Gaunt.
Will the king come? that I may breathe my last
In wholesome counsel to his unstay'd youth.

York.
Vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath;
For all in vain comes counsel to his ear.

Gaunt.
Oh, but, they say, the tongues of dying men
Inforce attention, like deep harmony:
Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain;
For they breathe truth, that breathe their words in pain.
He, that no more must say, is listen'd more
  Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose;
More are men's ends mark'd, than their lives before:
  The setting sun, and music at the close^{6 note}
,

As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last;
Writ in remembrance, more than things long past:
Though Richard my life's counsel would not hear,
My death's sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.

York.
No; it is stop'd with other flattering sounds,
As, praises of his state: then, there are found
Lascivious meeters^{7 note}

Gaunt.
Methinks, I am a prophet new inspir'd;
And thus, expiring, do foretell of him:—
His ^{2 note}rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last;
For violent fires soon burn out themselves:
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;

He tires betimes, that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding, food doth choak the feeder.
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demy paradise;
This fortress, built by nature for herself,
Against infection^{3 note}

Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service, and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son;
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leas'd out (I die pronouncing it)
Like to a tenement, or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watry Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds^{6 note};
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself:
Ah! would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death! Enter King Richard, Queen, Aumerle, Bushy, Green, Bagot, Ross, and Willoughby.

York.
The king is come: deal mildly with his youth;
For young hot colts, being rag'd, do rage the more.

Queen.
How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster?

K. Rich.
What comfort, man? How is't with aged Gaunt?

Gaunt.
Oh, how that name befits my composition!
Old Gaunt, indeed; and gaunt in being old:
Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast;
And who abstains from meat, that is not gaunt?
For sleeping England long time have I watch'd;
Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt:

The pleasure, that some fathers feed upon,
Is my strict fast, I mean—my children's looks;
And, therein fasting, thou hast made me gaunt:
Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,
Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones.

K. Rich.
Can sick men play so nicely with their names?

Gaunt.
No, misery makes sport to mock itself:
Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me,
I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee.

K. Rich.
Should dying men flatter with those that live?9Q0633

Gaunt.
No, no; men living flatter those that die.

K. Rich.
Thou, now a dying, say'st—thou flatter'st me.

Gaunt.
Oh! no; thou dy'st, though I the sicker be.

K. Rich.
I am in health, I breathe, I see thee ill.

Gaunt.
Now, He that made me, knows I see thee ill;
Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill.
Thy death-bed is no lesser than the land,
Wherein thou liest in reputation sick;
And thou, too careless patient as thou art,
Giv'st thy anointed body9Q0634 to the cure
Of those physicians that first wounded thee:
A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,
Whose compass is no bigger than thy head;
And yet, incaged in so small a verge,
The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.
Oh, had thy grandsire, with a phophet's eye,
Seen how his son's son should destroy his sons,
From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame;
Deposing thee before thou wert possess'd,
Who art possess'd now to depose thyself.
Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world,
It were a shame, to let this land by lease:
But, for thy world, enjoying but this land,
Is it not more than shame, to shame it so?
Landlord of England art thou now, not king:

^{7 note}

K. Rich.
—Thou, a lunatic lean-witted fool,
Presuming on an ague's privilege,
Dar'st with thy frozen admonition
Make pale our cheek; chasing the royal blood,
With fury, from his native residence.
Now by my seat's right royal majesty,
Wert thou not brother to great Edward's son,
This tongue, that runs so roundly in thy head,
Should run thy head from thy unreverend shoulders.

Gaunt.
Oh, spare me not, my brother Edward's son,
For that I was his father Edward's son;
That blood already, like the pelican,
Hast thou tap'd out, and drunkenly carows'd:
My brother Gloster, plain well-meaning soul,
(Whom fair befal in heaven 'mongst happy souls!)
May be a precedent and witness good,
That thou respect'st not spilling Edward's blood:
Join with the present sickness that I have;

^{8 note}

K. Rich.
And let them die, that age and sullens have;
For both hast thou, and both become the grave.

York.
'Beseech your majesty, impute his words
To wayward sickliness and age in him:
He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear
As Harry duke of Hereford, were he here.

K. Rich.
Right; you say true: as Hereford's love, so his;
As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is. Enter Northumberland.

North.
My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your majesty.

K. Rich.
What says he?

North.
Nay, nothing; all is said:
His tongue is now a stringless instrument;
Words, life, and all, old Lancaster hath spent.

York.
Be York the next that must be bankrupt so!
Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.

K. Rich.
The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he;
His time is spent, our pilgrimage must be:
So much for that.—Now for our Irish wars:
We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns;
Which live like venom, where no venom else^{1 note}

York.
How long shall I be patient? Oh, how long
Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?
Not Gloster's death, nor Hereford's banishment,
Not Gaunt's rebukes, nor England's private wrongs,
^{2 note}
Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke

About his marriage, nor my own disgrace,
Have ever made me sour my patient cheek,
Or bend one wrinkle on my sovereign's face.—
I am the last of noble Edward's sons,
Of whom thy father, prince of Wales, was first;
In war was never lion rag'd more fierce,
In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,
Than was that young and princely gentleman:
His face thou hast, for even so look'd he,
Accomplish'd with the number of thy hours;
But, when he frown'd, it was against the French,
And not against his friends: his noble hand
Did win what he did spend, and spent not that
Which his triumphant father's hand had won:
His hands were guilty of no kindred's blood,
But bloody with the enemies of his kin.
Oh, Richard! York is too far gone with grief,
Or else he never would compare between.

K. Rich.
Why, uncle, what's the matter?

York.
O, my liege,
Pardon me, if you please; if not, I pleas'd
Not to be pardon'd, am content withal.
Seek you to seize, and gripe into your hands,
The royalties and rights of banish'd Hereford?
Is not Gaunt dead? and doth not Hereford live?
Was not Gaunt just? and is not Harry true?
Did not the one deserve to have an heir?
Is not his heir a well-deserving son?
Take Hereford's rights away, and take from time
His charters, and his customary rights;
Let not to-morrow then ensue to-day;
Be not thyself, for how art thou a king,
But by fair sequence and succession?
Now, afore God (God forbid, I say true!)

If you do wrongfully seize Hereford's rights,
Call in his letters patents that he hath
By his attornies-general to sue
His livery, and ^{3 note}deny his offer'd homage,
You pluck a thousand dangers on your head,
You lose a thousand well-disposed hearts,
And prick my tender patience to those thoughts
Which honour and allegiance cannot think.

K. Rich.
Think what you will; we seize into our hands
His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands.

York.
I'll not be, by the while: My liege, farewel:
What will ensue hereof, there's none can tell;
But by bad courses may be understood,
That their events can never fall out good. [Exit.

K. Rich.
Go, Bushy, to the earl of Wiltshire straight;
Bid him repair to us to Ely-house,
To see this business: To-morrow next
We will for Ireland; and 'tis time, I trow;
And we create, in absence of ourself,
Our uncle York lord-governor of England,
For he is just, and always lov'd us well.—
Come on, our queen: to-morrow must we part;
Be merry, for our time of stay is short. [Flourish. [Exeunt king, queen, &c.

North.
Well, lords, the duke of Lancaster is dead.

Ross.
And living too; for now his son is duke.

Willo.
Barely in title, not in revenue.

North.
Richly in both, if justice had her right.

Ross.
My heart is great; but it must break with silence,
Ere't be disburden'd with a liberal tongue.

North.
Nay, speak thy mind; and let him ne'er speak more,
That speaks thy words again, to do thee harm!

Willo.
Tends that thou'dst speak, to the duke of Hereford?
If it be so, out with it boldly, man;
Quick is mine ear, to hear of good towards him.

Ross.
No good at all, that I can do for him;
Unless you call it good, to pity him,
Bereft and gelded of his patrimony.

North.
Now, afore heaven, 'tis shame, such wrongs are borne,
In him a royal prince, and many more
Of noble blood in this declining land.
The king is not himself, but basely led
By flatterers; and what they will inform,
Merely in hate, 'gainst any of us all,
That will the king severely prosecute
'Gainst us, our lives, our children, and our heirs.

Ross.
The commons hath he pill'd with grievous taxes,
And quite lost their hearts: the nobles he hath fin'd
For ancient quarrels, and quite lost their hearts.

Willo.
And daily new exactions are devis'd;
As—blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what:
But what, o' God's name, doth become of this?

North.
War hath not wasted it, for warr'd he hath not,
But basely yielded upon compromise
That which his ancestors atchiev'd with blows:
More hath he spent in peace, than they in wars.

Ross.
The earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm.

Willo.
The king's grown bankrupt, like a broken man.

North.
Reproach, and dissolution, hangeth over him.

Ross.
He hath not money for these Irish wars,
His burthenous taxations notwithstanding,
But by the robbing of the banish'd duke.

North.
His noble kinsman:—Most degenerate king!
But, lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing,

Yet seek no shelter to avoid the storm:
We see the wind sit sore upon our sails,
^{4 note}And yet we strike not, but securely perish.

Ross.
We see the very wreck that we must suffer;
And unavoided is the danger now,
For suffering so the causes of our wreck.

North.
Not so; even through the hollow eyes of death,
I spy life peering: but I dare not say,
How near the tidings of our comfort is.

Willo.
Nay, let us share thy thoughts, as thou dost ours.

Ross.
Be confident to speak, Northumberland:
We three are but thyself; and, speaking so,
Thy words are but as thoughts; therefore, be bold.

North.
Then thus:—I have from Port le Blanc, a bay
In Britany, receiv'd intelligence,
That Harry Hereford, Reignold lord Cobham,
That late broke from the duke of Exeter^{5 note}

His brother, archbishop late of Canterbury^{6 note},
Sir Thomas Erpingham, sir John Ramston,
Sir John Norbery, sir Robert Waterton, and Francis Quoint,—
All these, well furnish'd by the duke of Bretagne,
With eight tall ships, three thousand men of war,
Are making hither with all due expedience,
And shortly mean to touch our northern shore:
Perhaps, they had ere this; but that they stay
The first departing of the king for Ireland.
If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke,
Imp out^{7 note}

Ross.
To horse, to horse! urge doubts to them that fear.

Willo.
Hold out my horse, and I will first be there. [Exeunt.

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