the sicker be.
KING RICHARD.
I am in health, I breathe, and see thee ill.
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, incaged 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 possess’d,
Which art possess’d 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.
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 tapp’d out, and drunkenly carous’d:
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!
Convey me to my bed, then to my grave:
Love they to live that love and honour have.
[Exit, bourne out by his Attendants.]
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 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 moveables,
Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possess’d.
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,
