Page 2887 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

RICHARD

Should dying men flatter with those that live?

GAUNT

No, no. Men living flatter those that die.

RICHARD

Thou now a-dying sayst thou flatterest me. [90]

GAUNT

O, no. Thou diest, though I the sicker be.

RICHARD

I am in health. I breathe, and see thee ill.

GAUNT

Now he that made me knows I see thee ill;
Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill.
Thy deathbed is no lesser than thy land, [95]
Wherein thou liest in reputation sick,
And thou, too careless patient as thou art,
Committ’st thy anointed body to the cure
Of those physicians that first wounded thee.
A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown, [100]
Whose compass is no bigger than thy head,
And yet, encagèd in so small a verge,
The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.
O, had thy grandsire with a prophet’s eye
Seen how his son’s son should destroy his sons, [105]
From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame,
Deposing thee before thou wert possessed,
Which art possess’d now to depose thyself.
Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world
It were a shame to let this land by lease; [110]
But for thy world enjoying but this land,
Is it not more than shame to shame it so?
Landlord of England art thou now, not king.
Thy state of law is bondslave to the law,
And thou -