This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth,
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 watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds:
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, and 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. O, 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 hast thou 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?
Gaunt. No, no; men living flatter those that die.

K. Rich. Thou, now a-dying, say'st thou flatter'st me. Gaunt. O! no; thou diest, though I the sicker be. K. Rich. I am in health, I breathe, and 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, Commit'st thy 'nointed body 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. O! had thy grandsire, with a prophet'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, Which 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: Thy state of law is bondslave to the law,

And thou

K. Rich.

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. O! 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 tapp'd out, and drunkenly carous'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,
And thy unkindness be like crooked age,
To crop at once a too-long withered flower.
Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee:
These words hereafter thy tormentors be!
Convey me to my bed, then to my grave:
Love they to live, that love and honour have.

[Exit, borne out by his Attendants. K. Rich. And let them die, that age and sullens have,

For both hast thou, and both become the grave.

York. I do 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,
But only they, hath privilege to live:

And for these great affairs do ask some charge,
Towards our assistance we do seize to us

The plate, coin, revenues, and moveables,
Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possess'd.

York. How long shall I be patient? Ah! 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,
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 blood,
But bloody with the enemies of his kin.
O, Richard! York is too far gone with grief,
Or else he never would compare between.

K. Rich. Why, uncle, what's the matter?
York.
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 the letters patents that he hath
By his attornies-general to sue

His livery, and 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.

O, my liege!

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, farewell: What will ensue hereof, there's none can tell;

But by bad courses may be understood,

That their events can never fall out good.

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 't is 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.

[Exit.