Page 2936 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

BOLINGBROKE

Lords, you that here are under our arrest,
Procure your sureties for your days of answer.
Little are we beholding to your love, [160]
And little look’d for at your helping hands.

Enter Richard and York.

RICHARD

Alack, why am I sent for to a king
Before I have shook off the regal thoughts
Wherewith I reign’d? I hardly yet have learn’d
To insinuate, flatter, bow, and bend my knee. [165]
Give sorrow leave awhile to tutor me
To this submission. Yet I well remember
The favours of these men. Were they not mine?
Did they not sometime cry “All hail!” to me?
So Judas did to Christ. But He in twelve [170]
Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand, none.
God save the King! Will no man say Amen?
Am I both priest and clerk? Well then, Amen.
God save the King, although I be not he;
And yet Amen if Heaven do think him me. [175]
To do what service am I sent for hither?

Y ORK

To do that office of thine own good will
Which tired majesty did make thee offer:
The resignation of thy state and crown
To Henry Bolingbroke.

RICHARD

Give me the crown. [180]
Here, cousin - seize the crown. Here, cousin -
On this side, my hand; and on that side, thine.
Now is this golden crown like a deep well
That owes two buckets, filling one another,
The emptier ever dancing in the air, [185]
The other down, unseen, and full of water.
That bucket down and full of tears am I,
Drinking my griefs whilst you mount up on high.