ScENE I.
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nter the Kine, LEIcesTER, the BIsHoP OFWINCHESTER, and TRUSSEL. Leices. Be patient, good my lord, cease to lament ;Imagine Killingworth Castle were your court,And that you lay for pleasure here a space,Not of compulsion or necessity.Edw. Leicester, if gentle words might comfort me,Thy speeches long ago had eased my sorrows,For kind and loving hast thou always been.The griefs of private men are soon allay'd ;But not of kings. The forest deer, being struck,Ruus to an herb that closeth up the wounds:But when the imperial lion’s flesh is gored,He rends and tears it with his wrathtul paw,And highly scorning that the lowly earthShould drink his Mood, mounts up to the air :And so it fares with me, whose dauntless mindThe ambitious Mortimer would seek to curb,And that unnatural queen, false Isabel,That thus hath pent and mewd me in a prison ;For such outrageous passions cloy my soul,As with the wings of rancour and disdainFull often am I soaring up to heaven,To plain me to the gods against them both.But when I call to mind I am a king,Methinks I should revenge me of my wrongs,That Mortimer and Isabel have done.But what are kings, when regiment is gone,But perfect shadows in a sunshine day ?My nobles rule; I bear the name of king ; EDWARD THE SECOND. 117 I wear the crown ; but am controlled by them, By Mortimer, and my unconstané queen, Who spots my nuptial bed with infamy ; Whilst Iam lodged within this cave of care, Where sorrow at my elbow still attends, To company my heart with sad laments,
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