AUMERLE      Comfort, my liege, remember who you are. RICHARD        I had forgot myself. Am I not king? Awake, thou sluggard majesty, thou sleep’st. Is not the king’s name twenty thousand names? Arm, arm, my name!  A puny subject strikes At thy great glory. Look not to the ground, Ye favourites of a king. Are we […]

AUMERLE      Comfort, my liege. Why looks your grace so pale? RICHARD        But now the blood of twenty thousand men Did triumph in my face and they are fled; And till so much blood thither come again Have I not reason to look pale and dead? All souls that will be safe fly from my side, […]

Enter Salisbury RICHARD        Welcome, my lord. How far off lies your power? SALISBURY    Nor nea’er nor farther off, my gracious lord, Than this weak arm. Discomfort guides my tongue And bids me speak of nothing but despair. One day too late, I fear me, noble lord, Hath clouded all thy happy days on earth. O […]

RICHARD        Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm off from an anointed king. The breath of worldly men cannot depose The deputy elected by the Lord; For every man that Bolingbroke hath pressed To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown, God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay […]

RICHARD        So when this thief, this traitor Bolingbroke, Who all this while hath revelled in the night Whilst we were wandering in th’antipodes, Shall see us rising in our throne, the east, His treasons will sit blushing in his face, Not able to endure the sight of day But, self-affrighted, tremble at his sin.        (3.2.47-53) […]

RICHARD        Discomfortable cousin, know’st thou not That when the searching eye of heaven is hid Behind the globe and lights the lower world, Then thieves and robbers range about unseen In murders and in outrage boldly here; But when from under this terrestrial ball He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines And darts […]

CARLISLE       Fear not, my lord. That power that made you king Hath power to keep you king in spite of all. The means that heavens yield must be embraced And not neglected; else heaven would And we will not: heaven’s offer we refuse, The proffered means of succours and redress. AUMERLE      He means, my lord, […]

RICHARD        Yield stinging nettles to mine enemies And when they from thy bosom pluck a flower, Guard it, I pray thee, with a lurking adder, Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch Throw death upon thy sovereign’s enemies. Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords. This earth shall have a feeling and these stones Prove […]

RICHARD        As a long-parted mother with her child Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting, So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth, And do thee favours with my royal hands. Feed not thy sovereign’s foe, my gentle earth, Nor with thy sweets comfort his ravenous sense, But let thy spiders that suck […]

Drums, flourish, and colours. Enter Richard, Aumerle, Carlisle, and soldiers RICHARD        Barkloughly Castle call they this at hand? AUMERLE      Yea, my lord. How brooks your grace the air After your late tossing on the breaking seas? RICHARD        Needs must I like it well. I weep for joy To stand upon my kingdom once again; Dear […]