QUEEN
What sport shall we devise here in this garden
To drive away the heavy thought of care?
LADY
Madam, we’ll play at bowls.
QUEEN
’Twill make me think the world is full of rubs
And that my fortune runs against the bias.
LADY
Madam, we’ll dance.
QUEEN
My legs can keep no measure in delight
When my poor heart no measure keeps in grief.
Therefore no dancing, girl; some other sport.
LADY
Madam, we’ll tell tales.
QUEEN
Of sorrow or of joy?
LADY
Of either, madam.
QUEEN
Of neither, girl.
For if of joy, being altogether wanting,
It remember me the more of sorrow;
Or if of grief, being altogether had,
It adds more sorrow to my want of joy.
For what I have I need not to repeat,
And what I want it boots not to complain.
LADY
Madam, I’ll sing.
QUEEN
well that cause;
But please me better weep.
LADY
I could weep, madam, would it do you good.
QUEEN
And I could sing, would weeping do me good,
And never borrow any tear of .
But stay, here come the gardeners.
Let’s step into the shadow of these trees.
My wretchedness unto a row of pins,
They will talk of state, for everyone so
Against a change; woe is forerun with woe.
GARDENER
Go, bind up young dangling apricocks,
Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight.
Give some supportance to the bending twigs.
Go , and like an executioner
Cut off the heads of too fast-growing sprays
That look too lofty in our commonwealth.
All must be even in our government.
You thus employed, I will go root away
The noisome weeds which without profit suck
The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.
SERVANT
Why should we in the compass of a pale
Keep law and form and due proportion,
Showing, as in a model, our firm estate,
When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up,
Her fruit trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined,
Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars?
GARDENER
Hold peace.
He that suffered this disordered spring
now himself met with the fall of leaf.
The weeds which his broad-spreading leaves did shelter,
That seemed in eating him to hold him up,
Are plucked up, root and all, by Bolingbroke—
I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green.
SERVANT
What, are they dead?
GARDENER
They are. And Bolingbroke
seized the wasteful King. O, what pity is it
That he had not so trimmed and dressed his land
As we this garden! We at time of year
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees,
Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood,
With too much riches it confound itself.
Had he done so to great and growing men,
They might have lived to bear and he to taste
Their fruits of duty. Superfluous branches
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live.
Had he done so, himself had home the crown,
Which waste of idle hours quite thrown down.
SERVANT
What, think you the King shall be deposed?
GARDENER
Depressed he is already, and deposed
doubt he will be. Letters came last night
To a dear friend of the good Duke of York’s
That tell black tidings.
QUEEN
O, I am pressed to death through want of speaking!
QUEEN
, old Adam’s likeness, set to dress this garden,
How dares harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news?
What Eve, what serpent, suggested
To make a second fall of cursed man?
Why say King Richard is deposed?
Dar’st , little better thing than earth,
Divine his downfall? Say, where, when, and how,
Cam’st by this ill tidings? Speak, wretch!
GARDENER
Pardon me, madam. Little joy have I
To breathe this news; yet what I say is true.
King Richard, he is in the mighty hold
Of Bolingbroke. Their fortunes both are weighed.
In your lord’s scale is nothing but himself,
And some few vanities that make him light;
But in the balance of great Bolingbroke,
Besides himself, are all the English peers,
And with that odds he weighs King Richard down.
Post you to London, and you will find it so.
I speak no more than everyone know.
QUEEN
Nimble mischance, that art so light of foot,
not embassage belong to me,
And am I last that knows it? O, thinkest
To serve me last that I may longest keep
sorrow in my breast. Come, ladies, go
To meet at London London’s king in woe.
What, was I born to this, that my sad look
Should grace the triumph of great Bolingbroke?
Gard’ner, for telling me these news of woe,
Pray God the plants graft’st may never grow!
GARDENER
Poor Queen, so that state might be no worse,
I would my skill were subject to curse.
Here did she fall a tear. Here in this place
I’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace.
Rue even for ruth here shortly shall be seen
In the remembrance of a weeping queen.