Faculty of English

GROOM           O how it erned my heart when I beheld In London streets that coronation day When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary, That horse that thou so often hast bestrid, That horse that I so carefully have dressed. RICHARD        Rode he on Barbary? Tell me, gentle friend, How went he under him? GROOM           So proudly […]

Enter a Groom of the Stable GROOM           Hail, royal prince! RICHARD                                            Thanks noble peer, The cheapest of us is ten groats too dear. What art thou, and how com’st thou hither, Where no man never comes but that sad dog That brings me food to make misfortune live? GROOM           I was a poor groom of […]

RICHARD        Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is Are clamorous groans which strike upon my heart, Which is the bell. So sighs and tears and groans Show minutes, hours and times. But my time Runs posting on in Bolingbroke’s proud joy, While I stand fooling here, his jack o’ the clock. This […]

RICHARD        I wasted time and now doth time waste me, For now hath time made me his numb’ring clock: My thoughts are minutes and with sighs they jar Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch, Whereto my finger like a dial’s point Is pointing still in cleansing them from tears.        (5.5.49-54)   Richard’s […]

The music plays RICHARD                                Music do I hear? Ha, ha, keep time. How sour sweet music is When time is broke and no proportion kept. So is it in the music of men’s lives; And here have I the daintiness of ear To check time broke in a disordered string, But for the concord […]

RICHARD        Thus play I in one person many people And none contented. Sometimes am I king, Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar And so I am. Then crushing penury Persuades me I was better when a king, Then am I kinged again, and by and by Think that I am unkinged again by […]

RICHARD        Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves That they are not the first of fortune’s slaves, Nor shall not be the last—like silly beggars Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame That many have and others must sit there, And in this thought they find a kind of ease, Bearing their own misfortunes on […]

RICHARD                                            The better sort, As thoughts of things divine, are intermixed With scruples and do set the word itself Against the word, as thus: ‘Come, little ones’, And then again, ‘It is as hard to come as for a camel To thread the postern of a needle’s eye’. Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot […]

RICHARD        My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul, My soul the father, and these two beget A generation of still-breeding thoughts; And these same thoughts people this little world In humours like the people of this world, For no thought is contented.            (5.5.6-11)   As soon as Richard resolves to hammer it out, […]

Enter Richard alone RICHARD        I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world, And for because the world is populous And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I’ll hammer it out.           (5.5.1-5)   I started writing this blog (this is post number […]