Open Source Shakespeare

Speeches (Lines) for Servant
in "Richard II"

Total: 8

# Act, Scene, Line
(Click to see in context)
Speech text

1

II,2,1084

(stage directions). [Enter a Servant]

Servant. My lord, your son was gone before I came.


2

II,2,1091

Edmund of Langley. He was? Why, so! go all which way it will!
The nobles they are fled, the commons they are cold,
And will, I fear, revolt on Hereford's side.
Sirrah, get thee to Plashy, to my sister Gloucester;
Bid her send me presently a thousand pound:
Hold, take my ring.

Servant. My lord, I had forgot to tell your lordship,
To-day, as I came by, I called there;
But I shall grieve you to report the rest.


3

II,2,1095

Edmund of Langley. What is't, knave?

Servant. An hour before I came, the duchess died.


4

III,4,1904

Gardener. Go, bind thou up yon dangling apricocks,
Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight:
Give some supportance to the bending twigs.
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 employ'd, I will go root away
The noisome weeds, which without profit suck
The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers.

Servant. Why should we in the compass of a pale
Keep law and form and due proportion,
Showing, as in a model, our firm estate,
When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up,
Her fruit-trees all upturned, her hedges ruin'd,
Her knots disorder'd and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars?


5

III,4,1919

Gardener. Hold thy peace:
He that hath suffer'd this disorder'd spring
Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf:
The weeds which his broad-spreading leaves did shelter,
That seem'd in eating him to hold him up,
Are pluck'd up root and all by Bolingbroke,
I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green.

Servant. What, are they dead?


6

III,4,1933

Gardener. They are; and Bolingbroke
Hath seized the wasteful king. O, what pity is it
That he had not so trimm'd and dress'd his land
As we this garden! We at time of year
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees,
Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood,
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:
Had he done so, himself had borne the crown,
Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.

Servant. What, think you then the king shall be deposed?


7

V,4,2738

Sir Pierce of Exton. Didst thou not mark the king, what words he spake,
'Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?'
Was it not so?

Servant. These were his very words.


8

V,4,2741

Sir Pierce of Exton. 'Have I no friend?' quoth he: he spake it twice,
And urged it twice together, did he not?

Servant. He did.