Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me-I am a king?

Bishop. My lord, wise men ne'er sit and wail their

woes,

But presently prevent the ways to wail.

To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength,
Gives, in your weakness, strength unto your foe,
[And so your follies fight against yourself3.]
Fear, and be slain; no worse can come to fight:
And fight and die is death destroying death;
Where fearing dying pays death servile breath.
Aum. My father hath a power, enquire of him,
And learn to make a body of a limb.

K. Rich. Thou chid'st me well.-Proud Bolingbroke,
I come

To change blows with thee for our day of doom.
This ague-fit of fear is over-blown :

An easy task it is, to win our own.

Say, Scroop, where lies our uncle with his power?
Speak sweetly, man, although thy looks be sour.

Scroop. Men judge by the complexion of the sky
The state and inclination of the day;

2 How can you say to me--I am a king?] We follow here the regulation of all the old copies, quarto and folio, which is to be preferred to the modern arrangement, which only varies without curing the defect. Were we to adopt Capel's advice, we should insert like you twice over, in order to complete what he considered defective lines. The case might be different if there were any difference in the original editions. In the next line the folio, 1623, reads, “My lord, wise men ne'er wail their present woes," omitting the word "sit,” which is important, because from it we may, perhaps, gather, that in his despondency Richard had thrown himself upon the ground, where he remained until roused by the reproof of the Bishop, (whom Malone calls Bishop in one place and Carlisle in another,) and by the hope expressed by Aumerle, when Richard starts up with the exclamation, "Thou chid'st me well."

3 [And so your follies fight against yourself.] This line is omitted in the folios.

So may you by my dull and heavy eye,

My tongue hath but a heavier tale to say.
I play the torturer, by small and small,

To lengthen out the worst that must be spoken.
Your uncle York is join'd' with Bolingbroke;
And all your northern castles yielded up,
And all your southern gentlemen in arms

Upon his party.

K. Rich. Thou hast said enough.—

Beshrew thee, cousin, [To AUMERLE.] which didst lead me forth

Of that sweet way I was in to despair!

What say you now? What comfort have we now?
By heaven, I'll hate him everlastingly,
That bids me be of comfort any more.
Go to Flint castle: there I'll pine away;
A king, woe's slave, shall kingly woe obey.
That power I have, discharge; and let them go
To ear the land that hath some hope to grow3,
For I have none.-Let no man speak again
To alter this, for counsel is but vain.

Aum. My liege, one word.

K. Rich.

He does me double wrong, That wounds me with the flatteries of his tongue. Discharge my followers: let them hence away, From Richard's night to Bolingbroke's fair day.

[Exeunt.

4 Your uncle York is join'd-] So all the old copies: Malone reads "hath joined." Three lines lower the four early quartos read "party," and the folio faction.

5 TO EAR the land that hath some hope to grow,] i. e. to cultivate that soil which promises to be productive. To "ear the land" meant to prepare it for seed by ploughing it. In "Antony and Cleopatra," Shakespeare speaks of earing" or ploughing the sea:—

"Make the sea serve them, which they ear and wound
With keels."

SCENE III.

Wales. A Plain before Flint Castle.

Enter, with Drum and Colours, BOLINGBROKE and Forces; YORK, NORTHUMBERLAND, and Others. Boling. So that by this intelligence we learn, The Welshmen are dispers'd; and Salisbury Is gone to meet the king, who lately landed With some few private friends upon this coast. North. The news is very fair and good, my lord: Richard, not far from hence, hath hid his head.

York. It would beseem the lord Northumberland,
To say, king Richard :—Alack, the heavy day,
When such a sacred king should hide his head!
North. Your grace mistakes; only to be brief,
Left I his title out.

York.
The time hath been,
Would you have been so brief with him, he would
Have been so brief with you, to shorten you,
For taking so the head, your whole head's length.

Boling. Mistake not, uncle, farther than you should.
York. Take not, good cousin, farther than you

should,

Lest you mistake: the heavens are o'er our heads'.
Boling. I know it, uncle; and oppose not myself
Against their will.—But who comes here?

Enter PERCY.

Welcome, Harry. What, will not this castle yield?

6 Have been so brief WITH YOU,] The words "with you" are from the first folio. They improve the sense, and complete the metre.

7- the heavens are o'er OUR HEADS.] So the quartos of 1597 and 1598. The folio has "o'er your head," an error easily explained, because the quartos of 1608 and 1615 read, "o'er your heads," which being clearly wrong, the editor of the folio, 1623, made heads singular.

Percy. The castle royally is mann'd, my lord,

Against thy entrance.

Boling. Royally?

Why, it contains no king.

Percy.

Yes, my good lord,

It doth contain a king: king Richard lies

Within the limits of yond' lime and stone;

And with him are the lord Aumerle, lord Salisbury,
Sir Stephen Scroop; besides a clergyman

Of holy reverence, who, I cannot learn.

North. O belike it is the bishop of Carlisle.
Boling. Noble lord,

[TO NORTH.

Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle;
Through brazen trumpet send the breath of parle
Into his ruin'd ears, and thus deliver.

Henry Bolingbroke

On both his knees doth kiss king Richard's hand,
And sends allegiance, and true faith of heart,
To his most royal person; hither come
Even at his feet to lay my arms and power,
Provided that, my banishment repeal'd,
And lands restor'd again, be freely granted.
If not, I'll use th' advantage of my power,

And lay the summer's dust with showers of blood,
Rain'd from the wounds of slaughter'd Englishmen :
The which, how far off from the mind of Bolingbroke
It is, such crimson tempest should bedrench

The fresh green lap of fair king Richard's land,
My stooping duty tenderly shall show.

Go; signify as much while here we march
Upon the grassy carpet of this plain.

Let's march without the noise of threat'ning drum,
That from the castle's tatter'd battlements

8

8 That from the castle's TATTER'D battlements-] Tottered in the quartos of 1597 and 1598: "tattered" in the quartos of 1608, 1615, and the folios. Boswell suggested that tottered was put for tottering, but as has been stated in note 9, p. 94, of this volume, the oldest mode of spelling tattered was tottered: consequently, “tattered battlements" merely means ragged battle

66

Our fair appointments may be well perus'd.
Methinks, king Richard and myself should meet
With no less terror than the elements

Of fire and water, when their thundering shock'
At meeting tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven.
Be he the fire, I'll be the yielding water:
The rage be his, while on the earth I rain
My waters; on the earth, and not on him.—
March on, and mark king Richard how he looks.

A parley sounded, and answered by a Trumpet within. Flourish. Enter on the walls King RICHARD, the Bishop of Carlisle, AUMERLE, SCROOP, and SALIS

BURY.

Boling. See, see, king Richard doth himself appear, As doth the blushing discontented sun

From out the fiery portal of the east,

When he perceives the envious clouds are bent
To dim his glory, and to stain the track

Of his bright passage to the occident1o.

York. Yet looks he like a king: behold, his eye,

ments if the battlements were tottering, they would have been no very good defence for the King. We may add one proof of what we have advanced from the old play of the " Alarum for London," 1602, which is peculiarly apposite:"Whose streetes besmear'd with blood, whose blubber'd eyes, Whose tottered walls, whose buildings overthrowne," &c.

9

when their thundering SHOCK] It stands "thundering smoke" in the folio, and in three of the quartos, and some modern editors have expressed wonder whence "shock" was obtained? The answer is very short-from the first quarto in 1597, which indisputably contains the best text of this play.

10 Of his bright passage to the occident.] In every old edition, quarto and folio, this and the preceding five lines are given to Bolingbroke, and there is no sufficient reason for taking them from him, and giving them to York, as has been done by all the editors since the time of Warburton, some with and others without notice. It is not at all inconsistent with the character of Bolingbroke, and with what he has before said of Richard, that he should now so speak of him; and, as has been remarked, all the authorities are in favour of the restoration. After he has so spoken, and after York's answer, we must suppose Bolingbroke to retire with York, and to leave the conduct of the interview to Northumberland, until he rejoins Bolingbroke just before Richard descends to the plain. Richard's observation to Northumberland, "For yond', methinks, he stands," shows that Bolingbroke was not out of sight.