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  • Title: Richard II (Quarto 1, 1597)
  • Editor: Catherine Lisak
  • ISBN: 978-1-55058-436-3

    Copyright Internet Shakespeare Editions. This text may be freely used for educational, non-proift purposes; for all other uses contact the Coordinating Editor.
    Author: William Shakespeare
    Editor: Catherine Lisak
    Peer Reviewed

    Richard II (Quarto 1, 1597)

    King Richard the second.
    Looke what thy soule holds deare, imagine it
    557.20To ly that way thou goest, not whence thou comst:
    Suppose the singing birds musitions,
    The grasse whereon thou treadst, the presence strowd,
    The flowers, faire Ladies, and thy steps, no more
    Then a delightfull measure or a dance,
    557.25For gnarling sorrow hath lesse power to bite,
    The man that mocks at it, and sets it light.
    Bul. Oh who can hold a fier in his hand,
    By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
    560Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite,
    By bare imagination of a feast?
    Or wallow naked in December snow,
    By thinking on fantasticke sommers heate?
    Oh no, the apprehension of the good,
    565Giues but the greater feeling to the worse:
    Fell sorrowes tooth doth neuer ranckle more,
    Then when he bites, but launceth not the soare.
    Gaun. Come come my sonne Ile bring thee on thy way,
    Had I thy youth and cause, I would not stay.
    570Bul. Then Englands ground farewell, sweet soile adiew,
    My mother and my nurse that beares me yet,
    Where eare I wander boast of this I can,
    Though banisht, yet a true borne English man. Exeunt.

    575 Enter the King with Bushie, &c at one dore, and the
    Lord Aumarle at another.

    King We did obserue. Coosen Aumarle,
    How far brought you high Hereford on his way?
    Aum. I brought high Herford, if you call him so,
    But to the next high way, and there I left him.
    580King And say, what store of parting teares were shed?
    Aum. Faith none for me, except the Northeast winde,
    Which then blew bitterly against our faces,
    Awakt the sleeping rhewme, and so by chance
    Did grace our hollow parting with a teare.
    King
    C 2