Richard II
ACT III SCENE I | Bristol. Before the castle.. | |
[ Enter HENRY BOLINGBROKE, DUKE OF YORK, NORTHUMBERLAND, LORD ROSS, HENRY PERCY, LORD WILLOUGHBY, with BUSHY and GREEN, prisoners ] | ||
HENRY BOLINGBROKE | Bring forth these men. | |
Bushy and Green, I will not vex your souls– | ||
Since presently your souls must part your bodies– | ||
With too much urging your pernicious lives, | ||
For ’twere no charity; yet, to wash your blood | 5 | |
From off my hands, here in the view of men | ||
I will unfold some causes of your deaths. | ||
You have misled a prince, a royal king, | ||
A happy gentleman in blood and lineaments, | ||
By you unhappied and disfigured clean: | 10 | |
You have in manner with your sinful hours | ||
Made a divorce betwixt his queen and him, | ||
Broke the possession of a royal bed | ||
And stain’d the beauty of a fair queen’s cheeks | ||
With tears drawn from her eyes by your foul wrongs. | 15 | |
Myself, a prince by fortune of my birth, | ||
Near to the king in blood, and near in love | ||
Till you did make him misinterpret me, | ||
Have stoop’d my neck under your injuries, | ||
And sigh’d my English breath in foreign clouds, | 20 | |
Eating the bitter bread of banishment; | ||
Whilst you have fed upon my signories, | ||
Dispark’d my parks and fell’d my forest woods, | ||
From my own windows torn my household coat, | ||
Razed out my imprese, leaving me no sign, | 25 | |
Save men’s opinions and my living blood, | ||
To show the world I am a gentleman. | ||
This and much more, much more than twice all this, | ||
Condemns you to the death. See them deliver’d over | ||
To execution and the hand of death. | 30 | |
BUSHY | More welcome is the stroke of death to me | |
Than Bolingbroke to England. Lords, farewell. | ||
GREEN | My comfort is that heaven will take our souls | |
And plague injustice with the pains of hell. | ||
HENRY BOLINGBROKE | My Lord Northumberland, see them dispatch’d. | 35 |
[ Exeunt NORTHUMBERLAND and others, with the prisoners ] | ||
Uncle, you say the queen is at your house; | ||
For God’s sake, fairly let her be entreated: | ||
Tell her I send to her my kind commends; | ||
Take special care my greetings be deliver’d. | ||
DUKE OF YORK | A gentleman of mine I have dispatch’d | 40 |
With letters of your love to her at large. | ||
HENRY BOLINGBROKE | Thank, gentle uncle. Come, lords, away. | |
To fight with Glendower and his complices: | ||
Awhile to work, and after holiday. | ||
[Exeunt] |
Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2