Shakespeare Histories Comedies Passages

A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege,

And all unlooked for from your highness’ mouth.

A dearer merit, not so deep a maim

As to be cast forth in the common air,

Have I deserved at your highness’ hands.

The language I have learned these forty years,

My native English, now I must forgo,

And now my tongue’s use is to me no more

Than an unstringed viol or a harp,

Or like a cunning instrument cased up,

Or, being open, put into his hands

That knows no touch to tune the harmony.

Within my mouth you have enjailed my tongue,

Doubly portcullised with my teeth and lips,

And dull, unfeeling, barren Ignorance

Is made my jailer to attend on me.

I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,

Too far in years to be a pupil now.

What is thy sentence, then, but speechless death

Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?

Richard II, 1.3 - Mowbray’s Exile

Oh, who can hold a fire in his hand

By thinking on the frosty Causcasus?

Or cloy the hunger edge of appetite

By bare imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December snow

By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?

Oh, no, the apprehension of the good

Gives but the greater feeling to the worse;

Fell Sorrow’s tooth doth never rankle more

Than when it bites but lanceth not the sore.

Richard II, 1.3 - Bolingbroke’s Exile

Not all the water in the rough rude sea

Can wash the balm from an anointed king.

The breath of worldly men cannot depose

The deputy elected by the Lord.

For every man that Bolingbroke hath pressed

To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown.

Heaven for His Richard hath in heavenly pay

A glorious angel. Then, if angels fight,

Weak men must fall, for heaven still guards the right

Richard II, 3.2 - Richard defending his kingship and asserting divine right.

Methinks I am a prophet new inspired
And thus expiring do foretell of him:
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder;
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessèd plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Feared by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renownèd for their deeds as far from home
For Christian service and true chivalry
As is the sepulcher in stubborn Jewry
Of the world’s ransom, blessèd Mary’s son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out—I die pronouncing it—
Like to a tenement or pelting farm.
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of wat’ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds.
That England that was wont to conquer others
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!

Richard II, 2.1 - John Gaunt talks about England