Page 2895 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

You promis’d when you parted with the King
To lay aside life-harming heaviness,
And entertain a cheerful disposition.

QUEEN

To please the King I did. To please myself [5]
I cannot do it. Yet I know no cause
Why I should welcome such a guest as grief
Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest
As my sweet Richard. Yet again methinks
Some unborn sorrow ripe in fortune’s womb [10]
Is coming towards me, and my inward soul
With nothing trembles. At something it grieves
More than with parting from my lord the King.

BUSHY

Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows
Which shows like grief itself, but is not so. [15]
For sorrow’s eye, glazèd with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire to many objects,
Like perspectives which, rightly gaz’d upon,
Show nothing but confusion; ey’d awry,
Distinguish form. So your sweet majesty, [20]
Looking awry upon your lord’s departure,
Find shapes of grief more than himself to wail,
Which look’d on as it is, is naught but shadows
Of what it is not. Then, thrice-gracious Queen,
More than your lord’s departure weep not - more is not seen, [25]
Or if it be, ’tis with false sorrow’s eye,
Which for things true weeps things imaginary.

QUEEN

It may be so; but yet my inward soul
Persuades me it is otherwise. Howe’er it be
I cannot but be sad - so heavy-sad [30]
As, though on thinking on no thought I think,
Makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink.

BUSHY

’Tis nothing but conceit, my gracious lady.