For violent fires soon burn out themselves : Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short ; itself. Consuming means, soon preys upon This fortress, built by nature for herself, Against the envy of less happier lands; : This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, Enter King RICHARD and QUEEN; AUMERLE, BUSHY, York. The king is come: deal mildly with his youth; For young hot colts, being rag'd, do rage the more. [7] I once suspected that for infection we might read invasion; but the copies all agree, and I suppose Shakespeare meant to say, that islanders are secured by their situation both from war and pestilence. JOHNSON. [8] Shakespeare, as Mr. Walpole suggests to me, has deviated from historical truth in the introduction of Richard's queen as a woman in tire present piece: Queen. How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster? K. Rich. What comfort, man? How is't with aged Gaunt ? Gaunt. O, how that name befits my composition! 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 watch'd ; 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 nought but bones. K. Rich. Can sick men play so nicely with their names? 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. K. Rich. Should dying men flatter with those that live? Gaunt. No, no; men living flatter those that die. K. Rich. Thou, now a dying, say'st-thou flatter'st me. Gaunt. Oh! no; thou diest, though I the sicker be. K. Rich, 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 death-bed is no lesser than the land, Wherein thou liest in reputation sick : And thou, too careless patient as thou art, Commit'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; for Anne his first wife, was dead before the play commences, and Isabella, his second wife, was a child at the time of his death. MALONE. Is it not more than shame, to shame it so? K. Rich. -a lunatic lean-witted fool, Presuming on an ague's privilege, Dar'st with thy frozen admonition Make pale our cheeks; chasing the royal blood, Now by my seat's right royal majesty, Wert thou not brother to great Edward's son, Should run thy head from thy unreverend shoulders. That blood already, like the pelican, Hast thou tapp'd out, and drunkenly carous'd: That thou respect'st not spilling Edward's blood : Love they' to live, that love and honour have. [Exit, borne out by his Attendants. K. Rich. And let them die, that age and sullens have; For both hast thou, and both become the grave. York. 'Beseech your majesty, impute his words To wayward sickliness and age in him: He love's you, on my life, and holds you dear As Harry duke of Hereford, were he here. K. Rich. Right; you say true: as Hereford's love, so his : As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is. [9] The reasoning of Gaunt, I think, is this; By setting thy royalties to farm thou hast reduced thyself to a state below sovereignty, thou art now no longer king but landlord of England, subject to the same restraint and limitations as other landlords; by making thy condition a state of law, a condition upon which the cou mon rules of law can operate, thou art become a bondslave to the law; thou hast made thyself amenable to laws from which thou wert originally exempt." JOHNSON, [1] That is, Let them love. JOHNSON. Enter NORTHUMBERLAND. North. My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your majesty. K. Rich. What says he now ? North. Nay, nothing; all is said: His tongue is now a stringless instrument; York. Be York the next that must be bankrupt so! K. Rich. The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he; And for these great affairs do ask some charge, York. How long shall I be patient? Ah, how long Not Gloster's death, nor Hereford's banishment, 3 About his marriage, nor my own disgrace, Have ever made me sour my patient cheek, Of whom thy father, prince of Wales, was first; [2] This alludes to a tradition that St. Patrick freed the kingdom of Ireland from venomous reptiles of every kind. STEEVENS. [3] When the duke of Hereford, after his banishment, went into France, he was honourably entertained at that court, and would have obtained in marriage the only daughter of the duke of Berry, uncle to the French king, had not Richard prevented the match. STEEVENS, 8 VOL. V. His hands were guilty of no kindred's blood, Pardon me, if you please; if not, I pleas'd Seek you to seize, and gripe into your hands, Take Hereford's rights away, and take from time His livery, and deny his offer'd homage,* K. Rich. 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. K. Rich. Go, Bushy, to the earl of Wiltshire straight; Bid him repair to us to Ely-house, To see this business: To-morrow next We will for Ireland; and 'tis time, I trow: [4] That is, refuse to admit the homage, by which he is to hold his lands. JOHNSON. |