On this side my hand, and on that side yours, Now is this golden crown like a deep well That owes two buckets, filling one another, The emptier ever dancing in the air,

The other down, unseen, and full of water: That bucket down and full of tears am I, Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.

Boling. I thought you had been willing to resign.

K. Rich. My crown I am; but still my griefs are mine:

You may my glories and my state depose, But not my griefs; still am I king of those. Boling. Part of your cares you give me with your crown.

K. Rich. Your cares set up do not pluck my cares down.

My care is loss of care, by old care done; Your care is gain of care, by new care

won:

The cares I give I have, though given away; They tend the crown, yet still with me they stay.

Boling. Are you contented to resign the crown?

K. Rich. Ay, no; no, ay; for I must
nothing be;

Therefore no no, for I resign to thee.
Now mark me, how I will undo myself:
I give this heavy weight from off my head
And this unwieldy scepter from my hand,
The pride of kingly sway from out my
heart;

With mine own tears I wash away my balm,
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state.
With mine own breath release all duty's
rites:

All pomp and majesty I do forswear;

My manors, rents, revenues, I forego;
My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny:
God pardon all oaths that are broke to
me!

God keep all vows unbroke that swear to thee!

Make me, that nothing have, with nothing grieved,

And thou with all pleased, that hast all achieved!

Long mayst thou live in Richard's seat to sit,

And soon lie Richard in an earthy pit!
God save King Harry, unking'd Richard

says,

And send him many years of sunshine days!

What more remains?

North. No more, but that you read These accusations and these grievous crimes Committed by your person and your followers

Against the state and profit of this land; That, by confessing them, the souls of men May deem that you are worthily deposed.

K. Rich. Must I do so? and must I ravel out

My weaved-up folly? Gentle Northumberland,

If thy offences were upon record,

Would it not shame thee in so fair a troop To read a lecture of them? If thou wouldst, There shouldst thou find one heinous ar

ticle,

Containing the deposing of a king And cracking the strong warrant of an oath,

Mark'd with a blot, damn'd in the book of heaven:

Nay, all of you that stand and look upon, Whilst that my wretchedness doth bait myself.

Though some of you with Pilate wash your hands

Showing an outward pity; yet you Pilates Have here deliver'd me to my sour cross, And water cannot wash away your sin. North. My Lord, despatch; read o'er these articles.

K. Rich. Mine eyes are full of tears, I

cannot see:

And yet salt water blinds them not so much
But they can see a sort of traitors here.
Nay, if I turn my eyes upon myself,
I find myself a traitor with the rest;
For I have given here my soul's consent
To undeck the pompous body of a king;

Made glory base and sovereignty a slave, Proud majesty a subject, state a peasant. North. My lord,

K. Rich. No lord of thine, thou haught

insulting man,

Nor no man's lord; I have no name, no title,

No, not that name was given me at the font,

But 'tis usurped: alack the heavy day,
That I have worn so many winters out,
And know not now what name to call my-
self!

O that I were a mockery king of snow,
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away in water-drops!
Good king, great king, and yet not greatly
good,

And if my word be sterling yet in England,
Let it command a mirror hither straight,
That it may show me what a face I have,
Since it is bankrupt of his majesty.
Boling. Go some of you and fetch a
looking-glass. [Exit an attendant.

North. Read o'er this paper while the
glass doth come.

K. Rich. Fiend, thou torment'st me ere I come to hell!

Boling. Urge it no more, my Lord Northumberland.

North. The commons will not then be satisfied.

K. Rich. They shall be satisfied: I'll read enough,

When I do see the very book indeed Where all my sins are writ, and that's myself.

Re-enter Attendant, with a glass. Give me the glass, and therein will I read. No deeper wrinkles yet? hath sorrow struck So many blows upon this face of mine, And made no deeper wounds? O flattering glass,

Like to my followers in prosperity,

Thou dost beguile me! Was this face the face

That every day under his household roof Did keep ten thousand men? was this the face

That, like the sun, did make beholders wink? Was this the face that faced so many follies,

And was at last out-faced by Bolingbroke?
A brittle glory shineth in this face:
As brittle as the glory is the face;

[Dashes the glass against the ground.

For there it is, crack'd in a hundred shiv.

ers.

Mark, silent king, the moral of this sport, How soon my sorrow hath destroy'd my face.

Boling. The shadow of your sorrow hath destroy'd

The shadow of your face.

K. Rich. Say that again. The shadow of my sorrow! ha! let's see: 'Tis very true, my grief lies all within; And these external manners of laments Are merely shadows to the unseen grief That swells with silence in the tortured

soul;

There lies the substance: and I thank thee, king,

For thy great bounty, that not only givest Me cause to wail, but teachest me the way How to lament the cause. I'll beg one boon,

And then be gone and trouble you no more. Shall I obtain it?

Boling. Name it, fair cousin.

K. Rich. "Fair cousin"? I am greater than a king:

For when I was a king, my flatterers Were then but subjects; being now a subject,

I have a king here to my flatterer.
Being so great, I have no need to beg.
Boling. Yet ask.

The advised head defends itself at home; For government, though high and low and lower,

Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, Congreeing in a full and natural close, Like music.

Canterbury. Therefore doth heaven di-
vide

The state of man in divers functions,
Setting endeavor in continual motion;
To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,
Obedience: for so work the honey-bees,
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts;
Where some, like magistrates, correct at
home,

Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad,

Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds,

Which pillage they with merry march bring home

To the tent-royal of their emperor;
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of
gold,

The civil citizens kneading up the honey,
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone. I this infer,
That many things, having full refer-

4. OF "DEGREE"

[From Troilus and Cressida, Act I, scene iii.]

The Grecian camp. Before
Agamemnon's tent.

Sennet. Enter AGAMEMNON, NESTOR,
ULYSSES, MENELAUS, and others.
Agam. Princes,

What grief hath set the jaundice on your cheeks?

The ample proposition that hope makes
In all designs begun on earth below
Fails in the promised largeness: checks and
disasters

Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd,
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound pine and divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of
growth.

Nor, princes, is it matter new to us

That we come short of our suppose so far That after seven years' siege yet Troy walls stand;

Sith every action that hath gone before, Whereof we have record, trial did draw Bias and thwart, not answering the aim, And that unbodied figure of the thought That gave't surmised shape. Why then, you princes,

Do you with cheeks abash'd behold our works,

And call them shames? which are indeed nought else

But the protracted trials of great Jove
To find persistive constancy in men:

The fineness of which metal is not found In fortune's love; for then the bold and coward,

The wise and fool, the artist and unread, The hard and soft, seem all affined and

kin:

But, in the wind and tempest of her frown, Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan, Puffing at all, winnows the light away; And what hath mass or matter, by itself Lies rich in virtue and unmingled.

Nest. With due observance of thy godlike seat,

Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply
Thy latest words. In the reproof of chance
Lies the true proof of men: the sea being
smooth

How many shallow bauble boats dare sail
Upon her patient breast, making their way
With those of nobler bulk!

Thou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece,

Heart of our numbers, soul and only spirit, In whom the tempers and the minds of all

Should be shut up, hear what Ulysses speaks.

Besides the applause and approbation The which, [To Agamemnon] most mighty for thy place and sway,

[To Nestor] And thou most reverend for thy stretch'd-out life

I give to both your speeches, which were such

As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece Should hold up high in brass, and such again

As venerable Nestor, hatch'd in silver, Should with a bond of air, strong as the axletree

On which heaven rides, knit all the Greekish ears

To his experienced tongue, yet let it please. both,

Thou great, and wise, to hear Ulysses speak. Agam. Speak, prince of Ithaca; and be't

of less expect

That matter needless, of importless burden, Divide thy lips, than we are confident, When rank Thersites opes his mastie jaws, We shall hear music, wit, and oracle.

Ulyss. Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,

And the great Hector's sword had lack'd a master,

But for these instances.

The specialty of rule hath been neglected: And, look, how many Grecian tents do stand Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.

When that the general is not like the hive To whom the foragers shall all repair, What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,

The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask. The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center

Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order; And therefore is the glorious planet Sol In noble eminence enthroned and sphered Amidst the other; whose medicinable eye Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil, And posts, like the commandment of a king, Sans check to good and bad: but when the planets

In evil mixture to disorder wander, What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!

What raging of the sea! shaking of earth! Commotion in the winds! frights, changes,

horrors,

Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture! O, when degree
is shaked,

Which is the ladder to all high designs, Then enterprise is sick! How could communities,

Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogenitive and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, laurels,

But by degree, stand in authentic place? Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets

In mere oppugnaney: the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores

And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father
dead:

Force should be right; or rather, right and

wrong,

Between whose endless jar justice resides,

[From Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I, 1592] 1. Maintaining Things That Are Established

He that goeth about to persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favorable hearers; because they know the manifold defects whereunto every kind of regiment is subject, but the secret lets and difficulties, which in public proceedings are innumerable and inevitable, they have not ordinarily the judgment to consider. And because such as openly reprove supposed disorders of state are taken for principal friends to the common benefit of all, and for men that carry singular freedom of mind; under this fair and plausible color whatsoever they utter passeth for good and current. That which wanteth in the weight of their speech, is supplied by the aptness of men's minds to accept and believe it. Whereas on the other side, if we maintain things that are established, we have not only to strive with a number of heavy prejudices deeply rooted in the hearts of men, who think that herein we serve the time, and speak in favor of the present

state, because thereby we either hold or seek preferment; but also to bear such exceptions as minds so averted beforehand usually take against that which they are loth should be poured into them.

Albeit therefore much of that we are to speak in this present cause may seem to a number perhaps tedious, perhaps obscure, dark, and intricate; (for many talk of the truth, which never sounded the depth from whence it springeth; and therefore when they are led thereunto they are soon weary, as men drawn from those beaten paths wherewith they have been inured;) yet this may not so far prevail as to cut off that which the matter itself requireth, howsoever the nice humor of some be therewith pleased or no. They unto whom we shall seem tedious are in no wise injured by us, because it is in their own hands to spare that labor which they are not willing to endure. And if any complain of obscurity, they must consider, that in these matters it cometh no otherwise to pass than in sundry the works both of art and also of nature, where that which hath greatest force in the very things we see is notwithstanding itself oftentimes not seen. The stateliness of houses, the goodliness of trees, when we behold them delighteth the eye; but that foundation which beareth up the one, that root which ministereth unto the nourishment and life, is in the bosom of the earth concealed; and if there be at any time occasion to search into it, such labor is then more necessary than pleasant, both to them which undertake it and for the lookers-on. In like manner, the use and benefit of good laws all that live under them may enjoy with delight and comfort, albeit the grounds and first original causes from whence they have sprung be unknown, as to the greatest part of men they are. But when they who withdraw their obedience pretend that the laws which they should obey are corrupt and vicious; for better examination of their quality, it behoveth the very foundation and root, the highest well-spring and fountain of them to be discovered. Which because we are not oftentimes accustomed to do, when we do it the pains we take are more needful a great deal than acceptable, and the matters which we handle seem by reason of newness (till the mind grow better acquainted with them) dark, intricate, and unfamiliar. For as much help whereof as may be in this