The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 198
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,