The Complete Works of William Shakespeare · William Shakespeare
SCENE VI. London. The Tower
Enter King Henry and Richard, with the Lieutenant on the walls. RICHARD. Good day, my lord. What, at your book so hard? KING HENRY. Ay, my good lord—my lord, I should say rather. ’Tis sin to flatter; “good” was little better: “Good Gloucester” and “good devil” were alike, And both preposterous; therefore, not “good lord”. RICHARD. Sirrah, leave us to ourselves; we must confer. [_Exit Lieutenant._] KING HENRY. So flies the reckless shepherd from the wolf; So first the harmless sheep doth yield his fleece, And next his throat unto the butcher’s knife. What scene of death hath Roscius now to act? RICHARD. Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; The thief doth fear each bush an officer. KING HENRY. The bird that hath been limed in a bush With trembling wings misdoubteth every bush; And I, the hapless male to one sweet bird, Have now the fatal object in my eye Where my poor young was limed, was caught, and killed. RICHARD. Why, what a peevish fool was that of Crete That taught his son the office of a fowl! And yet, for all his wings, the fool was drowned. KING HENRY. I, Daedalus; my poor boy, Icarus; Thy father, Minos, that denied our course; The sun that seared the wings of my sweet boy, Thy brother Edward; and thyself, the sea Whose envious gulf did swallow up his life. Ah, kill me with thy weapon, not with words! My breast can better brook thy dagger’s point Than can my ears that tragic history. But wherefore dost thou come? Is ’t for my life?
RICHARD. Think’st thou I am an executioner? KING HENRY. A persecutor I am sure thou art. If murdering innocents be executing, Why, then thou art an executioner. RICHARD. Thy son I killed for his presumption. KING HENRY. Hadst thou been killed when first thou didst presume, Thou hadst not lived to kill a son of mine. And thus I prophesy: that many a thousand Which now mistrust no parcel of my fear, And many an old man’s sigh, and many a widow’s, And many an orphan’s water-standing eye, Men for their sons’, wives for their husbands’, Orphans for their parents’ timeless death, Shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born. The owl shrieked at thy birth, an evil sign; The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time; Dogs howled, and hideous tempest shook down trees; The raven rooked her on the chimney’s top, And chatt’ring pies in dismal discord sung; Thy mother felt more than a mother’s pain, And yet brought forth less than a mother’s hope, To wit, an indigested and deformed lump, Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree. Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born, To signify thou cam’st to bite the world; And, if the rest be true which I have heard, Thou cam’st— RICHARD. I’ll hear no more. Die, prophet, in thy speech.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.