Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees;
Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood,
With too much riches it confound itself:
Had he done so to great and growing men,
They might have liv'd to bear, and he to taste
Their fruits of duty. Superfluous branches
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live:
Had he done so, himself had borne the crown,
Which waste and idle hours hath quite thrown down.
1 Serv. What! think you then, the king shall be
depos'd?

Gard. Depress'd he is already; and depos'd,
'Tis doubt, he will be: Letters came last night
To a dear friend of the good duke of York's,
That tell black tidings.

Queen. O, I am press'd to death, through want of speaking 10! [Coming from her concealment. Thou, old Adam's likeness, set to dress this garden, How dares thy harsh-rude tongue sound this unpleasing news?

What Eve, what serpent hath suggested thee
To make a second fall of cursed man?

Why dost thou say, King Richard is depos'd?
Dar'st thou, thou little better thing than earth,
Divine his downfall? Say, where, when, and how,

So the quartos and first folio. All was inserted probably on account of the metre in the folio 1632. Three lines lower the folio has-" Which waste and idle hours."

'Tis doubt. This uncommon phraseology has already occurred in the present play :

"He is our cousin, cousin; but 'tis doubt

When time shall call him home," &c.

The folio, 1623, reads-" "Tis doubted." It also omits good in the next line, and then in the speech of the 1st Servant.

10 O, I am press'd to death through want of speaking. Malone is probably right in thinking that there is an allusion to the peine forte et poet, accordm of legal torture inflicted on those who, being arraignedejection to plead, they were often literally pressed to death thrours of sory of speaking.

Cam'st thou by these ill tidings? speak, thou wretch.

Gard. Pardon me, madam: little joy have I,
To breathe this 11 news; yet, what I say is true.
King Richard, he is in the mighty hold

Of Bolingbroke: their fortunes both are weigh'd:
In your lord's scale is nothing but himself,
And some few vanities that make him light;
But in the balance of great Bolingbroke,
Besides himself, are all the English peers,
And with that odds he weighs king Richard down.
Post you to London, and you'll find it so ;
I speak no more than every one doth know.

Queen. Nimble mischance, that art so light of foot, Doth not thy embassage belong to me,

And am I last that knows it? O, thou think'st
To serve me last, that I may longest keep
Thy sorrow in my breast.—Come, ladies, go,
To meet at London London's king in woe.—
What! was I born to this! that my sad look
Should grace the triumph of great Bolingbroke?—
Gardener, for telling me this news of woe,

I would, the plants thou graft'st, may never grow.
[Exeunt Queen and Ladies.
Gard. Poor queen! so that thy state might be no

worse,

I would, my skill were subject to thy curse.—
Here did she fall 12 a tear; here, in this place,
I'll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace:
Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen,
In the remembrance of a weeping queen. [Exeunt.

11 See note on Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act iii. Sc. 1, p. 144. The folios and quarto, 1597, has "these news." A very remarkable instance of the uncertainty of our ancestors in treating this word as singular or plural. See Notes and Queries, vol. ii. p. 180.

12 Thus the quarto of 1597. The quarto of 1598 and the folio read drop. Shakespeare elsewhere uses fall in an active sense.

ACT IV.

SCENE I. London. Westminster Hall1.

The Lords spiritual on the right side of the Throne; the Lords temporal on the left; the Commons below. Enter BOLINGBROKE, AUMERLE, SURREY?, NORTHUMBERLAND, PERCY, FITZWATER, another Lord, Bishop of Carlisle, Abbot of Westminster, and Attendants. Officers behind, with Bagot. Bolingbroke.

ALL forth Bagot :

Now, Bagot, freely speak thy mind;

What thou dost know of noble Gloster's death; Who wrought it with the king, and who perform'd The bloody office of his timeless3 end.

Bagot. Then set before my face the Lord Aumerle. Boling. Cousin, stand forth, and look upon that man. Bagot. My Lord Aumerle, I know, your daring

tongue

Scorns to unsay what once it hath deliver❜d.

In that dead time when Gloster's death was plotted,
I heard you say,—Is not my arm of length,
That reacheth from the restful English court
As far as Calais, to my uncle's head?
Amongst much other talk, that very time,
I heard you say, that you had rather refuse

1 The rebuilding of Westminster Hall, which Richard had begun in 1397, being finished in 1399, the first meeting of parliament in the new edifice was for the purpose of deposing him.

2 Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent, brother to John Holland, Earl of Exeter, was created Duke of Surrey in 1597. He was half-brother to the king, by his mother Joan, who married Edward the Black Prince after the death of her second husband Thomas Lord Holland.

Timeless, i. e. untimely. Vide note on King Henry VI. Part 1. Act v. Sc. 4.

The offer of a hundred thousand crowns,
Than Bolingbroke's retum to England;
Adding withal, how best this land would be,
In this your cousin's death.

Aum.
Princes, and noble lords.
What answer shall I make to this base man?
Shall I so much dishonour my fair stars,
On equal terms to give him chastisement?
Either I must, or have mine honour soil'd
With the attainder of his sand rous lips.-
There is my gage, the manual seal of death,
That marks thee out for heil; I say, thou liest,
And will maintain, what thou hast said, is false,
In thy heart-blood, though being all too base,
To stain the temper of my knightly sword.
Boling. Bagot, forbear, thou shalt not take it
up.
Aum. Excepting one, I would he were the best
In all this presence, that hath mov'd me so.

Fitz. If that thy valour stand on sympathies, There is my gage, Aumerle, in gage to thine: By that fair sun that shows me where thou stand'st, I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak'st it, That thou wert cause of noble Gloster's death. If thou deny'st it, twenty times thou liest; And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart,

4 The birth is supposed to be influenced by stars; therefore the poet, with his allowed licence, takes stars for birth. We learn from Pliny's Nat. Hist. that the vulgar error assigned the brightest and fairest stars to the rich and great :-"Sidera singulis attributa nobis, et clara divitibus, minora pauperibus," &c. lib. i c. viii.

5 This is a translated sense much harsher than that of st explained in the preceding note. Fitzwater throws down his as a pledge of battle, and tells Aumerle that if he stands up sympathies, that is upon equality of blood, the combat is offered him by a man of rank not inferior to his ow

is an affection incident at once to two subjects. of affection implies a likeness or equality of the poet transferred the term to equality of bl

Where it was forged, with my rapier's point.

Aum. Thou dar'st not, coward, live to see that day. Fitz. Now, by my soul, I would it were this hour. Aum. Fitzwater, thou art damn'd to hell for this. Percy. Aumerle, thou liest; his honour is as true, In this appeal, as thou art all unjust :

And, that thou art so, there I throw my gage,
To prove it on thee to the extremest point
Of mortal breathing; seize it, if thou darʼst.
Aum. And if I do not, may my hands rot off,
And never brandish more revengeful steel

Over the glittering helmet of my

foe!

Lord. [I task the earth to the like, forsworn Aumerle ;o And spur thee on with full as many

lies

As may be holla'd in thy treacherous ear
From sun to sun": there is my honour's pawn;
Engage it to the trial, if thou dar'st.

Aum. Who sets me else? by heaven, I'll throw at all:

I have a thousand spirits in one breast,

To answer twenty thousand such as you.]
Surrey. My lord Fitzwater, I do remember well
The very time Aumerle and you did talk.

Fitz. 'Tis very true: you were in presence then; And you can witness with me, this is true.

Surrey. As false, by heaven, as heaven itself is true.

6 This and the seven next lines are not in the folios. "To task the earth," is to burden it with something to be done, which he does by throwing down his glove. Some of the quartos

read take.

:

7 i. e. from sunrise to sunset. So in Cymbeline :

"Imo. How many score of miles may we well ride

"Twixt hour and hour?

Pisa. One score 'twixt sun and sun,

Madam, 's enough for you, and too much too."

The old quartos read-" From sin to sin." The emendation is Steevens's.

• "A thousand hearts are great within my bosom." King Richard III.