King Richard II
Act III, Scene 1
Bristol. Before the castle.
- Enter Bullingbrook, Duke of Herford, York, Northumberland,
- Ross, Percy, Willoughby, with Bushy and Green prisoners.
Bullingbrook
1 - 30- Bring forth these men.
- Bushy and Green, I will not vex your souls—
- Since presently your souls must part your bodies—
- With too much urging your pernicious lives,
- For ’twere no charity; yet, to wash your blood
- From off my hands, here in the view of men
- I will unfold some causes of your deaths:
- You have misled a prince, a royal king,
- A happy gentleman in blood and lineaments,
- By you unhappied and disfigured clean;
- You have in manner with your sinful hours
- Made a divorce betwixt his queen and him,
- Broke the possession of a royal bed,
- And stain’d the beauty of a fair queen’s cheeks
- With tears drawn from her eyes by your foul wrongs;
- Myself, a prince by fortune of my birth,
- Near to the King in blood, and near in love
- Till you did make him misinterpret me,
- Have stoop’d my neck under your injuries,
- And sigh’d my English breath in foreign clouds,
- Eating the bitter bread of banishment,
- Whilst you have fed upon my signories,
- Dispark’d my parks and fell’d my forest woods,
- From my own windows torn my household coat,
- Ras’d out my imprese, leaving me no sign,
- Save men’s opinions and my living blood,
- To show the world I am a gentleman.
- This and much more, much more than twice all this,
- Condemns you to the death. See them delivered over
- To execution and the hand of death.
Earl of Northumberland
R. Clamp, Edward Harding, Sylvester Harding, 1792
Bushy
31 - 32- More welcome is the stroke of death to me
- Than Bullingbrook to England. Lords, farewell!
Green
33 - 34- My comfort is, that heaven will take our souls,
- And plague injustice with the pains of hell.
Bullingbrook
35 - 39- My Lord Northumberland, see them dispatch’d.
- Exeunt Northumberland and others with the prisoners.
- Uncle, you say the Queen is at your house,
- For God’s sake fairly let her be entreated.
- Tell her I send to her my kind commends;
- Take special care my greetings be delivered.
York
40 - 41- A gentleman of mine I have dispatch’d
- With letters of your love to her at large.
Bullingbrook
42 - 44- Thanks, gentle uncle. Come, lords, away,
- To fight with Glendower and his complices.
- A while to work, and after holiday.
- Exeunt.
Willoughby
From costume sketches for Henry Irving’s production of King Richard II
Edwin Austin Abbey, 1898