QUEEN. It may be so; but yet my inward soul Persuades me it is otherwise. Howe’er it be, I cannot but be sad—so heavy sad As thought, in thinking, on no thought I think, Makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink. 

 BUSHY. ’Tis nothing but conceit, my gracious lady. 

 QUEEN. ’Tis nothing less. Conceit is still derived From some forefather grief. Mine is not so, For nothing hath begot my something grief, Or something hath the nothing that I grieve. ’Tis in reversion that I do possess, But what it is, that is not yet known what, I cannot name. ’Tis nameless woe, I wot. 

 Enter Green.

Green

 GREEN. God save your majesty! And well met, gentlemen. I hope the King is not yet shipped for Ireland. 

 QUEEN. Why hop’st thou so? ’Tis better hope he is, For his designs crave haste, his haste good hope. Then wherefore dost thou hope he is not shipped? 

 GREEN. That he, our hope, might have retired his power, And driven into despair an enemy’s hope Who strongly hath set footing in this land. The banished Bolingbroke repeals himself, And with uplifted arms is safe arrived At Ravenspurgh. 

 QUEEN. Now God in heaven forbid! 

 GREEN. Ah, madam, ’tis too true; and that is worse, The Lord Northumberland, his son young Harry Percy, The Lords of Ross, Beaumond, and Willoughby, With all their powerful friends, are fled to him. 

 BUSHY. Why have you not proclaimed Northumberland And all the rest revolted faction traitors? 

 GREEN. We have, whereupon the Earl of Worcester Hath broken his staff, resigned his stewardship, And all the household servants fled with him To Bolingbroke. 

 QUEEN. So, Green, thou art the midwife to my woe, And Bolingbroke my sorrow’s dismal heir. Now hath my soul brought forth her prodigy, And I, a gasping new-delivered mother, Have woe to woe, sorrow to sorrow joined. 

 BUSHY. Despair not, madam. 

 QUEEN. Who shall hinder me? I will despair and be at enmity With cozening hope. He is a flatterer, A parasite, a keeper-back of death, Who gently would dissolve the bands of life, Which false hope lingers in extremity. 

 Enter York.

York

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