This must be answer’d, either here or hence.
KING JOHN
Why do you bend such solemn brows on me?
90
Think you I bear the shears of destiny?
Have I commandment on the pulse of life?
SALISBURY It is apparent foul-play; and ’tis shame
That greatness should so grossly offer it:
So thrive it in your game! and so, farewell.
95
PEMBROKE Stay yet, Lord Salisbury; I’ll go with thee,
And find th’ inheritance of this poor child,
His little kingdom of a forced grave.
That blood which ow’d the breadth of all this isle
Three foot of it doth hold: bad world the while!
100
This must not be thus borne: this will break out
To all our sorrows, and ere long I doubt.
Exeunt Lords.
KING JOHN They burn in indignation.
Enter a Messenger.
I repent:
There is no sure foundation set on blood,
No certain life achiev’d by others’ death.
105
[to the Messenger] A fearful eye thou hast: where is that blood
That I have seen inhabit in those cheeks?
So foul a sky clears not without a storm:
Pour down thy weather: how goes all in France?
MESSENGER
From France to England. Never such a power
110
For any foreign preparation
Was levied in the body of a land.
The copy of your speed is learn’d by them;
For when you should be told they do prepare
The tidings comes that they are all arriv’d.
115
KING JOHN O, where hath our intelligence been drunk?
Where hath it slept? Where is my mother’s care,
That such an army could be drawn in France,
And she not hear of it?
MESSENGER My liege, her ear
Is stopp’d with dust: the first of April died
120
Your noble mother; and, as I hear, my lord,
The Lady Constance in a frenzy died
Three days before: but this from rumour’s tongue
I idly heard; if true or false I know not.
KING JOHN Withhold thy speed, dreadful occasion!
125
O, make a league with me, till I have pleas’d
My discontented peers! What! mother dead!
How wildly then walks my estate in France!
Under whose conduct came those powers of France
That thou for truth giv’st out are landed here?
130
MESSENGER Under the Dolphin.
Enter the Bastard and PETER of Pomfret.
KING JOHN Thou hast made me giddy
With these ill tidings. – Now, what says the world
To your proceedings? do not seek to stuff
My head with more ill news, for it is full.
BASTARD But if you be afeard to hear the worst,
135
Then let the worst unheard fall on your head.
KING JOHN Bear with me, cousin; for I was amaz’d
Under the tide: but now I breathe again
Aloft the flood, and can give audience
To any tongue, speak it of what it will.
140
BASTARD How I have sped among the clergymen
The sums I have collected shall express.
But as I travaill’d hither through the land
I find the people strangely fantasied;
Possess’d with rumours, full of idle dreams,
145
Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear.
And here’s a prophet, that I brought with me
From forth the streets of Pomfret, whom I found
With many hundreds treading on his heels;
To whom he sung, in rude harsh-sounding rhymes,
150
That, ere the next Ascension-day at noon,
Your highness should deliver up your crown.
KING JOHN
Thou idle dreamer, wherefore didst thou so?
PETER Foreknowing that the truth will fall out so.
KING JOHN Hubert, away with him; imprison him:
155
And on that day at noon, whereon he says
I shall yield up my crown, let him be hang’d.
Deliver him to safety, and return,
For I must use thee. Exit Hubert with Peter.
O my gentle cousin,
Hear’st thou the news abroad, who are arriv’d?
160
BASTARD
The French, my lord: men’s mouths are full of it.
Besides, I met Lord Bigot and Lord Salisbury,
With eyes as red as new-enkindled fire,
And others more, going to seek the grave
Of Arthur, whom they say is kill’d to-night
165
On your suggestion.
KING JOHN Gentle kinsman, go,
And thrust thyself into their companies.
I have a way to win their loves again;
Bring them before me.
BASTARD I will seek them out.
KING JOHN Nay, but make haste: the better foot before!
170
O, let me have no subject enemies,
When adverse foreigners affright my towns
With dreadful pomp of stout invasion!
Be Mercury, set feathers to thy heels,
And fly like thought from them to me again.
175
BASTARD The spirit of the time shall teach me speed.
Exit.
KING JOHN Spoke like a sprightful noble gentleman.
Go after him; for he perhaps shall need
Some messenger betwixt me and the peers;
And be thou he.
MESSENGER With all my heart, my liege. Exit.
180
KING JOHN My mother dead!
Re-enter HUBERT.
HUBERT
My lord, they say five moons were seen to-night:
Four fixed, and the fift did whirl about
The other four in wondrous motion.
KING JOHN Five moons?
HUBERT Old men and beldams in the streets
185
Do prophesy upon it dangerously:
Young Arthur’s death is common in their mouths:
And when they talk of him, they shake their heads
And whisper one another in the ear;
And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer’s wrist,
190
Whilst he that hears makes fearful action,
With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes.
I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,
The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool,
With open mouth swallowing a tailor’s news;
195
Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,
Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste
Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet,
Told of a many thousand warlike French
That were embattailed and rank’d in Kent:
200
Another lean unwash’d artificer
Cuts off his tale and talks of Arthur’s death.
KING JOHN
Why seek’st thou to possess me with these fears?
Why urgest thou so oft young Arthur’s death?
Thy hand hath murd’red him: I had a mighty cause
205
To wish him dead, but thou hadst none to kill him.
HUBERT
No had, my lord! why, did you not provoke me?
KING JOHN It is the curse of kings to be attended
By slaves that take their humours for a warrant
To break within the bloody house of life,
210
An
d on the winking of authority
To understand a law, to know the meaning
Of dangerous majesty, when perchance it frowns
More upon humour than advis’d respect.
HUBERT Here is your hand and seal for what I did.
215
KING JOHN
O, when the last accompt ’twixt heaven and earth
Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal
Witness against us to damnation!
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds
Make deeds ill done! Hadst not thou been by,
220
A fellow by the hand of nature mark’d,
Quoted and sign’d to do a deed of shame,
This murther had not come into my mind;
But taking note of thy abhorr’d aspect,
Finding thee fit for bloody villainy,
225
Apt, liable to be employ’d in danger,
I faintly broke with thee of Arthur’s death;
And thou, to be endeared to a king,
Made it no conscience to destroy a prince.
HUBERT My lord –
230
KING JOHN
Hadst thou but shook thy head or made a pause
When I spake darkly what I purposed,
Or turn’d an eye of doubt upon my face,
As bid me tell my tale in express words,
Deep shame had struck me dumb, made me break off,
235
And those thy fears might have wrought fears in me:
But thou didst understand me by my signs
And didst in signs again parley with sin;
Yea, without stop, didst let thy heart consent,
And consequently thy rude hand to act
240
The deed, which both our tongues held vild to name.
Out of my sight, and never see me more!
My nobles leave me, and my state is brav’d,
Even at my gates, with ranks of foreign powers:
Nay, in the body of this fleshly land,
245
This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath,
Hostility and civil tumult reigns
Between my conscience and my cousin’s death.
HUBERT Arm you against your other enemies,
I’ll make a peace between your soul and you.
250
Young Arthur is alive: this hand of mine
Is yet a maiden and an innocent hand,
Not painted with the crimson spots of blood.
Within this bosom never ent’red yet
The dreadful motion of a murderous thought;
255
And you have slander’d nature in my form,
Which, howsoever rude exteriorly,
Is yet the cover of a fairer mind
Than to be butcher of an innocent child.
KING JOHN
Doth Arthur live? O, haste thee to the peers,
260
Throw this report on their incensed rage,
And make them tame to their obedience!
Forgive the comment that my passion made
Upon thy feature; for my rage was blind,
And foul imaginary eyes of blood
265
Presented thee more hideous than thou art.
O, answer not, but to my closet bring
The angry lords with all expedient haste.
I conjure thee but slowly: run more fast! Exeunt.
4.3 Enter ARTHUR, on the walls.
ARTHUR The wall is high, and yet will I leap down:
Good ground, be pitiful and hurt me not!
There’s few or none do know me: if they did,
This ship-boy’s semblance hath disguis’d me quite.
I am afraid; and yet I’ll venture it.
5
If I get down, and do not break my limbs,
I’ll find a thousand shifts to get away:
As good to die and go, as die and stay.
[He leaps, and lies momentarily in a trance.]
O me! my uncle’s spirit is in these stones:
Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones!
10
[Dies.]
Enter PEMBROKE, SALISBURY and BIGOT.
SALISBURY
Lords, I will meet him at Saint Edmundsbury:
It is our safety, and we must embrace
This gentle offer of the perilous time.
PEMBROKE Who brought that letter from the cardinal?
SALISBURY The Count Melun, a noble lord of France;
15
Whose private with me of the Dolphin’s love
Is much more general than these lines import.
BIGOT To-morrow morning let us meet him then.
SALISBURY Or rather then set forward; for ’twill be
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 270