Original Text |
Translated Text |
| Source: Folger Shakespeare Library |
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Scene 4 Enter the Queen with her Ladies-in-waiting. QUEEN
What sport shall we devise here in this garden
To drive away the heavy thought of care? LADY Madam, we’ll play at bowls. QUEEN’Twill make me think the world is full of rubs
And that my fortune runs against the bias. 5 LADY Madam, we’ll dance. QUEEN
My legs can keep no measure in delight
When my poor heart no measure keeps in grief.
Therefore no dancing, girl. Some other sport. LADY Madam, we’ll tell tales. 10 QUEEN
Of sorrow or of joy? LADY Of either, madam. QUEEN Of neither, girl,
For if of joy, being altogether wanting,
It doth remember me the more of sorrow; 15
Or if of grief, being altogether had,
It adds more sorrow to my want of joy.
For what I have I need not to repeat,
And what I want it boots not to complain. |
In her private garden, the queen chills out with her two ladies in waiting. They suggest lawn bowling and dancing and storytelling. She rejects them all. |
LADY
Madam, I’ll sing. 20 QUEEN ’Tis well that thou hast cause,
But thou shouldst please me better wouldst thou
weep. LADY
I could weep, madam, would it do you good. QUEEN
And I could sing, would weeping do me good, 25
And never borrow any tear of thee. Enter a Gardener and two Servingmen. But stay, here come the gardeners.
Let’s step into the shadow of these trees.
My wretchedness unto a row of pins,
They will talk of state, for everyone doth so 30
Against a change. Woe is forerun with woe. Queen and Ladies step aside. | One lady offers to sing, and the queen answers that she'd rather hear
her cry. The second lady offers to weep, and the queen says she'd sing
if hearing her weep would help. |
GARDENER, to one Servingman
Go, bind thou up young dangling apricokes
Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight.
Give some supportance to the bending twigs.— 35
Go thou, and like an executioner
Cut off the heads of too-fast-growing sprays
That look too lofty in our commonwealth.
All must be even in our government.
You thus employed, I will go root away 40
The noisome weeds which without profit suck
The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers. | A Gardener comes in with two men and starts ordering his workers around.
He tells one of them to bind the apricot trees to give them more
support. He tells the second one to prune some plants that are growing
too fast. |
MAN
Why should we, in the compass of a pale,
Keep law and form and due proportion,
Showing as in a model our firm estate, 45
When our sea-wallèd garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up,
Her fruit trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined,
Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars? 50 GARDENER Hold thy peace.
He that hath suffered this disordered spring
Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf.
The weeds which his broad-spreading leaves did
shelter, 55
That seemed in eating him to hold him up,
Are plucked up, root and all, by Bolingbroke—
I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green. MAN
What, are they dead? | Then the landscapers start to talk politics. The first man asks why they should bother keeping the garden in such good order when the kingdom – a metaphorical garden – is in such a shambles. The Gardener says Bolingbroke has pulled up the "weeds" that were keeping the king weak. (He's talking, of course, about how Bolingbroke ordered the deaths of Bushy and Green, Richard's lousy advisors.) |
GARDENER They are. And Bolingbroke 60
Hath seized the wasteful king. O, what pity is it
That he had not so trimmed and dressed his land
As we this garden! We at time of year
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees,
Lest, being overproud in sap and blood, 65
With too much riches it confound itself.
Had he done so to great and growing men,
They might have lived to bear and he to taste
Their fruits of duty. Superfluous branches
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live. 70
Had he done so, himself had borne the crown,
Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down. MAN
What, think you the King shall be deposed? GARDENER
Depressed he is already, and deposed
’Tis doubt he will be. Letters came last night 75
To a dear friend of the good Duke of York’s
That tell black tidings. | The second man is surprised to hear that Bushy and Green are dead. The Gardener explains that Bolingbroke has also taken the king prisoner. The Gardener says he wishes King Richard had been a better "gardener" of the kingdom. If he had "grown" loyal men and enjoyed the "fruits" of their duty, he would have kept the crown. The first man is surprised, and asks whether the king will be deposed (stripped of his crown). The Gardener answers yep, Richard's going to be tossed off the throne all right. |
QUEEN
O, I am pressed to death through want of speaking! Stepping forward. Thou old Adam’s likeness, set to dress this garden,
How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this 80
unpleasing news?
What Eve, what serpent, hath suggested thee
To make a second fall of cursèd man?
Why dost thou say King Richard is deposed?
Dar’st thou, thou little better thing than earth, 85
Divine his downfall? Say where, when, and how
Cam’st thou by this ill tidings? Speak, thou wretch! | Meanwhile, the queen has been eavesdropping on her gardeners, and she's not happy about what she hears. She jumps out of the bushes and yells at the Gardener, accusing him of being just like "Old Adam." (According to the Bible, Adam was the first man. He fell from God's grace and got kicked out of the Garden of Eden along with his wife, Eve. In other words, the queen thinks Richard's fall is worse than the fall of mankind, and she's blaming the Gardener for what's happened.) |
GARDENER
Pardon me, madam. Little joy have I
To breathe this news, yet what I say is true.
King Richard, he is in the mighty hold 90
Of Bolingbroke. Their fortunes both are weighed.
In your lord’s scale is nothing but himself
And some few vanities that make him light,
But in the balance of great Bolingbroke,
Besides himself, are all the English peers, 95
And with that odds he weighs King Richard down.
Post you to London and you will find it so.
I speak no more than everyone doth know. QUEEN
Nimble mischance, that art so light of foot,
Doth not thy embassage belong to me, 100
And am I last that knows it? O, thou thinkest
To serve me last that I may longest keep
Thy sorrow in my breast. Come, ladies, go
To meet at London London’s king in woe.
What, was I born to this, that my sad look 105
Should grace the triumph of great Bolingbroke?—
Gard’ner, for telling me these news of woe,
Pray God the plants thou graft’st may never grow. She exits with Ladies. | When she asks him where he heard this news, the Gardener apologizes but insists that what he said was true and is actually pretty common knowledge: Bolingbroke has all the English peers on his side. The queen is ticked off that she's the last person to find out about this. She curses the Gardener's plants, hoping they won't grow. (Um, okay.) |
GARDENER
Poor queen, so that thy state might be no worse,
I would my skill were subject to thy curse. 110
Here did she fall a tear. Here in this place
I’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace.
Rue even for ruth here shortly shall be seen
In the remembrance of a weeping queen. They exit. | The Gardener feels sorry for the queen and decides to plant some rue, an
herb associated with compassion and repentance. He plants the stuff
where one of the queen's tears fell. |