Aum. You holy clergymen, is there no plot
To rid the realm of this pernicious blot?

Abbot. 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 V.

SCENE I. London. A Street leading to the Tower.

Enter Queen, and Ladies.

Queen. This way the king will come; this is the way To Julius Cæsar's ill-erected tower1,

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 Guards.

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,

1 By ill erected is probably meant erected for evil purposes. 2 Model anciently signified, according to the dictionaries, 'the platform or form of any thing.' And map is used for picture resemblance. In The Rape of Lucrece Shakspeare calls sleep the map of death.'

And not King Richard; thou most beauteous inn 3, Why should hard-favour'd grief be lodg'd in thee, When triumph is become an ale-house guest?

K. Rich. 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 4, sweet, To grim necessity; and he and I

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 stricken down.

Queen. What, is my Richard both in shape and mind Transform'd and weakened? 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 thy correction mildly? kiss the rod, And fawn on rage with base humility,

Which art a lion, and a king of beasts?

K. Rich. A king of beasts, indeed: if aught but beasts,

I had been still a happy king of men.

Good sometime queen, prepare thee hence for France:
Think, I am dead; and that even here thou tak'st,
As from my death-bed, my last living leave.
In winter's tedious nights, sit by the fire

With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales
Of woful ages, long ago betid 5:

3 Inn does not probably here mean a house of public entertainment, but a dwelling or lodging generally. In which sense the word was anciently used.

4 Sworn brother alludes to the fratres jurati, who, in the age of adventure, bound themselves by mutual oaths to share fortunes together. Vide note on King Henry V. Act ii. Sc. 1. 5 Passed.

And, ere thou bid good night, to quit their grief,
Tell thou the lamentable fall 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 coal-black,
For the deposing of a rightful king.

Enter NORTHUMBERLAND, attended.

North. My lord, the mind of Bolingbroke is chang'd;

You must to Pomfret, not unto the Tower.-
And, madam, there is order ta'en for you3:
With all swift speed you must away to France.
K. Rich. Northumberland, thou ladder where-
withal

The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne,-
The time shall not be many hours of age
More than it is, ere foul sin, gathering head,
Shall break into corruption: thou shalt think,
Though he divide the realm, and give thee half,
It is too little, helping him to all;

And he shall think, that thou, which know'st the way
To plant unrightful kings, wilt know again,
Being ne'er so little urg'd, another way

To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne.
The love of wicked friends converts to fear;
That fear, to hate; and hate turns one, or both,
To worthy danger, and deserved death.

North. My guilt be on my head, and there an end. Take leave, and part; for you must part forthwith. K. Rich. Doubly divorc'd ?—Bad men, ye violate 6 To requite their mournful stories.

7 The quarto of 1597 reads tale.

8 Thus in Othello:

'Honest Iago hath ta'en order for it.'

A twofold marriage; 'twixt my crown and me;
And then, betwixt me and my married wife.-
Let me unkiss the oath 'twixt thee and me;
And yet not so, for with a kiss 'twas made 9.
Part us, Northumberland: I towards the north,
Where shivering cold and sickness pines the clime;
My wife to France; from whence, set forth in pomp,
She came adorned hither like sweet May,
Sent back like Hallowmas 10, or short'st of day.

Queen. And must we be divided? must we part? K. Rich. Ay, hand from hand, my love, and heart from heart.

Queen. Banish us both, and send the king with me. North. 11 That were some love, but little policy. Queen. Then whither he goes, thither let me go? K.Rich. So two, together weeping, make one woe. Weep thou for me in France, I for thee here; Better far off, than-near, be ne'er the near' 12. Go, count thy way with sighs; I, mine with groans. Queen. So longest way shall have the longest

moans.

K. Rich. Twice for one step I'll groan, the way being short,

And piece the way out with a heavy heart.
Come, come, in wooing sorrow let's be brief,
Since, wedding it, there is such length in grief.
One kiss shall stop our mouths, and dumbly part:
Thus give I mine, and thus I take thy heart.

[They kiss.

9 A kiss appears to have been an established circumstance in our ancient marriage ceremonies. So, in Marston's Insatiate Countess, 1613, the duke, on parting with his wife, says to her :'The kiss thou gav'st me in the church here take.'

10 All Hallows, i. e. All Saints, Nov. 1.

11 The quartos give this speech to the king.

12 Never the nigher, i. e. 'it is better to be at a great distance than being near each other, to find that we are yet not likely to be peaceably and happily united.'

Queen. Give me mine own again; 'twere no good

part,

To take on me to keep, and kill thy heart 13.

[Kiss again.

So now I have mine own again, begone,
That I may strive to kill it with a groan.

K. Rich. We make woe wanton with this fond delay:

Once more, adieu; the rest let sorrow say. [Exeunt.

The same.

SCENE II.

A Room in the Duke of York's Palace.

Enter YORK, and his Duchess1.

Duch. My lord, you told me, you would tell the rest,

When weeping made you break the story off
Of our two cousins coming into London.

York. Where did I leave?
Duch.
At that sad stop, my lord,
Where rude misgovern'd hands, from windows' tops,
Threw dust and rubbish on King Richard's head.
York. Then, as I said, the duke, great Boling-
broke,-

Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed,

Which his aspiring rider seem'd to know,-
With slow, but stately pace, kept on his course,

13 So in King Henry V. Act ii. Sc. 2:—

the king hath kill'd his heart.'

1 The first wife of Edward duke of York was Isabella, daughter of Peter the Cruel, king of Castile and Leon. He married her in 1372, and had by her the duke of Aumerle, and all his other children. In introducing her the poet has departed widely from history; for she died in 1394, four or five years before the events related in the present play. After her death York married Joan, daughter of John Holland, earl of Kent, who survived him about thirty-four years, and had three other husbands.