GARDENER    Pardon me, madam, little joy I have To breathe this news, yet what I say is true— King Richard, he is in the mighty hold Of Bolingbroke. Their fortunes both are weighed: In your lord’s scale is nothing but himself And some few vanities that make him light, But in the balance of great […]

QUEEN           Thou, old Adam’s likeness, set to dress this garden, How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news? What Eve, what serpent, hath suggested thee To make a second fall of cursèd man? Why dost thou say King Richard is deposed? Dar’st thou, thou little better thing than earth, Divine his downfall? Say […]

SERVANT       What, think you the King shall be deposed? GARDENER    Depressed he is already, and deposed ’Tis doubt he will be. Letters came last night To a dear friend of the good Duke of York’s That tell black tidings. QUEEN           O, I am pressed to death with want of speaking!   (3.4.67-72)   Deposed has, hitherto, mostly […]

GARDENER                                        O what pity it is That he had not so trimmed and dressed his land As we this garden! We at time of year Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees, Lest being over-proud in sap and blood With too much riches it confound itself. Had he done so to […]

GARDENER                                        Hold thy peace. He that hath suffered this disordered spring Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf. The weeds which his broad-spreading leaves did shelter That seemed in eating him to hold him up Are plucked up root and all by Bolingbroke— I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green. […]

SERVANT       Why should we in the compass of a pale Keep law and form and due proportion, Showing as in a model our firm estate, When our sea-wallèd garden, the whole land, Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up, Her fruit trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined, Her knots disordered and her wholesome […]

GARDENER    Go bind thou up yon dangling apricots Which like unruly children make their sire Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight; Give some supportance to the bending twigs. Go thou and like an executioner Cut off the heads of too-fast-growing sprays That look too lofty in our commonwealth— All must be even in our […]

Enter a Gardener and two Servants QUEEN           But stay, here come the gardeners. Let’s step into the shadow of these trees; My wretchedness unto a row of pins They’ll talk of state, for every one doth so Against a change. Woe is forerun with woe.           (3.4.24-28)   A functional setting-up of the scene’s next movement—the […]

LADY              Madam, we’ll tell tales. QUEEN           Of sorrow or of joy? LADY                                                  Of either, madam. QUEEN           Of neither, girl. For if of joy, being altogether wanting, It doth remember me the more of sorrow; Or if of grief, being altogether had, It adds more sorrow to my want of joy. For what I have I […]

Enter the Queen and two Ladies QUEEN           What sport shall we devise here in the garden To drive away the heavy thought of care? LADY              Madam, we’ll play at bowls. QUEEN           ’Twill make me think the world is full of rubs And that my fortune rubs against the bias. LADY              Madam, we’ll dance. QUEEN           My […]