble cousin is right welcome hither;
And all the number of his fair demands
Shall be accomplish'd without contradiction:
With all the gracious utterance thou hast,
Speak to his gentle hearing kind commends.-
We do debase ourself, cousin, do we not,

[To AUMERLE.
To look so poorly, and to speak to fair?
Shall we call back Northumberland, and send
Defiance to the traitor, and so die?

Aum. No, good my lord; let's fight with gentle words,

Till time lend friends, and friends their helpful swords. K. Rich. O God! O God! that e'er this tongue

of mine,

That laid the sentence of dread banishment

On yon proud man, should take it off again
With words of sooth 9! O, that I were as great
As is my grief, or lesser than my name!

8 Commend for commit. Vide Macbeth, vol. iv. p. 234, note 3. 9 Sooth is sweet, as well as true. In this place sooth means sweetness or softness. Thus to sooth still means to calm and sweeten the mind.