Richard II: Act I

I have, my liege.

As near as I could sift him on that argument,
On some apparent danger seen in him
Aimed at your Highness, no inveterate malice.

High stomached are they both and full of ire,
In rage deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.

Many years of happy days befall
My gracious sovereign, my most loving liege.

Thou art a traitor and a miscreant,
Too good to be so and too bad to live,
Since the more fair and crystal is the sky,
The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.

’Tis not the trial of a woman’s war,
The bitter clamor of two eager tongues,
Can arbitrate this cause betwixt us twain.

’Tis not the trial of a woman’s war,
The bitter clamor of two eager tongues,
Can arbitrate this cause betwixt us twain.

Setting aside his high blood’s royalty,
And let him be no kinsman to my liege,
I do defy him, and I spit at him,
Call him a slanderous coward and a villain

...he did plot the Duke of Gloucester’s death,
Suggest his soon-believing adversaries,
And consequently, like a traitor coward,
Sluiced out his innocent soul through streams of
blood

Which blood, like sacrificing Abel’s, cries
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth
To me for justice and rough chastisement.

Three parts of that receipt I had for Calais
Disbursed I duly to his Highness’ soldiers;
The other part reserved I by consent,
For that my sovereign liege was in my debt
Upon remainder of a dear account
Since last I went to France to fetch his queen.

For you, my noble Lord of Lancaster,
The honorable father to my foe,
Once did I lay an ambush for your life,
A trespass that doth vex my grievèd soul.

As for the rest appealed,
It issues from the rancor of a villain,
A recreant and most degenerate traitor,
Which in myself I boldly will defend,
And interchangeably hurl down my gage
Upon this overweening traitor’s foot,
He throws down a gage.

As for the rest appealed,
It issues from the rancor of a villain,
A recreant and most degenerate traitor,
Which in myself I boldly will defend,
And interchangeably hurl down my gage
Upon this overweening traitor’s foot,
He throws down a gage.

As for the rest appealed,
It issues from the rancor of a villain,
A recreant and most degenerate traitor,
Which in myself I boldly will defend,
And interchangeably hurl down my gage
Upon this overweening traitor’s foot,
He throws down a gage.

I am disgraced, impeached, and baffled here,
Pierced to the soul with slander’s venomed spear,
The which no balm can cure but his heart-blood
Which breathed this poison.

My dear dear lord,
The purest treasure mortal times afford
Is spotless reputation; that away,
Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.

Shall I seem crestfallen in my father’s sight?

Ere my tongue
Shall wound my honor with such feeble wrong
Or sound so base a parle, my teeth shall tear
The slavish motive of recanting fear
And spit it bleeding in his high disgrace,
Where shame doth harbor, even in Mowbray’s face.

Or if misfortune miss the first career,
Be Mowbray’s sins so heavy in his bosom
That they may break his foaming courser’s back
And throw the rider headlong in the lists,
A caitiff recreant to my cousin Hereford!

Marshal, ask yonder knight in arms
Both who he is and why he cometh hither
Thus plated in habiliments of war,
And formally, according to our law,
Depose him in the justice of his cause.

Lord Marshal, let me kiss my sovereign’s hand
And bow my knee before his Majesty;
For Mowbray and myself are like two men
That vow a long and weary pilgrimage.

O, let no noble eye profane a tear
For me if I be gored with Mowbray’s spear.

Be swift like lightning in the execution,
And let thy blows, doubly redoubled,
Fall like amazing thunder on the casque
Of thy adverse pernicious enemy.

As gentle and as jocund as to jest
Go I to fight.

Securely I espy
Virtue with valor couchèd in thine eye.

The language I have learnt these forty years,
My native English, now I must forgo;
And now my tongue’s use is to me no more
Than an unstringèd viol or a harp

...never by advisèd purpose meet
To plot, contrive, or complot any ill
’Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.

Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy:
By this time, had the King permitted us,
One of our souls had wandered in the air,
Banished this frail sepulcher of our flesh,
As now our flesh is banished from this land.

But what thou art, God, thou, and I do know,
And all too soon, I fear, the King shall rue.

I have too few to take my leave of you,
When the tongue’s office should be prodigal
To breathe the abundant dolor of the heart.

I have too few to take my leave of you,
When the tongue’s office should be prodigal
To breathe the abundant dolor of the heart.

Must I not serve a long apprenticehood
To foreign passages, and in the end,
Having my freedom, boast of nothing else
But that I was a journeyman to grief?

Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honor,
And not the King exiled thee; or suppose
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air
And thou art flying to a fresher clime.

Or wallow naked in December snow
By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?

O no, the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.

Faith, none for me, except the northeast wind,
Which then blew bitterly against our faces,
Awaked the sleeping rheum and so by chance
Did grace our hollow parting with a tear.

Off goes his bonnet to an oysterwench;
A brace of draymen bid God speed him well
And had the tribute of his supple knee,
With “Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends,”
As were our England in reversion his
And he our subjects’ next degree in hope.

And, for our coffers, with too great a court
And liberal largess, are grown somewhat light,
We are enforced to farm our royal realm,
The revenue whereof shall furnish us
For our affairs in hand.

Old John of Gaunt is grievous sick, my lord,
Suddenly taken, and hath sent posthaste
To entreat your Majesty to visit him.