Bust. How did he take it? who did taste to him? Yet speaks and peradventure may recover. Bust. Who didst thou leave to tend his majesty? Hub. Why, know you not? the lords are all come back, At whose request the King hath pardon'd them, Bast. Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven, SCENE VII. The orchard in Swinstead Abbey. Enter PRINCE HENRY, SALISBURY, and BIGOT. P. Hen. It is too late: the life of all his blood Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling-house, Foretell the ending of mortality. Enter PEMBROKE. Pem. His highness yet doth speak, and holds belief That, being brought into the open air, It would allay the burning quality Of that fell poison which assaileth him. P. Hen. Let him be brought into the orchard here. Doth he still rage? Pem. He is more patient Than when you left him; even now he sung. P. Hen. O vanity of sickness! fierce extremes Which, in their throng and press to that last hold, 30 40 [Exeunt. 10 [Exit Bigot. Confound themselves. 'Tis strange that death should sing. Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death, 20 pure brain. The blood was corrupted; the brain, although untainted, was enfeebled. And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings His soul and body to their lasting rest. Sal. Be of good comfort, prince; for you are born To set a form upon that indigest Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude. Enter Attendants, and BIGOT, carrying KING JOHN in a chair. K. John. Ay, marry, now my soul hath elbow-room; P. Hen. How fares your majesty? K. John. Poison'd, ill fare dead, forsook, cast off: And none of you will bid the winter come Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course P. Hen. O that there were some virtue in my tears, K. John. The salt in them is hot. Within me is a hell; and there the poison Is as a fiend confin'd to tyrannize On unreprievable condemned blood. Enter the BASTARD. Bast. O, I am scalded with my violent motion, And spleen of speed to see your majesty! 30 40 50 K. John. O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye : The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burn'd, And all the shrouds wherewith my life should sail Are turned to one thread, one little hair: My heart hath one poor string to stay it by, Which holds but till thy news be uttered; And then all this thou seest is but a clod And module of confounded royalty. Bast. The Dolphin is preparing hitherward, Where heaven He knows how we shall answer him; 60 For in a night the best part of my power, 28 indigest 42 so strait 58 module chaotic. Plainly here a remembrance of "rudis indigestaque moles." so niggard, close, "near." form, outward show. As I upon advantage did remove, [The king dies. Sal. You breathe these dead views in as dead an ear. P. Hen. Even so must I run on, and even so stop. And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven, As it on earth hath been thy servant still. Now, now, you stars that move in your right spheres, To push destruction and perpetual shame Out of the weak door of our fainting land. Sal. It seems you know not, then, so much as we: The Cardinal Pandulph is within at rest, Who half an hour since came from the Dolphin, Sal. Nay, it is in a manner done already ; To the sea-side, and put his cause and quarrel With whom yourself, myself and other lords, If you think meet, this afternoon will post To consummate this business happily. Bast. Let it be so: and you, my noble prince, With other princes that may best be spar'd, Shall wait upon your father's funeral. P. Hen. At Worcester must his body be interr'd; For so he will'd it. Bast. Thither shall it then: And happily may your sweet self put on The lineal state and glory of the land! And true subjection everlastingly. 104 bequeath: loosely used for offer, make over. Sal. And the like tender of our love we make, To rest without a spot for evermore. P. Hen. I have a kind soul that would give you thanks Bast. O, let us pay the time but needful woe, But when it first did help to wound itself. 110 And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue, [Exeunt KING RICHARD THE SECOND. INTRODUCTION. SHAKESPEARE, producing his plays merely to please his public, naturally chose subjects which he thought would be of general interest; and it so happened that toward the end of the sixteenth century the deposition of Richard II. was much in the minds of Englishmen. For the deposition of Queen Elizabeth was then desired by not a few of her subjects, and thought possible by many. She herself was sensitive to any allusion to this only precedent for the formal dethroning of an English sovereign. Two plays, if not more, in which Richard II's fate was the principal incident, had been produced before Shakespeare wrote this one. But, contrary to his custom in such cases, he seems to have made no use of the work of his predecessors. He went for the substance of his drama to Holinshed's Chronicles. The incidents which he found recorded there he used at his pleasure, and with a single eye to dramatic effect. He was entirely indifferent as to chronological consistency or even historical accuracy. Indeed, he was probably as ignorant upon some of the points as to which he erred in these respects as most of his audience were. For example, the Queen, whom he represents as such a lovely and loving young matron, was only nine years old at the time of Bolingbroke's banishment. What matter? Who but an historical pedant would sacrifice his queen to historical accuracy? The true Duchess of York was not the mother of Aumerle; but what has that to do with our enjoyment of the spirit of her action and her manifestation of maternal love in the fifth act? Four editions of this play were published in quarto during Shakespeare's life; the first in 1597. The third, published in 1608, is of special interest, as it had, according to its title-page, "new additions of the Parliament sceane, and the deposing of King Richard." This scene manifestly had been omitted in the representation, and in previous editions, for fear of offending Elizabeth, who died in 1603. There is internal evidence, of indisputable character (which cannot be here set forth), that it existed in the play as originally written. The date of the production of the play is quite surely 1594-5. Its text has come to us in a perplexing state; and indeed it seems to have been written with a strange mixture of heedlessness and care. Some parts of it are perfect in their beauty and their strength; others are deformed by irregularity of metre, lines too long, lines too short, confusion of epithet and perversion of language, the attempt to correct which in most cases would be unwarrantable presumption. |