Richard II: Act II

No, it is stopped with other flattering sounds,
As praises, of whose taste the wise are fond;
Lascivious meters, to whose venom sound
The open ear of youth doth always listen

Report of fashions in proud Italy,
Whose manners still our tardy-apish nation
Limps after in base imitation.

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.

Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!

Thy deathbed is no lesser than thy 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.

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?

A lunatic lean-witted fool,
Presuming on an ague’s privilege,
Darest with thy frozen admonition
Make pale our cheek, chasing the royal blood
With fury from his native residence.

That blood already, like the pelican,
Hast thou tapped out and drunkenly caroused.

I do beseech your Majesty, impute his words
To wayward sickliness and age in him.

I do beseech your Majesty, impute his words
To wayward sickliness and age in him.

Now for our Irish wars:
We must supplant those rough rugheaded kern,
Which live like venom where no venom else
But only they have privilege to live.

Take Hereford’s rights away, and take from time
His charters and his customary rights;
Let not tomorrow then ensue today;
Be not thyself; for how art thou a king
But by fair sequence and succession?

If you do wrongfully seize Hereford’s rights,
Call in the letters patents that he hath
By his attorneys general to sue
His livery, and deny his offered homage,
You pluck a thousand dangers on your head

No good at all that I can do for him,
Unless you call it good to pity him,
Bereft and gelded of his patrimony.

No good at all that I can do for him,
Unless you call it good to pity him,
Bereft and gelded of his patrimony.

Reproach and dissolution hangeth over him.

We see the very wrack that we must suffer,
And unavoided is the danger now
For suffering so the causes of our wrack.

If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke,
Imp out our drooping country’s broken wing,
Redeem from broking pawn the blemished crown,
Wipe off the dust that hides our scepter’s gilt,
And make high majesty look like itself,
Away with me in post to Ravenspurgh.

If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke,
Imp out our drooping country’s broken wing,
Redeem from broking pawn the blemished crown,
Wipe off the dust that hides our scepter’s gilt,
And make high majesty look like itself,
Away with me in post to Ravenspurgh.

If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke,
Imp out our drooping country’s broken wing,
Redeem from broking pawn the blemished crown,
Wipe off the dust that hides our scepter’s gilt,
And make high majesty look like itself,
Away with me in post to Ravenspurgh.

Mine is not so,
For nothing hath begot my something grief—
Or something hath the nothing that I grieve.

Why have you not proclaimed Northumberland
And all the rest revolted faction traitors?

We have; whereupon the Earl of Worcester
Hath broken his staff, resigned his stewardship,
And all the Household servants fled with him
To Bolingbroke.

I will despair and be at enmity
With cozening hope.

I will despair and be at enmity
With cozening hope.

Should I do so, I should belie my thoughts.

Now comes the sick hour that his surfeit made;
Now shall he try his friends that flattered him.

For us to levy power
Proportionable to the enemy
Is all unpossible.

Thither will I with you, for little office
Will the hateful commons perform for us,
Except like curs to tear us all to pieces.

If heart’s presages be not vain,
We three here part that ne’er shall meet again.

I thank thee, gentle Percy, and be sure
I count myself in nothing else so happy
As in a soul rememb’ring my good friends;
And as my fortune ripens with thy love,
It shall be still thy true love’s recompense.

Evermore thank’s the exchequer of the poor,
Which, till my infant fortune comes to years,
Stands for my bounty.

But then, more why: why have they dared to march
So many miles upon her peaceful bosom,
Frighting her pale-faced villages with war
And ostentation of despisèd arms?

O, then, my father,
Will you permit that I shall stand condemned
A wandering vagabond, my rights and royalties
Plucked from my arms perforce and given away
To upstart unthrifts?

O, then, my father,
Will you permit that I shall stand condemned
A wandering vagabond, my rights and royalties
Plucked from my arms perforce and given away
To upstart unthrifts?

And you that do abet him in this kind
Cherish rebellion and are rebels all.

So fare you well—
Unless you please to enter in the castle
And there repose you for this night.

It may be I will go with you; but yet I’ll pause,
For I am loath to break our country’s laws.

Things past redress are now with me past care.

With the eyes of heavy mind
I see thy glory like a shooting star
Fall to the base earth from the firmament.