The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works

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by William Shakespeare


  QUEEN ISABEL You English princes all, I do salute you.

  BURGUNDY My duty to you both, on equal love,

  Great Kings of France and England. That I have laboured

  With all my wits, my pains and strong endeavours,

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  To bring your most imperial majesties

  Unto this bar and royal interview

  Your mightiness on both parts best can witness.

  Since then my office hath so far prevailed

  That face to face and royal eye to eye

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  You have congreeted, let it not disgrace me

  If I demand before this royal view

  What rub or what impediment there is

  Why that the naked, poor and mangled peace,

  Dear nurse of arts, plenties and joyful births,

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  Should not in this best garden of the world,

  Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?

  Alas, she hath from France too long been chased,

  And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,

  Corrupting in it own fertility.

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  Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,

  Unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleached,

  Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,

  Put forth disordered twigs; her fallow leas

  The darnel, hemlock and rank fumitory

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  Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts

  That should deracinate such savagery.

  The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth

  The freckled cowslip, burnet and green clover,

  Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,

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  Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems

  But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burrs,

  Losing both beauty and utility.

  And as our vineyards, fallows, meads and hedges,

  Defective in their natures, grow to wildness,

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  Even so our houses and our selves and children

  Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,

  The sciences that should become our country,

  But grow like savages, as soldiers will

  That nothing do but meditate on blood,

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  To swearing and stern looks, diffused attire,

  And everything that seems unnatural.

  Which to reduce into our former favour

  You are assembled; and my speech entreats

  That I may know the let why gentle peace

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  Should not expel these inconveniences

  And bless us with her former qualities.

  KING If, Duke of Burgundy, you would the peace

  Whose want gives growth to th’imperfections

  Which you have cited, you must buy that peace

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  With full accord to all our just demands,

  Whose tenors and particular effects

  You have, enscheduled briefly, in your hands.

  BURGUNDY The King hath heard them, to the which as yet

  There is no answer made.

  KING Well then, the peace

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  Which you before so urged lies in his answer.

  FRENCH KING I have but with a cursitory eye

  O’er-glanced the articles. Pleaseth your grace

  To appoint some of your council presently

  To sit with us once more, with better heed

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  To re-survey them, we will suddenly

  Pass our accept and peremptory answer.

  KING Brother, we shall. – Go, uncle Exeter,

  And brother Clarence, and you, brother Gloucester,

  Warwick and Huntingdon, go with the King,

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  And take with you free power to ratify,

  Augment or alter, as your wisdoms best

  Shall see advantageable for our dignity,

  Anything in or out of our demands,

  And we’ll consign thereto. – Will you, fair sister,

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  Go with the princes, or stay here with us?

  QUEEN ISABEL

  Our gracious brother, I will go with them.

  Haply a woman’s voice may do some good

  When articles too nicely urged be stood on.

  KING Yet leave our cousin Katherine here with us:

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  She is our capital demand, comprised

  Within the fore-rank of our articles.

  QUEEN ISABEL She hath good leave.

  Exeunt all but King and Katherine and Alice.

  KING Fair Katherine, and most fair,

  Will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms

  Such as will enter at a lady’s ear

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  And plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?

  KATHERINE Your majesty shall mock at me; I cannot

  speak your England.

  KING O fair Katherine, if you will love me soundly with

  your French heart I will be glad to hear you confess it

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  brokenly with your English tongue. Do you like me,

  Kate?

  KATHERINE Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell vat is ‘like me’.

  KING An angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an

  angel.

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  KATHERINE Que dit-il, que je suis semblable à les anges?

  ALICE Oui, vraiment, sauf votre grâce, ainsi dit-il.

  KING I said so, dear Katherine, and I must not blush to

  affirm it.

  KATHERINE O bon Dieu, les langues des hommes sont

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  pleines de tromperies!

  KING What says she, fair one? That the tongues of men

  are full of deceits?

  ALICE Oui, dat de tongues of de mans is be full of

  deceits: dat is de Princess.

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  KING The Princess is the better Englishwoman. I’faith,

  Kate, my wooing is fit for thy understanding. I am

  glad thou canst speak no better English, for if thou

  couldst thou wouldst find me such a plain king that

  thou wouldst think I had sold my farm to buy my

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  crown. I know no ways to mince it in love but directly

  to say ‘I love you.’ Then if you urge me farther than to

  say ‘Do you in faith?’, I wear out my suit. Give me

  your answer, i’faith do, and so clap hands and a

  bargain. How say you, lady?

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  KATHERINE Sauf votre honneur, me understand vell.

  KING Marry, if you would put me to verses or to dance

  for your sake, Kate, why, you undid me: for the one I

  have neither words nor measure, and for the other I

  have no strength in measure, yet a reasonable measure

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  in strength. If I could win a lady at leapfrog, or by

  vaulting into my saddle with my armour on my back,

  under the correction of bragging be it spoken, I should

  quickly leap into a wife. Or if I might buffet for my

  love or bound my horse for her favours, I could lay on

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  like a butcher and sit like a jackanapes, never off. But

  before God, Kate, I cannot look greenly nor gasp out

  my eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation,

  only downright oaths, which I never use till urged, nor

  never break for urging. If thou canst love a fellow of

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  this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth

  sunburning, that never looks in his glass for love of

  anything he sees there, let thine eye be thy cook. I

  speak to thee plain soldier. If thou canst love me for

  this, take me; if not, to say to thee that I shall die is

 
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  true; but for thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love thee

  too. And while thou liv’st, dear Kate, take a fellow of

  plain and uncoined constancy, for he perforce must do

  thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other

  places; for these fellows of infinite tongue, that can

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  rhyme themselves into ladies’ favours, they do always

  reason themselves out again. What, a speaker is but a

  prater, a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall, a

  straight back will stoop, a black beard will turn white,

  a curled pate will grow bald, a fair face will wither, a

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  full eye will wax hollow; but a good heart, Kate, is the

  sun and the moon, or rather the sun and not the moon,

  for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his

  course truly. If thou would have such a one, take me;

  and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier, take a king.

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  And what sayst thou then to my love? Speak, my fair,

  and fairly, I pray thee.

  KATHERINE Is it possible dat I sould love de enemy of

  France?

  KING No, it is not possible you should love the enemy of

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  France, Kate: but in loving me you should love the

  friend of France; for I love France so well that I will

  not part with a village of it; I will have it all mine: and

  Kate, when France is mine, and I am yours, then yours

  is France, and you are mine.

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  KATHERINE I cannot tell vat is dat.

  KING No, Kate? I will tell thee in French, which I am

  sure will hang upon my tongue like a new-married

  wife about her husband’s neck, hardly to be shook off.

  Je, quand j’ai le possession de France, et quand vous avez

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  le possession de moi – let me see, what then? Saint Denis

  be my speed! – donc votre est France, et vous êtes mienne.

  It is as easy for me, Kate, to conquer the kingdom as

  to speak so much more French. I shall never move thee

  in French, unless it be to laugh at me.

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  KATHERINE Sauf votre honneur, le français que vous

  parlez, il est meilleur que l’anglais lequel je parle.

  KING No, faith, is’t not, Kate; but thy speaking of my

  tongue, and I thine, most truly-falsely, must needs be

  granted to be much at one. But Kate, dost thou

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  understand thus much English? ‘Canst thou love me?’

  KATHERINE I cannot tell.

  KING Can any of your neighbours tell, Kate? I’ll ask

  them. Come, I know thou lovest me, and at night,

  when you come into your closet, you’ll question this

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  gentlewoman about me; and I know, Kate, you will to

  her dispraise those parts in me that you love with your

  heart: but, good Kate, mock me mercifully, the rather,

  gentle Princess, because I love thee cruelly. If ever

  thou be’st mine, Kate, as I have a saving faith within

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  me tells me thou shalt, I get thee with scambling, and

  thou must therefore needs prove a good soldier-

  breeder. Shall not thou and I, between Saint Denis

  and Saint George, compound a boy, half French, half

  English, that shall go to Constantinople and take the

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  Turk by the beard? Shall we not? What sayst thou, my

  fair flower-de-luce?

  KATHERINE I do not know dat.

  KING No, ’tis hereafter to know, but now to promise: do

  but now promise, Kate, you will endeavour for your

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  French part of such a boy, and for my English moiety

  take the word of a king and a bachelor. How answer

  you, la plus belle Katherine du monde, mon très cher et

  divin déesse?

  KATHERINE Your majesty ’ave fausse French enough to

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  deceive de most sage demoiselle dat is en France.

  KING Now fie upon my false French! By mine honour,

  in true English, I love thee, Kate: by which honour I

  dare not swear thou lovest me, yet my blood begins to

  flatter me that thou dost, notwithstanding the poor

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  and untempering effect of my visage. Now beshrew

  my father’s ambition! He was thinking of civil wars

  when he got me: therefore was I created with a

  stubborn outside, with an aspect of iron, that when I

  come to woo ladies I fright them. But in faith, Kate,

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  the elder I wax the better I shall appear. My comfort is

  that old age, that ill layer-up of beauty, can do no more

  spoil upon my face. Thou hast me, if thou hast me, at

  the worst; and thou shalt wear me, if thou wear me,

 

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