Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

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End in a word: such is the breath of kings.

JOHN OF GAUNT

I thank my liege that in regard of me

He shortens four years of my son’s exile.

But little vantage shall I reap thereby,

For ere the six years that he hath to spend

Can change their moons and bring their times about,

My oil-dried lamp and time-bewasted light

Shall be extinct with age and endless night.

My inch of taper will be burnt and done,

And blindfold death not let me see my son.

KING RICHARD

Why, uncle, thou hast many years to live.

JOHN OF GAUNT

But not a minute, King, that thou canst give.

Shorten my days thou canst with sudden sorrow,

And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow.

Thou canst help time to furrow me with age,

But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage.

Thy word is current with him for my death,

But dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath.

KING RICHARD

Thy son is banished upon good advice,

Whereto thy tongue a party verdict gave.

Why at our justice seem’st thou then to lour?

JOHN OF GAUNT

Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.

You urged me as a judge, but I had rather

You would have bid me argue like a father.

Alas, I looked when some of you should say

I was too strict to make mine own away,

But you gave leave to my unwilling tongue

Against my will to do myself this wrong.

KING RICHARD

Cousin, farewell; and uncle, bid him so.

Six years we banish him, and he shall go.

⌈Flourish.⌉ Exeunt all but Aumerle, the Lord Marshal, John of Gaunt, and Bolingbroke

AUMERLE (to Bolingbroke)

Cousin, farewell. What presence must not know,

From where you do remain let paper show.

[Exit]

LORD MARSHAL (to Bolingbroke)

My lord, no leave take I, for I will ride

As far as land will let me by your side.

JOHN OF GAUNT (to Bolingbroke)

O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words,

That thou return’st no greeting to thy friends?

BOLINGBROKE

I have too few to take my leave of you,

When the tongue’s office should be prodigal

To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart.

JOHN OF GAUNT

Thy grief is but thy absence for a time.

BOLINGBROKE

Joy absent, grief is present for that time.

JOHN OF GAUNT

What is six winters? They are quickly gone.

BOLINGBROKE

To men in joy, but grief makes one hour ten.

JOHN OF GAUNT

Call it a travel that thou tak’st for pleasure.

BOLINGBROKE

My heart will sigh when I miscall it so,

Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage.

JOHN OF GAUNT

The sullen passage of thy weary steps

Esteem as foil wherein thou art to set

The precious jewel of thy home return.

BOLINGBROKE

O, who can hold a fire in his hand

By thinking on the frosty Caucasus,

Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite

By bare imagination of a feast,

Or wallow naked in December snow

By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?

O no, the apprehension of the good

Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.

Fell sorrow’s tooth doth never rankle more

Than when he bites, but lanceth not the sore.

JOHN OF GAUNT

Come, come, my son, I’ll bring thee on thy way.

Had I thy youth and cause, I would not stay.

BOLINGBROKE

Then England’s ground, farewell. Sweet soil, adieu,

My mother and my nurse that bears me yet!

Where’er I wander, boast of this I can:

Though banished, yet a trueborn Englishman.

Exeunt

1.4 Enter King Richard with ⌈Green and Bagot⌉ at one door, and the Lord Aumerle at another

KING RICHARD

We did observe.—Cousin Aumerle,

How far brought you high Hereford on his way?

AUMERLE

I brought high Hereford, if you call him so,

But to the next highway, and there I left him.

KING RICHARD

And say, what store of parting tears were shed?

AUMERLE

Faith, none for me, except the north-east wind,

Which then grew bitterly against our faces,

Awaked the sleeping rheum, and so by chance

Did grace our hollow parting with a tear.

KING RICHARD

What said our cousin when you parted with him?

AUMERLE

‘Farewell.’ And for my heart disdained that my tongue

Should so profane the word, that taught me craft

To counterfeit oppression of such grief

That words seemed buried in my sorrow’s grave.

Marry, would the word ‘farewell’ have lengthened

hours

And added years to his short banishment,

He should have had a volume of farewells;

But since it would not, he had none of me.

KING RICHARD

He is our cousin, cousin; but ‘tis doubt,

When time shall call him home from banishment,

Whether our kinsman come to see his friends.

Ourself and Bushy, Bagot here, and Green

Observed his courtship to the common people,

How he did seem to dive into their hearts

With humble and familiar courtesy,

What reverence he did throw away on slaves,

Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles

And patient underbearing of his fortune,

As ’twere to banish their affects with him.

Off goes his bonnet to an oysterwench.

A brace of draymen bid God speed him well,

And had the tribute of his supple knee

With ‘Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends’,

As were our England in reversion his,

And he our subjects’ next degree in hope.

GREEN

Well, he is gone, and with him go these thoughts.

Now for the rebels which stand out in Ireland.

Expedient manage must be made, my liege,

Ere further leisure yield them further means

For their advantage and your highness’ loss.

KING RICHARD

We will ourself in person to this war,

And for our coffers with too great a court

And liberal largess are grown somewhat light,

We are enforced to farm our royal realm,

The revenue whereof shall furnish us

For our affairs in hand. If that come short,

Our substitutes at home shall have blank charters,

Whereto, when they shall know what men are rich,

They shall subscribe them for large sums of gold,

And send them after to supply our wants;

For we will make for Ireland presently.

Enter Bushy

Bushy, what news?

BUSHY

Old John of Gaunt is grievous sick, my lord,

Suddenly taken, and hath sent post-haste

To entreat your majesty to visit him.

KING RICHARD Where lies he?

BUSHY At Ely House.

KING RICHARD

Now put it, God, in his physician’s mind

To help him to his grave immediately.

The lining of his coffers shall make coats

To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars.

Come, gentlemen, let’s all go visit him.

Pray God we may make haste and come too late!

Exeunt

2.1 Enter John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, sick, ⌈carried in a chair,⌉ with the Duke of York

JOHN OF GAUNT

Will the King come, that I may breathe my last

In wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth?

YORK

Vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath,

For all in vain comes counsel to his ear.

JOHN OF GAUNT

O, but they say the tongues of dying men

Enforce attention, like deep harmony.

Where words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain,

For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.

He that no more must say is listened more

Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose.

More are men’s ends marked than their lives before.

The setting sun, and music at the close,

As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,

Writ in remembrance more than things long past.

Though Richard my life’s counsel would not hear,

My death’s sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.

YORK

No, it is stopped with other, flattering sounds,

As praises of whose taste the wise are feared,

Lascivious metres to whose venom sound

The open ear of youth doth always listen,

Report of fashions in proud Italy,

Whose manners still our tardy-apish nation

Limps after in base imitation.

Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity—

So it be new there’s no respect how vile—

That is not quickly buzzed into his ears?

Then all too late comes counsel, to be heard

Where will doth mutiny with wit’s regard.

Direct not him whose way himself will choose:

’Tis breath thou lack’st, and that breath wilt thou lose.

JOHN OF GAUNT

Methinks I am a prophet new-inspired,

And thus, expiring, do foretell of him.

His rash, fierce blaze of riot cannot last,

For violent fires soon burn out themselves.

Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short.

He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes.

With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder.

Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,

Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

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 blessèd plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,

Feared 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 leased 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 wat’ry 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 the Queen; ⌈the Duke of Aumerle,⌉ Bushy, ⌈Green, Bagot,⌉ Lord Ross, and Lord Willoughby

YORK

The King is come. Deal mildly with his youth,

For young hot colts, being reined, do rage the more.

QUEEN

How fares our noble uncle Lancaster?

KING RICHARD

What comfort, man? How is’t with aged Gaunt?

JOHN OF GAUNT

O, how that name befits my composition I

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 watched.

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 naught but bones.

KING RICHARD

Can sick men play so nicely with their names?

JOHN OF 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.

KING RICHARD

Should dying men flatter with those that live?

JOHN OF GAUNT

No, no, men living flatter those that die.

KING RICHARD

Thou now a-dying sayst thou flatt’rest me.

JOHN OF GAUNT

O no: thou diest, though I the sicker be.

KING RICHARD

I am in health; I breathe, and see thee ill.

JOHN OF GAUNT

Now He that made me knows I see thee ill:

Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill.

Thy deathbed is no lesser than thy land,

Wherein thou liest in reputation sick;

And thou, too careless patient as thou art,

Committ’st thy anointed 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, encagèd 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 possessed,

Which art possessed 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—

KING RICHARD

And thou, 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 unreverent shoulders.

JOHN OF 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 tapped out and drunkenly caroused.

My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul—

Whom fair befall 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.

(To attendants) Convey me to my bed, then to my grave.

Love they to live that love and honour have.

Exit, [carried in the chair]

KING RICHARD

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.

KING RICHARD

Right, you say true: as Hereford’s love, so his.

As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.

Enter the Earl of Northumberland

NORTHUMBERLAND

My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your majesty.

KING RICHARD

What says he?

NORTHUMBERLAND 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.

KING RICHARD

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 have 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 movables

Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possessed.

YORK

How long shall I be patient? Ah, how long

Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?

Not Gloucester’s death, nor Hereford’s banishment,

Nor 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 raged more fierce,

In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,

Than was that young and princely gentleman.

His face thou hast, for even so looked he,

Accomplished with the number of thy hours.

But when he frowned 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.

KING RICHARD

Why uncle, what’s the matter?

YORK O my liege,

Pardon me if you please; if not, I, pleased

Not to be pardoned, am content withal.

Seek you to seize and grip into your hands

The royalties and rights of banished 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 tomorrow then ensue today;

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 attorneys general to sue

His livery, and deny his offered 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.

KING RICHARD

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.

Exit

KING RICHARD

Go, Bushy, to the Earl of Wiltshire straight.

Bid him repair to us to Ely House

To see this business. Tomorrow next

We will for Ireland, and ’tis time, I trow.

And we create, in absence of ourself,

Our uncle York Lord Governor of England;

For he is just and always loved us well.—

Come on, our Queen; tomorrow must we part.

Be merry, for our time of stay is short.

⌈Flourish.⌉ Exeunt ⌈Bushy at one door; King Richard, the Queen, Aumerle, Green, and Bagot at another door⌉. Northumberland, Willoughby, and Ross remain

NORTHUMBERLAND

Well, lords, the Duke of Lancaster is dead.

ROSS

And living too, for now his son is Duke.

WILLOUGHBY

Barely in title, not in revenues.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Richly in both, if justice had her right.

ROSS

My heart is great, but it must break with silence

Ere’t be disburdened with a liberal tongue.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Nay, speak thy mind, and let him ne’er speak more

That speaks thy words again to do thee harm.

WILLOUGHBY

Tends that that thou wouldst speak to the Duke of Hereford?

If it be so, out with it boldly, man.

Quick is mine ear to hear of good towards him.

ROSS

No good at all that I can do for him,

Unless you call it good to pity him,

Bereft and gelded of his patrimony.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Now afore God, ‘tis shame such wrongs are borne

In him, a royal prince, and many more

Of noble blood in this declining land.

The King is not himself, but basely led

By flatterers; and what they will inform

Merely in hate ’gainst any of us all,

That will the King severely prosecute

’Gainst us, our lives, our children, and our heirs.

ROSS

The commons hath he pilled with grievous taxes,

And quite lost their hearts. The nobles hath he fined

For ancient quarrels, and quite lost their hearts.

WILLOUGHBY

And daily new exactions are devised,

As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what.

But what, a’ God’s name, doth become of this?

NORTHUMBERLAND

Wars hath not wasted it; for warred he hath not,

But basely yielded upon compromise

That which his ancestors achieved with blows.

More hath he spent in peace than they in wars.

ROSS

The Earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm.

WILLOUGHBY

The King’s grown bankrupt like a broken man.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Reproach and dissolution hangeth over him.

ROSS

He hath not money for these Irish wars,

His burdenous taxations notwithstanding,

But by the robbing of the banished Duke.

NORTHUMBERLAND

His noble kinsman. Most degenerate King!

But, lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing,

Yet seek no shelter to avoid the storm.

We see the wind sit sore upon our sails,

And yet we strike not, but securely perish.

ROSS

We see the very wreck that we must suffer,

And unavoided is the danger now

For suffering so the causes of our wreck.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Not so: even through the hollow eyes of death

I spy life peering; but I dare not say

How near the tidings of our comfort is.

WILLOUGHBY

Nay, let us share thy thoughts, as thou dost ours.

ROSS

Be confident to speak, Northumberland.

We three are but thyself, and, speaking so,

Thy words are but as thoughts. Therefore be bold.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Then thus. I have from Port le Blanc,

A bay in Brittaine, received intelligence

That Harry Duke of Hereford, Reinold Lord Cobham,

Thomas son and heir to the Earl of Arundel

That late broke from the Duke of Exeter,

His brother, Archbishop late of Canterbury,

Sir Thomas Erpingham, Sir Thomas Ramston,

Sir John Norbery,

Sir Robert Waterton, and Francis Coint,

All these well furnished by the Duke of Brittaine

With eight tall ships, three thousand men of war,

Are making hither with all due expedience,

And shortly mean to touch our northern shore.

Perhaps they had ere this, but that they stay

The first departing of the King for Ireland.

If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke,

Imp out our drooping country’s broken wing,

Redeem from broking pawn the blemished crown,

Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre’s gilt,

And make high majesty look like itself,

Away with me in post to Ravenspurgh.

But if you faint, as fearing to do so,

Stay, and be secret, and myself will go.

ROSS

To horse, to horse! Urge doubts to them that fear.

WILLOUGHBY

Hold out my horse, and I will first be there.

Exeunt