NORTHUMBERLAND

Read o’er this paper while the glass doth come.

RICHARD

Fiend, thou torment’st me ere I come to hell.

BOLINGBROKE

Urge it no more, my lord Northumberland.

NORTHUMBERLAND

The Commons will not then be satisfied.

RICHARD

They shall be satisfied. I’ll read enough

When I do see the very book indeed

Where all my sins are writ, and that’s myself.

Enter one with a glass

Give me that glass, and therein will I read.

Richard takes the glass and looks in it

No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath sorrow struck

So many blows upon this face of mine

And made no deeper wounds? O flatt’ring glass,

Like to my followers in prosperity,

Thou dost beguile me! Was this face the face

That every day under his household roof

Did keep ten thousand men? Was this the face

That like the sun did make beholders wink?

Is this the face which faced so many follies,

That was at last outfaced by Bolingbroke?

A brittle glory shineth in this face.

As brittle as the glory is the face,

He shatters the glass

For there it is, cracked in an hundred shivers.

Mark, silent King, the moral of this sport:

How soon my sorrow hath destroyed my face.

BOLINGBROKE

The shadow of your sorrow hath destroyed

The shadow of your face.

RICHARD

Say that again:

‘The shadow of my sorrow’—ha, let’s see.

‘Tis very true: my grief lies all within,

And these external manner of laments

Are merely shadows to the unseen grief

That swells with silence in the tortured soul.

There lies the substance, and I thank thee, King,

For thy great bounty that not only giv’st

Me cause to wail, but teachest me the way

How to lament the cause. I’ll beg one boon,

And then be gone and trouble you no more.

Shall I obtain it?

BOLINGBROKE

Name it, fair cousin.

RICHARD

Fair cousin? I am greater than a king;

For when I was a king my flatterers

Were then but subjects; being now a subject,

I have a king here to my flatterer.

Being so great, I have no need to beg.

BOLINGBROKE Yet ask.

RICHARD And shall I have?

BOLINGBROKE You shall.

RICHARD Then give me leave to go.

BOLINGBROKE Whither?

RICHARD

Whither you will, so I were from your sights.

BOLINGBROKE

Go some of you, convey him to the Tower.

RICHARD

O good, ‘convey’! Conveyors are you all,

That rise thus nimbly by a true king’s fall.

⌈Exit, guarded⌉

BOLINGBROKE

On Wednesday next we solemnly set down

Our coronation. Lords, prepare yourselves.

Exeunt all but the Abbot of Westminster, the Bishop of Carlisle, and Aumerle

ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER

A woeful pageant have we here beheld.

BISHOP OF CARLISLE

The woe’s to come, the children yet unborn

Shall feel this day as sharp to them as thorn.

AUMERLE

You holy clergymen, is there no plot

To rid the realm of this pernicious blot?

ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER

My lord, before I freely speak my mind herein,

You shall not only take the sacrament

To bury mine intents, but also to effect

Whatever I shall happen to devise.

I see your brows are full of discontent,

Your hearts of sorrow, and your eyes of tears.

Come home with me to supper. I will lay

A plot shall show us all a merry day.

Exeunt

5.1 Enter the Queen, with her Ladies

QUEEN

This way the King will come. This is the way

To Julius Caesar’s ill-erected Tower,

To whose flint bosom my condemned lord

Is doomed a prisoner by proud Bolingbroke.

Here let us rest, if this rebellious earth

Have any resting for her true king’s queen.

Enter Richard ⌈and guard⌉

But soft, but see—or rather do not see—

My fair rose wither. Yet look up, behold,

That you in pity may dissolve to dew,

And wash him fresh again with true-love tears.—

Ah, thou the model where old Troy did stand!

Thou map of honour, thou King Richard’s tomb,

And not King Richard! Thou most beauteous inn:

Why should hard-favoured grief be lodged in thee,

When triumph is become an alehouse guest?

RICHARD

Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so,

To make my end too sudden. Learn, good soul,

To think our former state a happy dream,

From which awaked, the truth of what we are

Shows us but this. I am sworn brother, sweet,

To grim necessity, and he and I

Will keep a league till death. Hie thee to France,

And cloister thee in some religious house.

Our holy lives must win a new world’s crown,

Which our profane hours here have stricken down.

QUEEN

What, is my Richard both in shape and mind

Transformed and weakenèd? Hath Bolingbroke

Deposed thine intellect? Hath he been in thy heart?

The lion dying thrusteth forth his paw

And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage

To be o’erpowered; and wilt thou, pupil-like,

Take the correction, mildly kiss the rod,

And fawn on rage with base humility,

Which art a lion and the king of beasts ?

RICHARD

A king of beasts indeed! If aught but beasts,

I had been still a happy king of men.