The Illustrated Works of Shakespeare/Illustrated Works of Shakespeare, The (1990)(Animated Pixels)[!][CDTV-PC].iso/shakes/text/06/03_04

Text File | 1991-04-10 | 5KB | 145 lines

Langley. The Duke of York's Garden.
 Enter the QUEEN and two LADIES.

Queen    What sport shall we devise here in this garden,
    To drive away the heavy thought of care?

1st Lady    Madam, we'll play at bowls.

Queen    'Twill make me think the world is full of rubs,
    And that my fortune runs against the bias.

1st Lady    Madam, we'll dance.

Queen    My legs can keep no measure in delight
    When my poor heart no measure keeps in grief:
    Therefore no dancing, girl: - some other sport.

1st Lady    Madam, we'll tell tales.

Queen    Of sorrow or of joy?

1st Lady                            Of either, madam.

Queen    Of neither, girl;
    For if of joy, being altogether wanting,
    It doth remember me the more of sorrow;
    Or if of grief, being altogether had,
    It adds more sorrow to my want of joy:
    For what I have I need not to repeat,
    And what I want it boots not to complain.

1st Lady    Madam, I'll sing.

Queen                        'Tis well that thou hast cause,
    But thou shouldst please me better wouldst thou weep.

1st Lady    I could weep, madam, would it do you good.

Queen    And I could sing, would weeping do me good,
    And never borrow any tear of thee.

                    Enter a GARDENER and his two MEN.

    But stay, here come the gardeners.
    Let's step into the shadow of these trees.
    My wretchedness unto a row of pins
    They'll talk of state, for everyone doth so
    Against a change: woe is forerun with woe.
                                         [QUEEN and LADIES retire.

Gardener    Go, bind thou up young dangling apricots,
    Which, like unruly children, make their sire
    Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight;
    Give some supportance to the bending twigs.
    Go thou, and, like an executioner,
    Cut off the heads of too fast growing sprays
    That look too lofty in our commonwealth:
    All must be even in our government.
    You thus employed, I will go root away
    The noisome weeds which without profit suck
    The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers.

1st Man    Why should we, in the compass of a pale,
    Keep law and form and due proportion,
    Showing, as in a model, our firm estate,
    When our sea-walld garden, the whole land,
    Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up,
    Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined,
    Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs
    Swarming with caterpillars?

Gardener                                Hold thy peace.
    He that hath suffered this disordered spring
    Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf.
    The weeds which his broad-spreading leaves did shelter,
    That seemed in eating him to hold him up,
    Are plucked up root and all by Bolingbroke;
    I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green.

1st Man    What, are they dead?

Gardener                        They are; and Bolingbroke
    Hath seized the wasteful king. O, what pity is it
    That he had not so trimmed and dressed his land
    As we this garden! We at time of year
    Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees,
    Lest, being overproud in sap and blood,
    With too much riches it confound itself:
    Had he done so to great and growing men,
    They might have lived to bear, and he to taste,
    Their fruits of duty. Superfluous branches
    We lop away, that bearing boughs may live:
    Had he done so, himself had borne the crown,
    Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.

1st Man    What, think you then the king shall be deposed?

Gardener    Depressed he is already, and deposed
    'Tis doubt he will be. Letters came last night
    To a dear friend of the good Duke of York's
    That tell black tidings.

Queen    O, I am pressed to death through want of speaking!
    [Advancing.]
    Thou, old Adam's likeness set to dress this garden,
    How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news?
    What Eve, what serpent, hath suggested thee
    To make a second fall of cursd man?
    Why dost thou say King Richard is deposed?
    Dar'st thou, thou little better thing than earth,
    Divine his downfall? Say, where, when, and how
    Cam'st thou by this ill tidings? Speak, thou wretch.

Gardener    Pardon me, madam; little joy have I
    To breathe this news, yet what I say is true.
    King Richard he is in the mighty hold
    Of Bolingbroke. Their fortunes both are weighed:
    In your lord's scale is nothing but himself,
    And some few vanities that make him light;
    But in the balance of great Bolingbroke,
    Besides himself, are all the English peers,
    And with that odds he weighs King Richard down.
    Post you to London and you'll find it so;
    I speak no more than everyone doth know.

Queen    Nimble mischance, that art so light of foot,
    Doth not thy embassage belong to me,
    And am I last that knows it? O, thou think'st
    To serve me last that I may longest keep
    Thy sorrow in my breast. Come, ladies, go
    To meet at London London's king in woe.
    What, was I born to this, that my sad look
    Should grace the triumph of great Bolingbroke?
    Gardener, for telling me these news of woe,
    Pray God the plants thou graft'st may never grow.
                                         [Exeunt QUEEN and LADIES.

Gardener    Poor queen, so that thy state might be no worse,
    I would my skill were subject to thy curse.
    Here did she fall a tear; here in this place
    I'll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace:
    Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen
    In the remembrance of a weeping queen.
                                                    [Exeunt.