Green.
Heav'n save your Majesty! and well met, gentlemen:
I hope, the King is not yet shipt for Ireland.

Queen.
Why hop'st thou so? 'tis better hope, he is:
For his designs crave haste, his haste good hope:
Then wherefore dost thou hope, he is not shipt?

Green.
That he, our hope, might have retir'd his Power;
And driv'n into despair an enemy's Hope,
Who strongly hath set footing in this Land.
The banish'd Bolingbroke repeals himself;
And with uplifted arms is safe arriv'd
At Ravenspurg.

Queen.
Now God in heav'n forbid!

Green.
O, Madam, 'tis too true; and what is worse,
The lord Northumberland, his young son Percy,
The lords of Ross, Beaumond, and Willoughby,
With all their pow'rful friends, are fled to him.

Bushy.
Why have you not proclaim'd Northumberland,
And all of that revolted faction, traitors?

Green.
We have: whereon the Earl of Worcester
Hath broke his staff, resign'd his Stewardship;
And all the houshold servants fled with him
To Bolingbroke.

Queen.
So, Green, thou art the midwife of my woe,
And Bolingbroke my sorrow's dismal heir:
Now hath my soul brought forth her prodigy,
And I, a gasping new-deliver'd mother,

Have woe to woe, sorrow to sorrow, join'd.

Bushy.
Despair not, Madam.

Queen.
Who shall hinder me?
I will despair, and be at enmity
With cozening hope; he is a flatterer,
A parasite, a keeper back of death;
Who gently would dissolve the bands of life,
Which false hopes linger, in extremity.

Previous section

Next section