He prays but faintly and would be denied;
We pray with heart and soul, and all beside:
His weary joints would gladly rise, I know;
Our knees still 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 prayer ought to have.
BOLINGBROKE.
Good aunt, stand up.
DUCHESS.
Nay, do not say ‘stand up’;
Say ‘pardon’ first, and afterwards ‘stand up’.
An if I were thy nurse, thy tongue to teach,
‘Pardon’ should be the first word of thy speech.
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 ‘pardonne moy.’
DUCHESS.
Dost thou teach pardon pardon to destroy?
Ah! my sour husband, my hard-hearted lord,,
That sett’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.
BOLINGBROKE.
Good aunt, stand up.
DUCHESS.
I do not sue to stand;
Pardon is all the suit I have in hand.
BOLINGBROKE.
I pardon him, as God shall pardon me.
DUCHESS.
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.
BOLINGBROKE.
With all my heart
I pardon him.
DUCHESS.
A god on earth thou art.
BOLINGBROKE.
But for our trusty brother-in-law and the abbot,
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’er these traitors are:
They shall not live within this world, I swear,
But I will have them, if I once know where.
Uncle, farewell: and, cousin, adieu:
Your mother well hath pray’d, and prove you true.
DUCHESS.
Come, my old son: I pray God make thee new.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE IV. Another room in the Castle.
[Enter EXTON and a Servant.]
EXTON.
Didst thou not mark the king, what words he spake?
‘Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?’
Was it not so?
SERVANT.
These were his very words.
EXTON.
‘Have I no friend?’ quoth he: he spake it twice
And urg’d it twice together, did he not?
SERVANT.
He did.
EXTON.
And, speaking it, he wistly looked on me,
As who should say ‘I would thou wert the man
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.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE V. Pomfret. The dungeon of the Castle.
[Enter KING RICHARD.]
KING RICHARD.
I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world
And for because the world is populous,
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
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.’
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.
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 sitting in the stocks refuge their shame,
That many have and others must sit there:
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortunes 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;
Then treasons make 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 whate’er I be,
Nor I, nor any man that but man is
With nothing