Act 2, Scene 1

London. An Apartment in Ely House.

[GAUNT on a couch; the DUKE OF YORK and Others standing by him.]
John of Gaunt
658 Will the King come, that I may breathe my last
659 In wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth?
Duke of York
660 Vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath;
661 For all in vain comes counsel to his ear.
John of Gaunt
662 O! but they say the tongues of dying men
663 Enforce attention like deep harmony:
664 Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
665 For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
666 He that no more must say is listen'd more
667 Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose;
668 More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before:
669 The setting sun, and music at the close,
670 As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,
671 Writ in remembrance more than things long past:
672 Though Richard my life's counsel would not hear,
673 My death's sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.
Duke of York
674 No; it is stopp'd with other flattering sounds,
675 As praises of his state: then there are fond,
676 Lascivious metres, to whose venom sound
677 The open ear of youth doth always listen:
678 Report of fashions in proud Italy,
679 Whose manners still our tardy apish nation
680 Limps after in base imitation.
681 Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity,—
682 So it be new there's no respect how vile,—
683 That is not quickly buzz'd into his ears?
684 Then all too late comes counsel to be heard,
685 Where will doth mutiny with wit's regard.
686 Direct not him whose way himself will choose:
687 'Tis breath thou lack'st, and that breath wilt thou lose.
John of Gaunt
688 Methinks I am a prophet new inspir'd,
689 And thus expiring do foretell of him:
690 His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
691 For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
692 Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
693 He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
694 With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:
695 Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
696 Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
697 This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
698 This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
699 This other Eden, demi-paradise,
700 This fortress built by Nature for herself
701 Against infection and the hand of war,
702 This happy breed of men, this little world,
703 This precious stone set in the silver sea,
704 Which serves it in the office of a wall,
705 Or as a moat defensive to a house,
706 Against the envy of less happier lands;
707 This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
708 This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
709 Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth,
710 Renowned for their deeds as far from home,—
711 For Christian service and true chivalry,—
712 As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
713 Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son:
714 This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
715 Dear for her reputation through the world,
716 Is now leas'd out,—I die pronouncing it,—
717 Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
718 England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
719 Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
720 Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
721 With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds:
722 That England, that was wont to conquer others,
723 Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
724 Ah! would the scandal vanish with my life,
725 How happy then were my ensuing death.
[Enter KING RICHARD and QUEEN; AUMERLE, BUSHY, GREEN, BAGOT, ROSS, and WILLOUGHBY.]
Duke of York
726 The King is come: deal mildly with his youth;
727 For young hot colts, being rag'd, do rage the more.
Queen Isabel
728 How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster?
King Richard II
729 What comfort, man? How is't with aged Gaunt?
John of Gaunt
730 O! how that name befits my composition;
731 Old Gaunt, indeed; and gaunt in being old:
732 Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast;
733 And who abstains from meat that is not gaunt?
734 For sleeping England long time have I watch'd;
735 Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt.
736 The pleasure that some fathers feed upon
737 Is my strict fast, I mean my children's looks;
738 And therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt.
739 Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,
740 Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones.
King Richard II
741 Can sick men play so nicely with their names?
John of Gaunt
742 No, misery makes sport to mock itself:
743 Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me,
744 I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee.
King Richard II
745 Should dying men flatter with those that live?
John of Gaunt
746 No, no; men living flatter those that die.
King Richard II
747 Thou, now a-dying, sayest thou flatterest me.
John of Gaunt
748 O, no! thou diest, though I the sicker be.
King Richard II
749 I am in health, I breathe, and see thee ill.
John of Gaunt
750 Now, he that made me knows I see thee ill;
751 Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill.
752 Thy death-bed is no lesser than thy land
753 Wherein thou liest in reputation sick:
754 And thou, too careless patient as thou art,
755 Committ'st thy anointed body to the cure
756 Of those physicians that first wounded thee:
757 A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,
758 Whose compass is no bigger than thy head;
759 And yet, incaged in so small a verge,
760 The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.
761 O! had thy grandsire, with a prophet's eye,
762 Seen how his son's son should destroy his sons,
763 From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame,
764 Deposing thee before thou wert possess'd,
765 Which art possess'd now to depose thyself.
766 Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world,
767 It were a shame to let this land by lease;
768 But for thy world enjoying but this land,
769 Is it not more than shame to shame it so?
770 Landlord of England art thou now, not king:
771 Thy state of law is bondslave to the law,
772 And—
King Richard II
773 And thou a lunatic lean-witted fool,
774 Presuming on an ague's privilege,
775 Dar'st with thy frozen admonition
776 Make pale our cheek, chasing the royal blood
777 With fury from his native residence.
778 Now by my seat's right royal majesty,
779 Wert thou not brother to great Edward's son,—
780 This tongue that runs so roundly in thy head
781 Should run thy head from thy unreverent shoulders.
John of Gaunt
782 O! spare me not, my brother Edward's son,
783 For that I was his father Edward's son.
784 That blood already, like the pelican,
785 Hast thou tapp'd out, and drunkenly carous'd:
786 My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul,—
787 Whom fair befall in heaven 'mongst happy souls!—
788 May be a precedent and witness good
789 That thou respect'st not spilling Edward's blood:
790 Join with the present sickness that I have;
791 And thy unkindness be like crooked age,
792 To crop at once a too-long withered flower.
793 Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!
794 These words hereafter thy tormentors be!
795 Convey me to my bed, then to my grave:
796 Love they to live that love and honour have.
[Exit, bourne out by his Attendants.]
King Richard II
797 And let them die that age and sullens have;
798 For both hast thou, and both become the grave.
Duke of York
799 I do beseech your Majesty, impute his words
800 To wayward sickliness and age in him:
801 He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear
802 As Harry Duke of Hereford, were he here.
King Richard II
803 Right, you say true: as Hereford's love, so his;
804 As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.
[Enter NORTHUMBERLAND.]
Earl of Northumberland
805 My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your Majesty.
King Richard II
806 What says he?
Earl of Northumberland
807 Nay, nothing; all is said:
808 His tongue is now a stringless instrument;
809 Words, life, and all, old Lancaster hath spent.
Duke of York
810 Be York the next that must be bankrupt so!
811 Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.
King Richard II
812 The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he:
813 His time is spent; our pilgrimage must be.
814 So much for that. Now for our Irish wars.
815 We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns,
816 Which live like venom where no venom else
817 But only they have privilege to live.
818 And for these great affairs do ask some charge,
819 Towards our assistance we do seize to us
820 The plate, coin, revenues, and moveables,
821 Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possess'd.
King Richard II
822 YORK. How long shall I be patient? Ah! how long
823 Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?
824 Not Gloucester's death, nor Hereford's banishment,
825 Nor Gaunt's rebukes, nor England's private wrongs,
826 Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke
827 About his marriage, nor my own disgrace,
828 Have ever made me sour my patient cheek,
829 Or bend one wrinkle on my sovereign's face.
830 I am the last of noble Edward's sons,
831 Of whom thy father, Prince of Wales, was first;
832 In war was never lion rag'd more fierce,
833 In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,
834 Than was that young and princely gentleman.
835 His face thou hast, for even so look'd he,
836 Accomplish'd with the number of thy hours;
837 But when he frown'd, it was against the French,
838 And not against his friends; his noble hand
839 Did win what he did spend, and spent not that
840 Which his triumphant father's hand had won:
841 His hands were guilty of no kindred's blood,
842 But bloody with the enemies of his kin.
843 O Richard! York is too far gone with grief,
844 Or else he never would compare between.
King Richard II
845 Why, uncle, what's the matter?
Duke of York
846 O! my liege.
847 Pardon me, if you please; if not, I, pleas'd
848 Not to be pardon'd, am content withal.
849 Seek you to seize and gripe into your hands
850 The royalties and rights of banish'd Hereford?
851 Is not Gaunt dead, and doth not Hereford live?
852 Was not Gaunt just, and is not Harry true?
853 Did not the one deserve to have an heir?
854 Is not his heir a well-deserving son?
855 Take Hereford's rights away, and take from Time
856 His charters and his customary rights;
857 Let not to-morrow then ensue to-day;
858 Be not thyself; for how art thou a king
859 But by fair sequence and succession?
860 Now, afore God,—God forbid I say true!—
861 If you do wrongfully seize Hereford's rights,
862 Call in the letters-patents that he hath
863 By his attorneys-general to sue
864 His livery, and deny his offer'd homage,
865 You pluck a thousand dangers on your head,
866 You lose a thousand well-disposed hearts,
867 And prick my tender patience to those thoughts
868 Which honour and allegiance cannot think.
King Richard II
869 Think what you will: we seize into our hands
870 His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands.
Duke of York
871 I'll not be by the while: my liege, farewell:
872 What will ensue hereof there's none can tell;
873 But by bad courses may be understood
874 That their events can never fall out good.
[Exit.]
King Richard II
875 Go, Bushy, to the Earl of Wiltshire straight:
876 Bid him repair to us to Ely House
877 To see this business. To-morrow next
878 We will for Ireland; and 'tis time, I trow:
879 And we create, in absence of ourself,
880 Our Uncle York lord governor of England;
881 For he is just, and always lov'd us well.
882 Come on, our queen: to-morrow must we part;
883 Be merry, for our time of stay is short.
[Exeunt KING, QUEEN, BUSHY, AUMERLE, GREEN, and BAGOT.]
Earl of Northumberland
884 Well, lords, the Duke of Lancaster is dead.
Lord Ross
885 And living too; for now his son is Duke.
Lord Willoughby
886 Barely in title, not in revenues.
Earl of Northumberland
887 Richly in both, if justice had her right.
Lord Ross
888 My heart is great; but it must break with silence,
889 Ere't be disburdened with a liberal tongue.
Earl of Northumberland
890 Nay, speak thy mind; and let him ne'er speak more
891 That speaks thy words again to do thee harm!
Lord Willoughby
892 Tends that thou wouldst speak to the Duke of Hereford?
893 If it be so, out with it boldly, man;
894 Quick is mine ear to hear of good towards him.
Lord Ross
895 No good at all that I can do for him,
896 Unless you call it good to pity him,
897 Bereft and gelded of his patrimony.
Earl of Northumberland
898 Now, afore God, 'tis shame such wrongs are borne
899 In him, a royal prince, and many moe
900 Of noble blood in this declining land.
901 The king is not himself, but basely led
902 By flatterers; and what they will inform,
903 Merely in hate, 'gainst any of us all,
904 That will the king severely prosecute
905 'Gainst us, our lives, our children, and our heirs.
Lord Ross
906 The commons hath he pill'd with grievous taxes,
907 And quite lost their hearts: the nobles hath he fin'd
908 For ancient quarrels and quite lost their hearts.
Lord Willoughby
909 And daily new exactions are devis'd;
910 As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what:
911 But what, o' God's name, doth become of this?
Earl of Northumberland
912 Wars hath not wasted it, for warr'd he hath not,
913 But basely yielded upon compromise
914 That which his ancestors achiev'd with blows.
915 More hath he spent in peace than they in wars.
Lord Ross
916 The Earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm.
Lord Willoughby
917 The King's grown bankrupt like a broken man.
Earl of Northumberland
918 Reproach and dissolution hangeth over him.
Lord Ross
919 He hath not money for these Irish wars,
920 His burdenous taxations notwithstanding,
921 But by the robbing of the banish'd Duke.
Earl of Northumberland
922 His noble kinsman: most degenerate king!
923 But, lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing,
924 Yet seek no shelter to avoid the storm;
925 We see the wind sit sore upon our sails,
926 And yet we strike not, but securely perish.
Lord Ross
927 We see the very wrack that we must suffer;
928 And unavoided is the danger now,
929 For suffering so the causes of our wrack.
Earl of Northumberland
930 Not so: even through the hollow eyes of death
931 I spy life peering; but I dare not say
932 How near the tidings of our comfort is.
Lord Willoughby
933 Nay, let us share thy thoughts as thou dost ours.
Lord Ross
934 Be confident to speak, Northumberland:
935 We three are but thyself: and, speaking so,
936 Thy words are but as thoughts; therefore be bold.
Earl of Northumberland
937 Then thus: I have from Le Port Blanc, a bay
938 In Brittany, receiv'd intelligence
939 That Harry Duke of Hereford, Rainold Lord Cobham,
940 That late broke from the Duke of Exeter,
941 His brother, Archbishop late of Canterbury,
942 Sir Thomas Erpingham, Sir John Ramston,
943 Sir John Norbery, Sir Robert Waterton, and Francis Quoint,
944 All these well furnish'd by the Duke of Britaine,
945 With eight tall ships, three thousand men of war,
946 Are making hither with all due expedience,
947 And shortly mean to touch our northern shore.
948 Perhaps they had ere this, but that they stay
949 The first departing of the king for Ireland.
950 If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke,
951 Imp out our drooping country's broken wing,
952 Redeem from broking pawn the blemish'd crown,
953 Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre's gilt,
954 And make high majesty look like itself,
955 Away with me in post to Ravenspurgh;
956 But if you faint, as fearing to do so,
957 Stay and be secret, and myself will go.
Lord Ross
958 To horse, to horse! Urge doubts to them that fear.
Lord Willoughby
959 Hold out my horse, and I will first be there.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 662rhetorical device
“tongues of dying men Enforce attention like deep harmony”
Gaunt argues that deathbed words carry special authority: a dying man, who can no longer flatter or pretend, must be speaking truth, and so people listen more carefully. The idea was a commonplace of the period: a final utterance was seen as a kind of testament, weighted with sincerity no living speaker could match.
TLN 667archaic vocab
“youth and ease have taught to glose”
'To glose' means to speak with flattery or smooth, empty talk — to coat one's words with a pleasant gloss that disguises the truth. Gaunt contrasts those who have learned to gloss (flatterers, idle courtiers) with the dying man whose words are too costly to waste on flattery.
TLN 669rhetorical device
“setting sun, and music at the close, As the last taste of sweets”
Gaunt strings together three images — the sunset, the final cadence of a piece of music, and the last bite of something sweet — to argue that endings are the most intensely remembered parts of any experience. 'Close' here means the final chord or resolution of a musical piece (a technical term of the period), not merely the end in a general sense.
TLN 675historical topical
“fond, Lascivious metres, to whose venom sound”
'Fond' means foolish; 'lascivious metres' means erotic or lewd verse. York is saying Richard's ear is stopped up with flattery and dirty poetry rather than honest counsel. This is a dig at the refined, Italianate court culture Richard cultivated, which conservative lords associated with moral laxity.
TLN 678historical topical
“fashions in proud Italy, Whose manners still our tardy apish nation Limps after”
York mocks England for copying Italian fashions, calling the country 'tardy' (slow) and 'apish' (ape-like — mimicking without understanding). Italy — especially the courts of Milan, Florence, and Venice — was Europe's trendsetter in dress, manners, fencing style, and courtly behavior in the late 16th century, and moralists routinely attacked the English rage for Italian imports as cultural self-betrayal.
TLN 688historical topical
“I am a prophet new inspir'd, And thus expiring do foretell”
Gaunt claims the authority of a dying prophet: the belief that dying people could foresee the future was common in both classical and biblical tradition. 'Expiring' plays on two meanings — 'dying' and 'breathing out' — since prophets were thought to be 'inspired' (literally breathed into) by a divine spirit.
TLN 695archaic vocab
“Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, Consuming means, soon preys upon itself”
A cormorant is a large seabird notorious for its insatiable appetite; Elizabethans used it as a standard image of greedy, bottomless consumption. Gaunt says Richard's 'light vanity' — his extravagance and self-indulgence — is like that bird: it will eat everything, then eat itself.
TLN 697rhetorical device
“This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, This earth of majesty”
This is the most famous speech in the play and one of the best-known passages in Shakespeare: a sustained list of metaphors for England, each beginning 'This' — a figure called anaphora, meaning the repetition of a word at the start of successive phrases. Gaunt piles up images of England as throne, isle, seat of Mars, Eden, fortress, world, precious stone, womb of kings, plot of blessed earth — then lands the entire weight on the devastating 'is now leas'd out' (TLN 716). The speech works by building up an ideal and then puncturing it.
historical The fall of princes (de casibus tragedy)
TLN 698classical allusion
“this seat of Mars”
Mars was the Roman god of war; his 'seat' is a throne or home. Gaunt calls England the place where Mars -- that is, military valor -- resides. The phrase praises England's warrior reputation and implicitly blames Richard for abandoning it.
TLN 699biblical allusion
“This other Eden, demi-paradise”
Gaunt calls England a second Garden of Eden — 'another paradise' — praising its natural abundance and insularity. Eden in Genesis is the original perfect world before the Fall; calling England its counterpart is the highest possible compliment. The bitter irony is that Richard, like Adam, is about to lose this paradise through his own fault.
biblical The serpent in the Garden of Eden
TLN 712historical topical
“sepulchre in stubborn Jewry Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son”
Gaunt says English kings were famous for crusading as far as Christ's tomb in Jerusalem — the 'sepulchre' of 'the world's ransom' (Jesus, who ransomed mankind from sin). 'Stubborn Jewry' means the Holy Land, resistant to Christian rule. The reference is to the Crusades, held up as the gold standard of Christian chivalry.
TLN 716historical topical
“Is now leas'd out, I die pronouncing it, Like to a tenement or pelting farm”
Richard had devised a system of 'farming' royal revenues: he leased out the right to collect taxes and income in various parts of England to private individuals or syndicates, who paid him a fixed fee in advance and kept what they collected above it. Gaunt uses the legal language of the landlord-tenant relationship — 'lease,' 'tenement,' 'pelting farm' (a wretched little tenant holding) — to say that England has been reduced from a kingdom to a shabby rental property.
TLN 720wordplay
“watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame, With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds”
Gaunt sets up a pun on 'bound': England is 'bound in' by the sea (enclosed by water, a defensive moat) but it is also 'bound in' by shame and legal contracts ('parchment bonds' — documents). The sea that used to protect England has been replaced by paper — lease documents, IOU notes, writs — as the thing that now defines and confines it.
TLN 730wordplay
“how that name befits my composition; Old Gaunt, indeed; and gaunt in being old”
Gaunt's given name was John, but his family title 'Gaunt' was a Latinization of 'Ghent' (the Flemish city where he was born). He seizes on the coincidence that 'gaunt' also means thin, wasted, and haggard — and then builds an extended series of puns: he is gaunt from grief, from sleeplessness watching over England, from fasting, from age, and finally 'gaunt as a grave.' The wordplay turns his dying body into a commentary on the kingdom's condition.
TLN 752rhetorical device
“Thy death-bed is no lesser than thy land Wherein thou liest in reputation sick”
Gaunt turns the medical metaphor of a sick man on his death-bed against Richard: Richard's 'death-bed' is England itself, a whole kingdom that is dying because of him. The image fuses the king's body with the body of the realm, a key legal and theological idea of the period: the king and his land are one, and when he is corrupted so is the kingdom.
historical The king's two bodies
TLN 755historical topical
“Committ'st thy anointed body to the cure Of those physicians that first wounded thee”
'Anointed' refers to the ritual anointing with holy oil during the coronation ceremony, which consecrated the king as God's deputy on earth — a sacred person, not merely a political one. Gaunt bitterly accuses Richard of handing his sacred, God-consecrated body over to the care of the very men — his flatterers, Bushy, Bagot, and Green — who have done him the most damage.
historical The divine right of kings
TLN 759archaic vocab
“incaged in so small a verge, The waste is no whit lesser than thy land”
'Verge' means border or circumference. Gaunt says a thousand flatterers fit within the crown's 'compass' — the small circle of gold around the king's head — and yet the destruction ('waste') they do is as large as the whole kingdom. He plays on 'waste' meaning both wasted resources and a legal term for damage done to an estate by a tenant.
TLN 761historical topical
“had thy grandsire, with a prophet's eye, Seen how his son's son should destroy his sons”
Gaunt says that if Richard's grandfather — Edward III — had foreseen what Richard would do, he would have deposed him before he ever took the throne. Richard's 'sons' that he destroys are Edward III's other royal sons (Gaunt's brothers), specifically Gloucester, who Richard had murdered. The speech is Gaunt's most direct accusation: Richard has shed royal Plantagenet blood.
historical Edward III and his seven sons
TLN 774archaic vocab
“Presuming on an ague's privilege”
An 'ague' was any fever accompanied by chills and shaking — it corresponds to what we now call malaria, which was common in England's marshes. Richard means: you think that being near death gives you a license to say things you could never say otherwise. He is contemptuous: Gaunt's deathbed boldness is just sick-man's madness.
TLN 784cultural context
“like the pelican, Hast thou tapp'd out, and drunkenly carous'd”
The pelican was believed to feed its young by pecking open its own breast and letting them drink its blood; it was the standard Christian symbol of a parent's self-sacrificing love, and of Christ shedding his blood for humanity. Gaunt accuses Richard of inverting the image completely: instead of a parent feeding its children, Richard is a child who has 'tapped out' (drawn off like a barrel's contents) the royal blood -- his family's lifeblood -- for his own drunken indulgence.
TLN 786historical topical
“My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul, Whom fair befall in heaven”
Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, was Edward III's youngest surviving son and Gaunt's brother. Richard II had him arrested in 1397 and he died in captivity at Calais -- almost certainly murdered on Richard's orders, though the king denied it. His death is the unresolved grievance at the start of the play (the Duchess of Gloucester begs Gaunt to avenge it). Here Gaunt names it to Richard's face.
historical Edward III and his seven sons
TLN 815historical topical
“rough rug-headed kerns, Which live like venom where no venom else But only they have privilege to live”
'Kerns' were lightly armed Irish foot soldiers; 'rug-headed' means shaggy-haired (a common English stereotype of the Irish at the time). Richard's dismissive comparison of Irish people to the legendary venomous snakes of Britain — echoing the belief that Ireland had no venomous snakes, so the Irish themselves were the only venom — is a piece of virulent Elizabethan anti-Irish prejudice.
TLN 849historical topical
“Seek you to seize and gripe into your hands The royalties and rights of banish'd Hereford”
York's great legal objection: Bolingbroke (Henry, Duke of Hereford) was banished, not disinherited; when his father Gaunt dies, he should inherit his father's estate by normal succession. Richard's plan to seize that inheritance violates the laws of inheritance that protect every English nobleman's property rights — and, York argues, the same property rights that underpin Richard's own claim to the throne.
historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 897archaic vocab
“Bereft and gelded of his patrimony”
'Patrimony' means the estate or inheritance passed down from one's father (Latin pater, father). 'Gelded' means castrated — literally cut; here it means stripped, emasculated, rendered powerless. Ross is saying Bolingbroke has been robbed of his fatherly inheritance and left as powerless as a gelded animal.
TLN 906historical topical
“The commons hath he pill'd with grievous taxes, And quite lost their hearts: the nobles hath he fin'd For ancient quarrels”
'Pill'd' means pillaged or fleeced — taxed to the bone. Ross lists Richard's financial abuses: extortionate taxes on the common people, fines levied on the nobility for old, supposedly settled quarrels (a form of forced payment). Both were real practices documented in Holinshed. Richard was notorious for reviving forgotten feudal claims against nobles to extract money.
TLN 910historical topical
“blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what”
'Blanks' were documents with the royal seal already affixed but the amount left blank — nobles were forced to sign them, after which the crown could write in whatever sum it chose. 'Benevolences' were forced 'gifts' to the king, theoretically voluntary but actually extorted. Both were deeply resented forms of extortion.
TLN 951archaic vocab
“Imp out our drooping country's broken wing”
'Imp' is a term from falconry: to graft new feathers onto a damaged wing so the bird can fly again. Northumberland uses it as a metaphor — England is like a falcon with a broken wing; Bolingbroke's return will 'imp' it, restoring its power to soar. The image is of repair and renewal.
TLN 952archaic vocab
“Redeem from broking pawn the blemish'd crown”
'Broking' means pawnbroking or dealing as a middleman — a 'broker' was often a moneylender. Northumberland says the crown has been pawned to brokers — that is, Richard has mortgaged the kingdom's honor and revenue to financial operators. To 'redeem' it means to buy it back, as one would retrieve a pledged item from a pawn shop.