QUEEN How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster?
KING RICHARD II What comfort, man? how is't with aged Gaunt?
JOHN OF GAUNT O how that name befits my composition!
Old Gaunt indeed, and gaunt in being old:
Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast;
And who abstains from meat that is not gaunt?
For sleeping England long time have I watch'd;
Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt:
The pleasure that some fathers feed upon,
Is my strict fast; I mean, my children's looks;
And therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt:
Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,
Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones.
KING RICHARD II Can sick men play so nicely with their names?
JOHN OF GAUNT No, misery makes sport to mock itself:
Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me,
I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee.
KING RICHARD II Should dying men flatter with those that live?
JOHN OF GAUNT No, no, men living flatter those that die.
KING RICHARD II Thou, now a-dying, say'st thou flatterest me.
JOHN OF GAUNT O, no! thou diest, though I the sicker be.
KING RICHARD II I am in health, I breathe, and see thee ill.
JOHN OF GAUNT Now He that made me knows I see thee ill;
Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill.
Thy death-bed is no lesser than thy land
Wherein thou liest in reputation sick;
And thou, too careless patient as thou art,
Commit'st thy anointed body to the cure
Of those physicians that first wounded thee:
A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,
Whose compass is no bigger than thy head;
And yet, incaged in so small a verge,
The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.
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