BOLINGBROKE          My gracious lord, I come but for mine own. RICHARD                    Your own is yours and I am yours and all. BOLINGBROKE          So far be mine, my most redoubted lord,                                     As my true service shall deserve your love. RICHARD                    Well you deserve. They well deserve to have                                     That know the strong’st and surest […]

BOLINGBROKE          What says his majesty? NORTHUMBERLAND                                    Sorrow and grief of heart Makes him speak fondly like a frantic man, [Enter Richard and his attendants below] Yet he is come. BOLINGBROKE                                              Stand all apart And show fair duty to his majesty. He kneels down My gracious lord. RICHARD                    Fair cousin, you debase your princely knee […]

RICHARD                                Most mighty prince, my lord Northumberland, What says King Bolingbroke—will his majesty Give Richard leave to live till Richard die? You make a leg and Bolingbroke says ‘Ay’. NORTHUMBERLAND            My lord, in the base court he doth attend To speak with you. May it please you to come down. RICHARD                                Down, down I […]

RICHARD        Aumerle, thou weep’st, my tender-hearted cousin. We’ll make foul weather with despisèd tears. Our sighs and they shall lodge the summer corn And make a dearth in the revolting land. Or shall we play the wantons with our woes And make some pretty match with shedding tears? As thus: to drop them still upon […]

RICHARD        I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads, My gorgeous palace for a hermitage, My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown, My figured goblets for a dish of wood, My sceptre for a palmer’s walking staff, My subjects for a pair of carvèd saints And my large kingdom for a little grave, A […]

RICHARD        What must the King do now? Must he submit? The King shall do it. Must he be deposed? The King shall be contented. Must he lose The name of king? In God’s name, let it go.            (3.3.142-145) This is just the beginning of a long, complex, histrionic speech. Richard’s the one making all the […]

RICHARD        O God, O God, that e’er this tongue of mine, That laid the sentence of dread banishment On yon proud man, should take it off again With words of sooth! O that I were as great As is my grief or lesser than my name Or that I could forget what I have been […]

RICHARD        Northumberland, say thus the King returns: His noble cousin is right welcome hither, And all the number of his fair demands Shall be accomplished without contradiction. With all the gracious utterance thou hast Speak to his gentle hearing kind commends. [Northumberland returns to Bolingbroke] [to Aumerle] We do debase ourselves, cousin, do we not, […]

NORTHUMBERLAND            The king of heaven forbid our lord the King Should so with civil and uncivil arms Be rushed upon. Thy thrice noble cousin, Harry Bolingbroke, doth humbly kiss thy hand, And by the honourable tomb he swears, That stands upon your royal grandsire’s bones, And by the royalties of both your bloods, Currents that […]

RICHARD        Tell Bolingbroke, for yon methinks he stands, That every stride he makes upon my land Is dangerous treason. He is come to open The purple testament of bleeding war, But ere the crown he looks for live in peace, Ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers’ sons Shall ill become the flower of England’s face, […]