GAUNT.
Methinks I am a prophet new inspir’d,
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 scepter’d 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 blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear’d 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 leas’d 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 watery 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 QUEEN; AUMERLE, BUSHY, GREEN, BAGOT,
ROSS, and WILLOUGHBY.]
YORK.
The King is come: deal mildly with his youth;
For young hot colts, being rag’d, do rage the more.
QUEEN.
How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster?
KING RICHARD.
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.
KING RICHARD.
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.
KING RICHARD.
Should dying men flatter with those that live?
GAUNT.
No, no; men living flatter those that die.
KING RICHARD.
Thou, now a-dying, sayest thou flatterest me.
GAUNT.
O, no! thou diest, though I 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: