Page 2943 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

ACT V IT

Scene I IT

Enter the Queen with her attendants.

QUEEN

This way the King will come. This is the way
To Julius Caesar’s ill-erected Tower,
To whose flint bosom my condemnèd lord
Is doomed a prisoner by proud Bolingbroke.
Here let us rest, if this rebellious earth [5]
Have any resting for her true King’s Queen.

Enter Richard and guard.
But soft, but see, or rather do not see,
My fair rose wither. Yet look up, behold,
That you in pity may dissolve to dew
And wash him fresh again with true-love tears. [10]
Ah, thou the model where old Troy did stand!
Thou map of honour, thou King Richard’s tomb,
And not King Richard! Thou most beauteous inn,
Why should hard-favour’d grief be lodg’d in thee
When triumph is become an alehouse guest? [15]

RICHARD

Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so,
To make my end too sudden. Learn, good soul,
To think our former state a happy dream,
From which awak’d the truth of what we are
Shows us but this. I am sworn brother, sweet, [20]
To grim Necessity, and he and I
Will keep a league till death. Hie thee to France,
And cloister thee in some religious house.
Our holy lives must win a new world’s crown
Which our profane hours here have thrown down. [25]