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JOHN OF GAUNT:
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Now He that made me knows I see thee ill;
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Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill.
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Thy death-bed is no lesser than thy land
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Wherein thou liest in reputation sick;
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And thou, too careless patient as thou art,
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Commit'st thy anointed body to the cure
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Of those physicians that first wounded thee:
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A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,
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Whose compass is no bigger than thy head;
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And yet, incaged in so small a verge,
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The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.
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O, had thy grandsire with a prophet's eye
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Seen how his son's son should destroy his sons,
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From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame,
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Deposing thee before thou wert possess'd,
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Which art possess'd now to depose thyself.
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Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world,
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It were a shame to let this land by lease;
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But for thy world enjoying but this land,
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Is it not more than shame to shame it so?
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Landlord of England art thou now, not king:
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Thy state of law is bondslave to the law; And thou--
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KING RICHARD II:
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A lunatic lean-witted fool,
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Presuming on an ague's privilege,
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Darest with thy frozen admonition
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Make pale our cheek, chasing the royal blood
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With fury from his native residence.
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Now, by my seat's right royal majesty,
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Wert thou not brother to great Edward's son,
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This tongue that runs so roundly in thy head
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Should run thy head from thy unreverent shoulders.
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JOHN OF GAUNT:
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O, spare me not, my brother Edward's son,
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For that I was his father Edward's son;
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That blood already, like the pelican,
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Hast thou tapp'd out and drunkenly caroused:
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My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul,
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Whom fair befal in heaven 'mongst happy souls!
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May be a precedent and witness good
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That thou respect'st not spilling Edward's blood:
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Join with the present sickness that I have;
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And thy unkindness be like crooked age,
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To crop at once a too long wither'd flower.
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Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!
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These words hereafter thy tormentors be!
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Convey me to my bed, then to my grave:
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Love they to live that love and honour have.
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KING RICHARD II:
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And let them die that age and sullens have;
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For both hast thou, and both become the grave.
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DUKE OF YORK:
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I do beseech your majesty, impute his words
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To wayward sickliness and age in him:
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He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear
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As Harry Duke of Hereford, were he here.
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KING RICHARD II:
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Right, you say true: as Hereford's love, so his;
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As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.
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NORTHUMBERLAND:
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My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your majesty.
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KING RICHARD II:
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What says he?
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NORTHUMBERLAND:
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Nay, nothing; all is said
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His tongue is now a stringless instrument;
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Words, life and all, old Lancaster hath spent.
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DUKE OF YORK:
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Be York the next that must be bankrupt so!
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Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.
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KING RICHARD II:
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The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he;
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His time is spent, our pilgrimage must be.
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So much for that. Now for our Irish wars:
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We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns,
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Which live like venom where no venom else
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But only they have privilege to live.
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And for these great affairs do ask some charge,
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Towards our assistance we do seize to us
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The plate, corn, revenues and moveables,
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Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possess'd.
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DUKE OF YORK:
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How long shall I be patient? ah, how long
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Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?
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Not Gloucester's death, nor Hereford's banishment
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Not Gaunt's rebukes, nor England's private wrongs,
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Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke
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About his marriage, nor my own disgrace,
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