The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works
Page 148
While Philip breathes.
Enter King John, Arthur Duke of Brittaine, and Hubert
KING JOHN
Hubert, keep this boy.—Philip, make up! 5
My mother is assailed in our tent,
And ta’en I fear.
BASTARD My lord, I rescued her;
Her highness is in safety; fear you not.
But on, my liege, for very little pains
Will bring this labour to an happy end. 10
Exeunt ⌈King John and the Bastard at one door, Hubert and Arthur at another door⌉
3.3 Alarum; excursions; retreat. Enter King John, Queen Eleanor, Arthur Duke of Brittaine, the Bastard, Hubert, lords, ⌈with soldiers⌉
KING JOHN (to Queen Eleanor)
So shall it be; your grace shall stay behind
So strongly guarded. (To Arthur) Cousin, look not sad;
Thy grandam loves thee, and thy uncle will
As dear be to thee as thy father was.
ARTHUR
O, this will make my mother die with grief. 5
KING JOHN (to the Bastard)
Cousin, away for England! Haste before,
And ere our coming, see thou shake the bags
Of hoarding abbots. The fat ribs of peace
Must by the hungry now be fed upon.
Imprisoned angels set at liberty. 10
Use our commission in his utmost force.
BASTARD
Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back
When gold and silver becks me to come on.
I leave your highness.—Grandam, I will pray,
If ever I remember to be holy,
For your fair safety. So I kiss your hand.
QUEEN ELEANOR
Farewell, gentle cousin.
KING JOHN Coz, farewell. Exit the Bastard
QUEEN ELEANOR
Come hither, little kinsman. Hark, a word.
She takes Arthur aside
KING JOHN
Come hither, Hubert.He takes Hubert aside
O my gentle Hubert,
We owe thee much. Within this wall of flesh 20
There is a soul counts thee her creditor,
And with advantage means to pay thy love;
And, my good friend, thy voluntary oath
Lives in this bosom, dearly cherished.
Give me thy hand.He takes Hubert’s hand
I had a thing to say, 25
But I will fit it with some better tune.
By heaven, Hubert, I am almost ashamed
To say what good respect I have of thee.
HUBERT
I am much bounden to your majesty.
KING JOHN
Good friend, thou hast no cause to say so yet, 30
But thou shalt have; and creep time ne‘er so slow,
Yet it shall come for me to do thee good.
I had a thing to say—but let it go.
The sun is in the heaven, and the proud day,
Attended with the pleasures of the world, 35
Is all too wanton and too full of gauds
To give me audience. If the midnight bell
Did with his iron tongue and brazen mouth
Sound on into the drowsy race of night;
If this same were a churchyard where we stand, 40
And thou possessed with a thousand wrongs;
Or if that surly spirit, melancholy,
Had baked thy blood and made it heavy, thick,
Which else runs tickling up and down the veins,
Making that idiot, laughter, keep men’s eyes 45
And strain their cheeks to idle merriment—
A passion hateful to my purposes—
Or if that thou couldst see me without eyes,
Hear me without thine ears, and make reply
Without a tongue, using conceit alone,
Without eyes, ears, and harmful sound of words;
Then in despite of broad-eyed watchful day
I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts.
But, ah, I will not. Yet I love thee well,
And by my troth, I think thou lov’st me well.
HUBERT
So well that what you bid me undertake,
Though that my death were adjunct to my act,
By heaven, I would do it.
KING JOHN Do not I know thou wouldst?
Good Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, throw thine eye
On yon young boy. I’ll tell thee what, my friend,
He is a very serpent in my way,
And wheresoe’er this foot of mine doth tread,
He lies before me. Dost thou understand me?
Thou art his keeper.
HUBERT And I’ll keep him so
That he shall not offend your majesty. 65
KING JOHN
Death.
HUBERT My lord.
KING JOHN A grave.
HUBERT He shall not live.
KING JOHN Enough.
I could be merry now. Hubert, I love thee.
Well, I’ll not say what I intend for thee.
Remember. (To Queen Eleanor) Madam, fare you well.
I’ll send those powers o’er to your majesty. 70
QUEEN ELEANOR
My blessing go with thee.
KING JOHN (to Arthur) For England, cousin, go.
Hubert shall be your man, attend on you
With all true duty.—On toward Calais, ho!
Exeunt ⌈Queen Eleanor, attended, at one door, the rest at another door⌉
3.4 Enter King Philip, Louis the Dauphin, Cardinal Pandolf, and attendants
KING PHILIP
So, by a roaring tempest on the flood,
A whole armada of convicted sail
Is scattered and disjoined from fellowship.
PANDOLF
Courage and comfort; all shall yet go well.
KING PHILIP
What can go well when we have run so ill?
Are we not beaten? Is not Angers lost,
Arthur ta‘en prisoner, divers dear friends slain,
And bloody England into England gone,
O’erbearing interruption, spite of France?
LOUIS THE DAUPHIN
What he hath won, that hath he fortified. 10
So hot a speed, with such advice disposed,
Such temperate order in so fierce a cause,
Doth want example. Who hath read or heard
Of any kindred action like to this?
KING PHILIP
Well could I bear that England had this praise, 15
So we could find some pattern of our shame.Enter Constance, distracted, with her hair about her ears
Look who comes here! A grave unto a soul,
Holding th’eternal spirit against her will
In the vile prison of afflicted breath.—
I prithee, lady, go away with me. 20
CONSTANCE
Lo, now, now see the issue of your peace!
KING PHILIP
Patience, good lady; comfort, gentle Constance.
CONSTANCE
No, I defy all counsel, all redress,
But that which ends all counsel, true redress:
Death, Death, O amiable, lovely Death! 25
Thou odoriferous stench, sound rottenness!
Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,
Thou hate and terror to prosperity,
And I will kiss thy detestable bones,
And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows, 30
And ring these fingers with thy household worms,
And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,
And be a carrion monster like thyself.
Come grin on me, and I will think thou smil’st,
And buss thee as thy wife. Misery’s love, 35
O, come to me!
KING PHILIP O fair affliction, peace I
CONSTANCE
No, no, I will not, having breath to cry.
O, that my tongue wer
e in the thunder’s mouth!
Then with a passion would I shake the world,
And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy,
Which cannot hear a lady’s feeble voice,
Which scorns a modern invocation.
PANDOLF
Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow.
CONSTANCE
Thou art not holy to belie me so.
I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;
My name is Constance; I was Geoffrey’s wife;
Young Arthur is my son; and he is lost.
I am not mad; I would to God I were,
For then ’tis like I should forget myself.
O,if I could, what grief should I forget ! 50
Preach some philosophy to make me mad,
And thou shalt be canonized, Cardinal.
For, being not mad, but sensible of grief,
My reasonable part produces reason
How I may be delivered of these woes, 55
And teaches me to kill or hang myself.
If I were mad I should forget my son,
Or madly think a babe of clouts were he.
I am not mad; too well, too well I feel
The different plague of each calamity. 60
KING PHILIP
Bind up those tresses. O,what love I note
In the fair multitude of those her hairs!
Where but by chance a silver drop hath fallen,
Even to that drop ten thousand wiry friends
Do glue themselves in sociable grief, 65
Like true, inseparable, faithful loves,
Sticking together in calamity.
CONSTANCE
To England, if you will.
KING PHILIP Bind up your hairs.
CONSTANCE
Yes, that I will. And wherefore will I do it?
I tore them from their bonds, and cried aloud,
‘O that these hands could so redeem my son,
As they have given these hairs their liberty!’
But now I envy at their liberty,
And will again commit them to their bonds,
Because my poor child is a prisoner. 75
She binds up her hair
And Father Cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven.
If that be true, I shall see my boy again;
For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday suspire, 80
There was not such a gracious creature born.
But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud,
And chase the native beauty from his cheek;
And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague’s fit,
And so he’ll die; and rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven,
I shall not know him; therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.
PANDOLF
You hold too heinous a respect of grief.
CONSTANCE
He talks to me that never had a son.
KING PHILIP
You are as fond of grief as of your child.
CONSTANCE
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then have I reason to be fond of grief.
Fare you well. Had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do. 100
⌈She unbinds her hair⌉
I will not keep this form upon my head
When there is such disorder in my wit.
O Lord, my boy, my Arthur, my fair son,
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world, 104
My widow-comfort, and my sorrow’s cure! Exit
KING PHILIP
I fear some outrage, and I’ll follow her. Exit ⌈attended⌉
LOUIS THE DAUPHIN
There’s nothing in this world can make me joy.
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale,
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man;
And bitter shame hath spoiled the sweet world’s taste,
That it yields naught but shame and bitterness. 111
PANDOLF
Before the curing of a strong disease,
Even in the instant of repair and health,
The fit is strongest. Evils that take leave,
On their departure most of all show evil. 115
What have you lost by losing of this day?
LOUIS THE DAUPHIN
All days of glory, joy, and happiness.
PANDOLF
If you had won it, certainly you had.
No, no; when Fortune means to men most good,
She looks upon them with a threat‘ning eye.
’Tis strange to think how much King John hath lost
In this which he accounts so clearly won.
Are not you grieved that Arthur is his prisoner?
LOUIS THE DAUPHIN
As heartily as he is glad he hath him.
PANDOLF
Your mind is all as youthful as your blood. 125
Now hear me speak with a prophetic spirit,
For even the breath of what I mean to speak
Shall blow each dust, each straw, each little rub,
Out of the path which shall directly lead
Thy foot to England’s throne. And therefore mark.
John hath seized Arthur, and it cannot be
That whiles warm life plays in that infant’s veins
The misplaced John should entertain an hour,
One minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest.
A sceptre snatched with an unruly hand
Must be as boisterously maintained as gained;
And he that stands upon a slipp’ry place
Makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up.
That John may stand, then Arthur needs must fall;
So be it, for it cannot be but so.
LOUIS THE DAUPHIN
But what shall I gain by young Arthur’s fall?
PANDOLF
You, in the right of Lady Blanche your wife,
May then make all the claim that Arthur did.
LOUIS THE DAUPHIN
And lose it, life and all, as Arthur did.
PANDOLF
How green you are, and fresh in this old world 145
John lays you plots; the times conspire with you;
For he that steeps his safety in true blood
Shall find but bloody safety and untrue.
This act, so vilely born, shall cool the hearts
Of all his people, and freeze up their zeal,
That none so small advantage shall step forth
To check his reign but they will cherish it;
No natural exhalation in the sky,
No scope of nature, no distempered day,
No common wind, no customèd event, 155
But they will pluck away his natural cause,
And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs,
Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven
Plainly denouncing vengeance upon John.
LOUIS THE DAUPHIN
Maybe he will not touch young Arthur’s life,
But hold himself safe in his prisonment.
PANDOLF
O sir, when he shall hear of your approach,
If that young Arthur be not gone already,
Even at that news he dies; and then the hearts
Of all his people shall revolt from him,
And kiss the lips of unacquainted change,
And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath
Out of the bloody fingers’ ends of John.
Methinks I see this hurly all on foot,
And O, what bet
ter matter breeds for you 170
Than I have named! The Bastard Falconbridge
Is now in England, ransacking the Church,
Offending charity. If but a dozen French
Were there in arms, they would be as a call
To train ten thousand English to their side, 175
Or as a little snow tumbled about
Anon becomes a mountain. O noble Dauphin,
Go with me to the King. ’Tis wonderful
What may be wrought out of their discontent
Now that their souls are top-full of offence. 180
For England, go! I will whet on the King.
LOUIS THE DAUPHIN
Strong reasons make strange actions. Let us go.
If you say ay, the King will not say no. Exeunt
4.1 Enter Hubert, and Executioners with a rope and irons
HUBERT
Heat me these irons hot, and look thou stand
Within the arras. When I strike my foot
Upon the bosom of the ground, rush forth
And bind the boy which you shall find with me
Fast to the chair. Be heedful. Hence, and watch! 5
EXECUTIONER
I hope your warrant will bear out the deed.
HUBERT
Uncleanly scruples: fear not you. Look to’t!⌈The Executioners withdraw behind the arras⌉
Young lad, come forth, I have to say with you.
Enter Arthur Duke of Brittaine
ARTHUR
Good morrow, Hubert.
Good morrow, little Prince.
ARTHUR
As little prince, having so great a title 10
To be more prince, as may be. You are sad.
HUBERT
Indeed I have been merrier.
ARTHURMercy on me!
Methinks nobody should be sad but I.
Yet I remember, when I was in France,
Young gentlemen would be as sad as night 15
Only for wantonness. By my christendom,
So I were out of prison and kept sheep,
I should be as merry as the day is long;
And so I would be here, but that I doubt
My uncle practises more harm to me. 20
He is afraid of me, and I of him.
Is it my fault that I was Geoffrey’s son?
No, indeed is’t not, and I would to God
I were your son, so you would love me, Hubert.
HUBERT (aside)
If I talk to him, with his innocent prate 25
He will awake my mercy, which lies dead;
Therefore I will be sudden, and dispatch.