The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 263
Together with that pale, that white-fac’d shore,
Whose foot spurns back the ocean’s roaring tides
And coops from other lands her islanders,
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Even till that England, hedg’d in with the main,
That water-walled bulwark, still secure
And confident from foreign purposes,
Even till that utmost corner of the west
Salute thee for her king; till then, fair boy,
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Will I not think of home, but follow arms.
CONSTANCE
O, take his mother’s thanks, a widow’s thanks,
Till your strong hand shall help to give him strength
To make a more requital to your love!
AUSTRIA
The peace of heaven is theirs that lift their swords
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In such a just and charitable war.
KING PHILIP Well then, to work; our cannon shall be bent
Against the brows of this resisting town.
Call for our chiefest men of discipline,
To cull the plots of best advantages:
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We’ll lay before this town our royal bones,
Wade to the market-place in Frenchmen’s blood,
But we will make it subject to this boy.
CONSTANCE Stay for an answer to your embassy,
Lest unadvis’d you stain your swords with blood:
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My Lord Chatillon may from England bring
That right in peace which here we urge in war,
And then we shall repent each drop of blood
That hot rash haste so indirectly shed.
Enter CHATILLON.
KING PHILIP A wonder, lady! lo, upon thy wish,
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Our messenger Chatillon is arriv’d!
What England says, say briefly, gentle lord;
We coldly pause for thee; Chatillon, speak.
CHATILLON
Then turn your forces from this paltry siege
And stir them up against a mightier task.
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England, impatient of your just demands,
Hath put himself in arms: the adverse winds,
Whose leisure I have stay’d, have given him time
To land his legions all as soon as I;
His marches are expedient to this town,
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His forces strong, his soldiers confident.
With him along is come the mother-queen,
An Ate, stirring him to blood and strife;
With her her niece, the Lady Blanche of Spain;
With them a bastard of the king’s deceas’d,
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And all th’unsettled humours of the land;
Rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntaries,
With ladies’ faces and fierce dragons’ spleens,
Have sold their fortunes at their native homes,
Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs,
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To make a hazard of new fortunes here:
In brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits
Than now the English bottoms have waft o’er
Did never float upon the swelling tide,
To do offence and scathe in Christendom.
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[Drum beats.]
The interruption of their churlish drums
Cuts off more circumstance: they are at hand,
To parley or to fight; therefore prepare.
KING PHILIP How much unlook’d for is this expedition!
AUSTRIA By how much unexpected, by so much
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We must awake endeavour for defence,
For courage mounteth with occasion:
Let them be welcome then; we are prepar’d.
Enter KING JOHN, ELEANOR, BLANCHE, the Bastard, lords and forces.
KING JOHN
Peace be to France, if France in peace permit
Our just and lineal entrance to our own;
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If not, bleed France, and peace ascend to heaven,
Whiles we, God’s wrathful agent, do correct
Their proud contempt that beats His peace to heaven.
KING PHILIP Peace be to England, if that war return
From France to England, there to live in peace.
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England we love; and for that England’s sake
With burden of our armour here we sweat.
This toil of ours should be a work of thine;
But thou from loving England art so far,
That thou hast underwrought his lawful king,
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Cut off the sequence of posterity,
Outfaced infant state, and done a rape
Upon the maiden virtue of the crown.
Look here upon thy brother Geoffrey’s face;
These eyes, these brows, were moulded out of his:
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This little abstract doth contain that large
Which died in Geoffrey: and the hand of time
Shall draw this brief into as huge a volume.
That Geoffrey was thy elder brother born,
And this his son; England was Geoffrey’s right,
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And this is Geoffrey’s; in the name of God
How comes it then that thou art call’d a king,
When living blood doth in these temples beat,
Which owe the crown that thou o’ermasterest?
KING JOHN
From whom hast thou this great commission, France,
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To draw my answer from thy articles?
KING PHILIP
From that supernal judge that stirs good thoughts
In any beast of strong authority
To look into the blots and stains of right.
That judge hath made me guardian to this boy:
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Under whose warrant I impeach thy wrong
And by whose help I mean to chastise it.
KING JOHN Alack, thou dost usurp authority.
KING PHILIP Excuse it is to beat usurping down.
ELEANOR Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?
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CONSTANCE Let me make answer: thy usurping son.
ELEANOR Out, insolent! thy bastard shall be king,
That thou mayst be a queen, and check the world!
CONSTANCE My bed was ever to thy son as true
As thine was to thy husband; and this boy
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Liker in feature to his father Geoffrey
Than thou and John in manners; being as like
As rain to water, or devil to his dam.
My boy a bastard! By my soul, I think
His father never was so true begot:
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It cannot be and if thou wert his mother.
ELEANOR
There’s a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.
CONSTANCE
There’s a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee.
AUSTRIA Peace!
BASTARD Hear the crier!
AUSTRIA What the devil art thou?
BASTARD One that will play the devil, sir, with you,
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And a may catch your hide and you alone:
You are the hare of whom the proverb goes,
Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard.
I’ll smoke your skin-coat, and I catch you right;
Sirrah, look to’t; i’faith I will, i’faith.
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BLANCHE O, well did he become that lion’s robe
That did disrobe the lion of that robe!
BASTARD It lies as sightly on the back of him
As great Alcides’ shoes upon an ass:
But, ass, I’ll take that burthen from your back,
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Or lay on that shall make your shoulders crack.
AUSTRIA What cracker is this same that deafs our ears
With this abundance of superfluous breath?
KING PHILIP
Lewis, determine what we shall do straight.
LEWIS Women and fools, break off your conference.
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KING PHILIP King John, this is the very sum of all:
England and Ireland, Anjou, Touraine, Maine,
In right of Arthur do I claim of thee.
Wilt thou resign them and lay down thy arms?
KING JOHN My life as soon: I do defy thee, France.
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Arthur of Britain, yield thee to my hand;
And out of my dear love I’ll give thee more
Than e’er the coward hand of France can win:
Submit thee, boy.
ELEANOR Come to thy grandam, child.
CONSTANCE Do, child, go to it grandam, child;
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Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig:
There’s a good grandam.
ARTHUR Good my mother, peace!
I would that I were low laid in my grave:
I am not worth this coil that’s made for me.
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ELEANOR
His mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps.
CONSTANCE
Now shame upon you, whe’r she does or no!
His grandam’s wrongs, and not his mother’s shames,
Draws those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes,
Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee;
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Ay, with these crystal beads heaven shall be brib’d
To do him justice and revenge on you.
ELEANOR
Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!
CONSTANCE
Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth!
Call not me slanderer; thou and thine usurp
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The dominations, royalties and rights
Of this oppressed boy: this is thy eldest son’s son,
Infortunate in nothing but in thee:
Thy sins are visited in this poor child;
The canon of the law is laid on him,
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Being but the second generation
Removed from thy sin-conceiving womb.
KING JOHN Bedlam, have done.
CONSTANCE I have but this to say,
That he is not only plagued for her sin,
But God hath made her sin and her the plague
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On this removed issue, plagued for her
And with her plague; her sin his injury,
Her injury the beadle to her sin,
All punish’d in the person of this child,
And all for her; a plague upon her!
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ELEANOR Thou unadvised scold, I can produce
A will that bars the title of thy son.
CONSTANCE Ay, who doubts that? a will! a wicked will;
A woman’s will; a cank’red grandam’s will!
KING PHILIP Peace, lady! pause, or be more temperate:
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It ill beseems this presence to cry aim
To these ill-tuned repetitions.
Some trumpet summon hither to the walls
These men of Angiers: let us hear them speak
Whose title they admit, Arthur’s or John’s.
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Trumpet sounds. Enter HUBERT upon the walls.
HUBERT Who is it that hath warn’d us to the walls?
KING PHILIP ’Tis France, for England.
KING JOHN England, for itself.
You men of Angiers, and my loving subjects –
KING PHILIP
You loving men of Angiers, Arthur’s subjects,
Our trumpet call’d you to this gentle parle –
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KING JOHN For our advantage; therefore hear us first.
These flags of France, that are advanced here
Before the eye and prospect of your town,
Have hither march’d to your endamagement.
The cannons have their bowels full of wrath,
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And ready mounted are they to spit forth
Their iron indignation ’gainst your walls:
All preparation for a bloody siege
And merciless proceeding by these French
Comforts your city’s eyes, your winking gates;
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And but for our approach those sleeping stones,
That as a waist doth girdle you about,
By the compulsion of their ordinance
By this time from their fixed beds of lime
Had been dishabited, and wide havoc made
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For bloody power to rush upon your peace.
But on the sight of us your lawful king,
Who painfully with much expedient march