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Alas, I look'd," when some of you should say,
I was too strict, to make mine own away;
But you gave leave to my unwilling tongue,
Against my will, to do myself this wrong.
K.Rich. Cousin,farewell;—and, uncle, bid him so;
Six years we banish him, and he shall go.

[Flourish. Exeunt K. RICH. and Train. Aum. Cousin, farewell; what presence must not know,

From where you do remain, let paper show.

Mar. My lord, no leave take I: for I will ride, As far as land will let me, by your

side. Gaunt. O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy

words,

That thou return'st no greeting to thy friends?
Boling. I have too few to take my leave of
When the tongue's office should be prodigal
To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart.

you,

Gaunt. Thy grief is but thy absence for a time. Boling. Joy absent, grief is present for that time. Gaunt. What is six winters? they are quickly gone. Boling. To men in joy; but grief makes one hour

ten.

Gaunt. Call it a travel that thou tak'st for pleasure. Boling. My heart will sigh, when I miscall it so, Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage.

Gaunt. The sullen passage of thy weary steps Esteem a foil, wherein thou art to set The precious jewel of thy home-return.

Boling. Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make 20 Will but remember me, what a deal of world I wander from the jewels that I love. Must I not serve a long apprenticehood To foreign passages; and in the end, Having my freedom, boast of nothing else, But that I was a journeyman to grief?

20 This speech and that which follows are not in the folio.

Gaunt. All places that the eye of heaven 21 visits, Are to a wise man ports and happy havens: Teach thy necessity to reason thus ; There is no virtue like necessity.

Think not the king did banish thee;

But thou the king 22: Woe doth the heavier sit,
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.
Go, say-I sent thee forth to purchase honour,
And not-the king exil'd thee: or suppose,
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air,
And thou art flying to a fresher clime.
Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it
To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou com'st:
Suppose the singing birds, musicians;

The grass whereon thou tread'st, the presence strew'd 23;

21 So Nonnus:-' aidéρos ôμμa; i. e. the sun. Thus in the Rape of Lucrece :

"The eye of heaven is out.'

And in Spenser's Faerie Queene, b. i. c. iii. st. 4 :—

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As the great eye of heaven shyned bright.'

22 Shakspeare probably remembered Euphues' exhortation to Botonio to take his exile patiently. Nature hath given to man a country no more than she hath a house, or lands, or livings. Socrates would neither call himself an Athenian, neither a Grecian; but a citizen of the world. Plato would never accompt him banished, that had the sunne, fire, ayre, water, and earth, that he had before; where he felt the winter's blast, and the summer's blaze; where the same sunne and same moone shined: whereby he noted that every place was a country to a wise man, and all parts a palace to a quiet mind.-When it was cast in Diogenes' teeth, that the Sinoponetes had banished him from Pontus; Yea, said he, I them of Diogenes.'

23 We have other allusions to the practice of strewing rushes over the floor of the presence chamber in Shakspeare. So in Cymbeline:

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Tarquin thus

Did softly press the rushes ere he waken'd

The chastity he wounded.'

See Hentzner's account of the presence chamber in the palace at Greenwich, 1598.-Itiner. p. 135.

The flowers, fair ladies; and thy steps, no more
Than a delightful measure, or a dance:
For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite
The man that mocks at it, and sets it light.
Boling. O, who can hold a fire in his hand 24,
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite,
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow,
By thinking on fantastick summer's heat?
O, no! the apprehension of the good,
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse:
Fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more,
Than when it bites, but lanceth not the sore.
Gaunt. Come, come, my son, I'll bring thee on
thy way:

Had I thy youth, and cause, I would not stay. Boling. Then, England's ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu;

My mother, and my nurse, that bears me yet!
Where'er I wander, boast of this I can,-
Though banish'd, yet a trueborn Englishman 25.
[Exeunt.

SCENE IV.

The same. A Room in the King's Castle. Enter KING RICHARD, BAGOT, and GREEN; AUMERLE following.

K. Rich. We did observe 1.-Cousin Aumerle, How far brought you high Hereford on his way?

24 There is a passage resembling this in the fifth book of Cicero's Tusculan Questions, which were translated and published by John Dolman, in 1561. There is also something which might serve for a hint in Euphues.

25 Dr. Johnson thought that the first act should end here.

1 The king here addressed Green and Bagot, who, we may suppose had been talking to him of Bolingbroke's 'courtship to the common people,' at the time of his departure. 'Yes,' says Richard, we did observe it.'

Aum. I brought high Hereford, if you call him so, But to the next high way, and there I left him. K. Rich. And, say, what store of parting tears were shed?

2

Aum. 'Faith, none by me: except the north-east wind,

Which then blew bitterly against our faces,
Awak'd the sleeping rheum; and so, by chance,
Did grace our hollow parting with a tear.

K. Rich. What said our cousin, when you parted with him?

Aum. Farewell:

And, for my heart disdained that my tongue
Should so profane the word, that taught me craft
To counterfeit oppression of such grief,
That words seem'd buried in my sorrow's grave.
Marry,would the word farewell have lengthen'd hours,
And added years to his short banishment,
He should have had a volume of farewells;
But, since it would not, he had none of me.

K. Rich. He is our cousin, cousin ; but 'tis doubt,
When time shall call him home from banishment,
Whether our kinsman come to see his friends.
Ourself, and Bushy 3, Bagot here, and Green,
Observ'd his courtship to the common people :—
How he did seem to dive into their hearts,
With humble and familiar courtesy ;

What reverence he did throw away on slaves;

2 The first folio and the quarto of 1597 read "Faith, none for The emendation was made in the folio, 1632.

me.'

3 The earlier quarto copies read Ourself and Bushy,' and no more. The folio:

'Ourself, and Bushy here, Bagot, and Greene.' In the quarto the stage direction says, 'Enter the King, with Bushie,' &c.; but in the folio, 'Enter the King, Aumerle,' &c. because it was observed that Bushy comes in afterward. On this account we have adopted a transposition made in the quarto of 1634.

Wooing poor craftsmen, with the craft of smiles,
And patient underbearing of his fortune,
As 'twere, to banish their affects with him.
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;
A brace of draymen bid-God speed him well,
And had the tribute of his supple knee*,
With-Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends;
As were our England in reversion his,
And he our subjects' next degree in hope5.
Green. Well, he is gone; and with him

go

these

thoughts.
Now for the rebels, which stand out in Ireland:-
Expedient manage must be made, my liege;
Ere further leisure yield them further means,
For their advantage, and your highness' loss.
K. Rich. We will ourself in person to this war.
And, for our coffers-with too great a court,
And liberal largess-are grown somewhat light,
We are enforc'd to farm our royal realm;
The revenue whereof shall furnish us

For our affairs in hand: If that come short,
Our substitutes at home shall have blank charters;
Whereto, when they shall know what men are rich,
They shall subscribe them for large sums of gold,
And send them after to supply our wants;
For we will make for Ireland presently.

Enter BUSHY.

Bushy, what news?

Bushy. Old John of Gaunt is grievous sick, my lord;

4 To illustrate this, it should be remembered that courtesying (the act of reverence now confined to women) was anciently practised by mén.

5.

Spes altera Romæ. - Virg.

6 Shakspeare often uses expedient for expeditious; but here its ordinary signification of fit, proper, will suit the context equally well.

7 i. e. cause.

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