Enter King Richard.
I have been studying, how to compare
This prison, where I live, unto the world;
And, for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but my self,
I cannot do it; yet I'll hammer on't.
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 humour, like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented. The better sort,
As thoughts, of things divine, are intermixt

With scruples, and do set the word it self
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,
And 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 prison, many people,
And none contented. Sometimes am I King,
Then treason makes me wish my self 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 what-e'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 sow'r sweet musick is,
When time is broke, and no proportion kept?
So is it in the musick of mens' 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 numbring clock,

My thoughts are minutes; and ^{1 note}