He would unhorse the lustiest challenger. [both 10
Boling. As dissolute, as desperate: yet, through
I see some sparkles of a better hope,
Which elder days may happily bring forth.
But who comes here?

I may'st thou thrive, if thou grant any grace!
Dutch. Pleads he in earnest? look upon his face;
His eyes do drop no tears, his prayers are in jest;
His words come from his mouth, ours from our
breast:

He prays

but faintly, and would be deny'd; 50 We pray with heart, and soul, and all beside: His weary joints would gladly rise, I know; Ourknees shall kneel 'till to the ground they grow: His prayers are full of false hypocrisy ; Ours, of true zeal and deep integrity.

Our prayers do out-pray his; then let them have
That mercy, which true prayers ought to have.
Boling. Good aunt, stand up.

Dutch. Nay, do not say-stand up;

But, pardon, first; and afterwards, stand up;

From whence this stream through muddy passages 60 And if I were thy nurse, thy tongue to teach, Hath held his current, and defil'd himself!

Pardon-should be the first word of thy speech.

1 Sheer is pellucid, clear. That is, "The overflow of good in thee is turned to bad in thy son." To digress is to deviate from what is right and regular. Alluding to an interlude well known in our author's time.

I never long'd to hear a word 'till now:
Say-pardon, king; let pity teach thee how:
The word is short, but not so short as sweet;
No word like, pardon, for kings' mouths so meet.
York. Speak it in French, king; say, pardonnez 5
moy'.

Dutch. Dost thou teach pardon pardon to destroy?
Ah, my sour husband, my hard-hearted lord,
That set'st the word itself against the word!—
Speak, pardon, as 'tis current in our land;
The chopping French we do not understand.
Thine eye begins to speak, set thy tongue there:
Or, in thy piteous heart plant thou thine ear;
That, hearing how our plaints and prayers do pierce,
Pity may move thee pardon to rehearse.
Boling. Good aunt, stand up.
Dutch. I do not sue to stand,

Pardon is all the suit I have in hand.

Boling. I pardon him, as heaven shall pardon me.
Dutch. O happy vantage of a kneeling knee!
Yet am I sick for fear; speak it again;
Twice saying pardon, doth not pardon twain,
But makes one pardon strong.

Boling. With all my heart

I pardon him.

And here is not a creature but myself,

I cannot do it ;-Yet I'll hammer it out.
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul;
My soul, the father: and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world;
In humours, like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented. The better sort,——
As thoughts of things divine,-are intermix'd
10 With scruples, and do set the word itself
Against the word':

As thus,-Come, little ones; and then again,-
It is as hard to come, as for a camel
To thread the postern of a needle's eye.
15 Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders; how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls;
And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.
20 Thoughts tending to content, flatter themselves,-
That they are not the first of fortune's slaves,
Nor shall not be the last: Like silly beggars,
Who, siting in the stocks, refuge their shame,-
That many have, and others must sit there:
25 And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortune on the back
Of such as have before endur'd the like.
Thus play I, in one person, many people,
And none contented: Sometimes am I king;
30 Then treason makes me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: then crushing penury
Persuades me, I was better when a king;
Then am I king'd again: and, by-and-by,
Think, that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing:-But what-e'er I am,
Nor I, nor any man, that but man is,

Dutch. A god on earth thou art. [the abbot',
Boling. But for our trusty brother-in-law,-and
With all the rest of that consorted crew,-
Destruction straight shall dog them at the heels.-
Good uncle, help to order several powers
To Oxford, or where-e'er these traitors are:
They shall not live within this world, I swear,
But I will have them, if I once knew where.
Uncle, farewel;—and, cousin, too, adieu:
Your mother well hath pray'd, and prove you true. 35
Dutch. Come, my old son; I pray heaven
make thee new.
[Exeunt.

With nothing shall be pleas'd, 'till he be eas'd
With being nothing.-Music do I hear? [Music.
Ha, ha! keep time:-How sour sweet music is,
40 When time is broke, and no proportion kept?
So is it in the musick of men's lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear,
To hear time broke in a disorder'd string;
But, for the concord of my state and time,
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
For now hath time made me his numb'ring clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and, with sighs,they jar,
Their watches to mine eyes, the outward watch',
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,

[twice, 45

Serv. Those were his very words.
Exton. Have I no friend? quoth he: he spake it
And urg'd it twice together; did he not?

Serv. He did.

Exton. And speaking it, he wistly look'd on me.
A who should say,-I would, thou wert the man 50
That would divorce this terror from my heart;
Meaning, the king at Pomfret. Come, let's go;
I am the king's friend, and will rid his foe. [Exe.
SCENE V.

The Prison at Pomfret Castle.
Enter King Richard.

K. Rich. I have been studying how to compare!
This prison, where I live, unto the world;
And, for because the world is populous,

That is, excuse me.

Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now, sir, the sound, that tells what hour it is,
Are clamorous groans, that strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: So sighs, and tears, and groans,
55 Shew minutes, times, and hours but my time
Runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy,
While I stand fooling here, his jack o' the clock".
This music mads me, let it sound no more;
For, though it hath holp madmen to their wits,
In me, it seems, it will make wise men mad.

2 The abbot of Westminster was an ecclesiastic; but the brother-in-law meant was John duke of Exeter and earl of Huntingdon (own brother to king Richard II.) and who had married with the lady Elizabeth, sister of Henry of Bolingbroke. By the word I suppose is meant the Scriptures.

4

3

To jar probably here means, to make that noise which is called ticking. Watch seems to be used in a double sense, for a quantity of time, and for the instrument which measures time. i. e. I strike for him.

Yet,

Groom. So proudly, as if he disdain'd the ground. 25
K. Rich. So proud, that Bolingbroke was on his
back!

That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand;
This hand hath made him proud with clapping him;
Would he not stumble? Would he not fail down,
(Since pride must have a fall) and break the neck
Of that proud man, that did usurp his back?
Forgiveness, horse! why do I rail on thee,
Since thou, created to be aw'd by man,
Wast born to bear? I was not made a horse;
And yet I bear a burden like an ass,
Spur-gall'd, and tir'd, by jauncing' Bolingbroke.
Enter Keeper with a dish.

Keep, Fellow, give place; here is no longer stay.
[To the Groom.
K.Rich. If thou love me,'tis time thou wert away.
Groom. What my tongue dares not,that my heart
[Exit.

shall say, Keep. My lord, will't please you to fall to? K. Rich. Taste of it first, as thou wert wont to do. 45 Keep. My lord, I dare not ; Sir Pierce of Exton, Who late came from the king, commands the contrary. [thee!

K. Rich. The devil take Henry of Lancaster, and Patience is stale, and I am weary of it.

[ment. 55 Villain, thine own hand yields thy death's instru[Snatching a weapon, and killing one. Gothou,and fill another room in hell. [Kills another [Exton strikes him down. That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire,

1i. e. is as strange and uncommon as a brooch, which is now no longer worn. grave, gloomy villain, who brings, &c. Jaunce and jaunt were synonimous words.

Sheriff, Vintner, Chamberlain, Drawers, two Carriers, Travellers, and Attendants, &c..

SCENE, England.

SCENE I.

The Court in London.

ACT I.

Enter King Henry, Earl of Westmoreland, Sir
Walter Blunt, and others.

K. Hen.SO shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Find we a time for frighted peace to
pant,

And breathe short-winded accents of new broils

To be commenc'd in stronds afar remote.
No more the thirsty entrance of this soil
Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood;
No more shall trenching war channel her fields,
5 Nor bruise her flowrets with the armed hoofs
Of hostile paces: those opposed eyes,
Which,-like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,
Did lately meet in the intestine shock

The transactions contained in this historical drama are comprised within the period of about ten months: for the action commences with the news brought of Hotspur having defeated the Scots under Archibald earl Douglas at Holmedon, (or Halidown-hill), which battle was fought on Holyrood-day (the 14th of September) 1402; and it closes with the defeat and death of Hotspur at Shrewsbury; which engagement happened on Saturday the 21st of July (the eve of St. Mary Magdalen) in the year 1403. Dr. Johnson remarks, that "Shakspeare has apparently designed a regular connection of these dramatic histories from Richard the Second to Henry the Fifth. King Henry, at the end of Richard the Second, declares his purpose to visit the Holy Land, which he resumes in this speech. The complaint made by king Henry in the last act of Richard the Second, of the wildness of his son, prepares the reader for the frolicks which are here to be recounted, and the characters which are now to be exhibited." Mr. Steevens says, it should be Prince John of Lancaster, and adds, that the persons of the drama were originally collected by Mr. Rowe, who has given the title of Duke of Lancaster to Prince John, a mistake which Shakspeare has been no where guilty of in the first part of this play, though in the second he has fallen into the same error. K. Henry IV. was himself the last person that ever bore the title of Duke of Lancaster. But all his sons ('till they had peerages, as Clarence, Bedford, Gloucester) were distinguished by the name of the royal house, as John of Lancaster, Humphry of Lancaster, &c. and in that proper style, the present John (who became afterwards so illustrious by the title of Duke of Bedford) is always mentioned in the play before us.

2

And