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KING RICHARD.

What comfort, man? How is't with aged Gaunt?

GAUNT.

O, how that name befits my composition!

Old Gaunt, indeed; and gaunt in being old.

Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast;

And who abstains from meat that is not gaunt?

For sleeping England long time have I watch'd;

Watching breeds leanness, leanness is an gaunt.

The pleasure that some fathers feed upon

Is my strict fast-I mean my children's looks;

And therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt.

Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,

Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones.

KING RICHARD.

Can sick men play so nicely with their names?

GAUNT.

No, misery makes sport to mock itself:

Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me,

I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee.

KING RICHARD.

Should dying men flatter with those that live?

GAUNT.

No, no; men living flatter those that die.

KING RICHARD.

Thou, now a-dying, sayest thou flatterest me.

GAUNT.

O, no! thou diest, though I the sicker be.

KING 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 death-bed is no lesser than thy land

Wherein thou liest in reputation sick;

And thou, too careless patient as thou art,

Commit'st thy anointed body to the cure

Of those physicians that first wounded thee:

A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,

Whose compass is no bigger than thy head;

And yet, incaged 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,

From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame,

Deposing thee before thou wert possess'd,

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;

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-

KING RICHARD.

A lunatic lean-witted fool,

Presuming on an ague's privilege,

Darest with thy frozen admonition

Make pale our cheek, chasing the royal blood

With fury from his native residence.

Now by my seat's right royal majesty,

Wert thou not brother to great Edward's son,

This tongue that runs so roundly in thy head

Should run thy head from thy unreverent shoulders.

GAUNT.

O, Spare me not, my brother Edward's son,

For that I was his father Edward's son;

That blood already, like the pelican,

Hast thou tapp'd out, and drunkenly carous'd.

My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul-

Whom fair befall in heaven 'mongst happy souls!-

May be a precedent and witness good

That thou respect'st not spilling Edward's blood.

Join with the present sickness that I have;

And thy unkindness be like crooked age,

To crop at once a too long withered flower.

Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!

These words hereafter thy tormentors be!

Convey me to my bed, then to my grave.

Love they to live that love and honour have.

Exit, borne out by his attendants

KING RICHARD.

And let them die that age and sullens have;

For both hast thou, and both become the grave.

YORK.

I do beseech your Majesty impute his words

To wayward sickliness and age in him.

He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear

As Harry Duke of Hereford, were he here.

KING RICHARD.

Right, you say true: as Hereford's love, so his;

As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.

Enter NORTHUMBERLAND

NORTHUMBERLAND.

My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your Majesty.

KING RICHARD.

What says he?

NORTHUMBERLAND.

Nay, nothing; all is said.

His tongue is now a stringless instrument;

Words, life, and all, old Lancaster hath spent.

YORK.

Be York the next that must be bankrupt so!

Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.

KING RICHARD.

The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he;

His time is spent, our pilgrimage must be.

So much for that. Now for our Irish