Exeunt King Richard and his party

Northumberland returns to Bolingbroke

BOLINGBROKE

What says his majesty?

NORTHUMBERLAND Sorrow and grief of heart

Makes him speak fondly, like a frantic man.

Enter King Richard ⌈and his party⌉ below

Yet he is come.

BOLINGBROKE Stand all apart,

And show fair duty to his majesty.

He kneels down

My gracious lord.

KING RICHARD

Fair cousin, you debase your princely knee

To make the base earth proud with kissing it.

Me rather had my heart might feel your love

Than my unpleased eye see your courtesy.

Up, cousin, up. Your heart is up, I know,

Thus high at least, although your knee be low.

BOLINGBROKE

My gracious lord, I come but for mine own.

KING RICHARD

Your own is yours, and I am yours, and all.

BOLINGBROKE

So far be mine, my most redoubted lord,

As my true service shall deserve your love.

KING RICHARD

Well you deserve. They well deserve to have

That know the strong’st and surest way to get.

⌈Bolingbroke rises⌉

(To York) Uncle, give me your hands. Nay, dry your

eyes.

Tears show their love, but want their remedies.

(To Bolingbroke) Cousin, I am too young to be your father,

Though you are old enough to be my heir.

What you will have I’ll give, and willing too;

For do we must what force will have us do.

Set on towards London, cousin: is it so?

BOLINGBROKE

Yea, my good lord.

KING RICHARD Then I must not say no.

Flourish. Exeunt

3.4 Enter the Queen, with her two Ladies

QUEEN

What sport shall we devise here in this garden,

To drive away the heavy thought of care?

⌈first⌉ LADY Madam, we’ll play at bowls.

QUEEN

’Twill make me think the world is full of rubs,

And that my fortune runs against the bias.

⌈SECOND⌉ LADY Madam, we’ll dance.

QUEEN

My legs can keep no measure in delight

When my poor heart no measure keeps in grief;

Therefore no dancing, girl. Some other sport.

⌈FIRST⌉ LADY Madam, we’ll tell tales.

QUEEN Of sorrow or of joy?

⌈FIRST⌉ LADY Of either, madam.

QUEEN Of neither, girl.

For if of joy, being altogether wanting,

It doth remember me the more of sorrow.

Or if of grief, being altogether had,

It adds more sorrow to my want of joy.

For what I have I need not to repeat,

And what I want it boots not to complain.

⌈SECOND⌉ LADY

Madam, I’ll sing.

QUEEN

’Tis well that thou hast cause;

But thou shouldst please me better wouldst thou weep.

⌈SECOND⌉ LADY

I could weep, madam, would it do you good.

QUEEN

And I could sing, would weeping do me good,

And never borrow any tear of thee.

Enter a Gardener and two Men

But stay; here come the gardeners.

Let’s step into the shadow of these trees.

My wretchedness unto a row of pins

They will talk of state, for everyone doth so

Against a change. Woe is forerun with woe.

The Queen and her Ladies stand apart

GARDENER ⌈to First Man⌉

Go, bind thou up young dangling apricots

Which, like unruly children, make their sire

Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight.

Give some supportance to the bending twigs.

⌈To Second Man⌉ Go thou, and, like an executioner,

Cut off the heads of too fast-growing sprays

That look too lofty in our commonwealth.

All must be even in our government.

You thus employed, I will go root away

The noisome weeds which without profit suck

The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.

⌈FIRST⌉ MAN

Why should we, in the compass of a pale,

Keep law and form and due proportion,

Showing as in a model our firm estate,

When our sea-wallèd garden, the whole land,

Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up,

Her fruit trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined,

Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs

Swarming with caterpillars?

GARDENER Hold thy peace.

He that hath suffered this disordered spring

Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf.

The weeds which his broad spreading leaves did

shelter,

That seemed in eating him to hold him up,

Are plucked up, root and all, by Bolingbroke—

I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green.

⌈SECOND⌉ MAN

What, are they dead?

GARDENER They are; and Bolingbroke

Hath seized the wasteful King. O, what pity is it

That he had not so trimmed and dressed his land

As we this garden! We at time of year

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 lived 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 of idle hours hath quite thrown down.

⌈FIRST⌉ MAN

What, think you then the King shall be deposed?

GARDENER

Depressed he is already, and deposed

’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 pressed to death through want of speaking!

She comes forward

Thou, old Adam’s likeness, set to dress this garden,