The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  HUBERT

  Who’s there? Speak, ho! Speak quickly, or I shoot.

  BASTARD

  A friend. What art thou?

  HUBERT Of the part of England.

  BASTARD

  Whither dost thou go?

  HUBERT What’s that to thee?

  Why may not I demand of thine affairs

  As well as thou of mine?

  BASTARD Hubert, I think.

  HUBERT Thou hast a perfect thought.

  I will upon all hazards well believe

  Thou art my friend that know’st my tongue so well.

  Who art thou?

  BASTARD Who thou wilt. An if thou please,

  Thou mayst befriend me so much as to think

  I come one way of the Plantagenets.

  HUBERT

  Unkind remembrance! Thou and eyeless night

  Have done me shame. Brave soldier, pardon me

  That any accent breaking from thy tongue

  Should ’scape the true acquaintance of mine ear.

  BASTARD

  Come, come, sans compliment. What news abroad?

  HUBERT

  Why, here walk I in the black brow of night

  To find you out.

  BASTARD Brief, then, and what’s the news?

  HUBERT

  O my sweet sir, news fitting to the night:

  Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible.

  BASTARD

  Show me the very wound of this ill news;

  I am no woman, I’ll not swoon at it.

  HUBERT

  The King, I fear, is poisoned by a monk.

  I left him almost speechless, and broke out

  To acquaint you with this evil, that you might

  The better arm you to the sudden time

  Than if you had at leisure known of this.

  BASTARD

  How did he take it? Who did taste to him?

  HUBERT

  A monk, I tell you, a resolved villain,

  Whose bowels suddenly burst out. The King

  Yet speaks, and peradventure may recover.

  BASTARD

  Who didst thou leave to tend his majesty?

  HUBERT

  Why, know you not? The lords are all come back,

  And brought Prince Henry in their company,

  At whose request the King hath pardoned them,

  And they are all about his majesty.

  BASTARD

  Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven,

  And tempt us not to bear above our power.

  I’ll tell thee, Hubert, half my power this night,

  Passing these flats, are taken by the tide.

  These Lincoln Washes have devoured them;

  Myself, well mounted, hardly have escaped.

  Away before! Conduct me to the King.

  I doubt he will be dead or ere I come. Exeunt

  5.7 Enter Prince Henry, the Earl of Salisbury, and Lord Bigot

  PRINCE HENRY

  It is too late. The life of all his blood

  Is touched corruptibly, and his pure brain,

  Which some suppose the soul’s frail dwelling-house,

  Doth by the idle comments that it makes

  Foretell the ending of mortality.

  Enter the Earl of Pembroke

  PEMBROKE

  His highness yet doth speak, and holds belief

  That being brought into the open air,

  It would allay the burning quality

  Of that fell poison which assaileth him.

  PRINCE HENRY

  Let him be brought into the orchard here.—⌈Exit Lord Bigot⌉

  Doth he still rage?

  PEMBROKE He is more patient

  Than when you left him. Even now, he sung.

  PRINCE HENRY

  O, vanity of sickness! Fierce extremes

  In their continuance will not feel themselves.

  Death, having preyed upon the outward parts,

  Leaves them invincible, and his siege is now

  Against the mind; the which he pricks and wounds

  With many legions of strange fantasies,

  Which in their throng and press to that last hold

  Confound themselves. ’Tis strange that death should

  sing.

  I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,

  Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,

  And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings

  His soul and body to their lasting rest.

  SALISBURY

  Be of good comfort, Prince, for you are born

  To set a form upon that indigest

  Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude.

  King John is brought in, ⌈with Lord Bigot attending⌉

  KING JOHN

  Ay marry, now my soul hath elbow-room;

  It would not out at windows nor at doors.

  There is so hot a summer in my bosom

  That all my bowels crumble up to dust;

  I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen

  Upon a parchment, and against this fire

  Do I shrink up.

  PRINCE HENRY How fares your majesty?

  KING JOHN

  Poisoned, ill fare! Dead, forsook, cast off;

  And none of you will bid the winter come

  To thrust his icy fingers in my maw,

  Nor let my kingdom’s rivers take their course

  Through my burned bosom, nor entreat the north

  To make his bleak winds kiss my parchèd lips 40

  And comfort me with cold. I do not ask you much;

  I beg cold comfort, and you are so strait

  And so ingrateful you deny me that.

  PRINCE HENRY

  O, that there were some virtue in my tears

  That might relieve you!

  KING JOHN The salt in them is hot.

  Within me is a hell, and there the poison

  Is, as a fiend, confined to tyrannize

  On unreprievable condemned blood.

  Enter the Bastard

  BASTARD

  O, I am scalded with my violent motion

  And spleen of speed to see your majesty!

  KING JOHN

  O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye.

  The tackle of my heart is cracked and burnt,

  And all the shrouds wherewith my life should sail

  Are turned to one thread, one little hair;

  My heart hath one poor string to stay it by,

  Which holds but till thy news be uttered,

  And then all this thou seest is but a clod

  And module of confounded royalty.

  BASTARD

  The Dauphin is preparing hitherward,

  Where God He knows how we shall answer him;

  For in a night the best part of my power,

  As I upon advantage did remove,

  Were in the Washes all unwarily

  Devoured by the unexpected flood.

  King John dies

  SALISBURY

  You breathe these dead news in as dead an ear.

  (To King John) My liege, my lord!—But now a king,

  now thus.

  PRINCE HENRY

  Even so must I run on, and even so stop.

  What surety of the world, what hope, what stay,

  When this was now a king and now is clay?

  BASTARD (to King John)

  Art thou gone so? I do but stay behind

  To do the office for thee of revenge,

  And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven,

  As it on earth hath been thy servant still.

  (To the lords) Now, now, you stars that move in your

  right spheres,

  Where be your powers? Show now your mended

  faiths,

  And instantly return with me again,

  To push destruction and perpetual shame

  Out of the weak door of our fainting land.

  Straight let us seek, or
straight we shall be sought.

  The Dauphin rages at our very heels.

  SALISBURY

  It seems you know not, then, so much as we.

  The Cardinal Pandolf is within at rest,

  Who half an hour since came from the Dauphin,

  And brings from him such offers of our peace

  As we with honour and respect may take,

  With purpose presently to leave this war.

  BASTARD

  He will the rather do it when he sees

  Ourselves well-sinewed to our own defence.

  SALISBURY

  Nay, ’tis in a manner done already,

  For many carriages he hath dispatched

  To the sea-side, and put his cause and quarrel

  To the disposing of the Cardinal,

  With whom yourself, myself, and other lords,

  If you think meet, this afternoon will post

  To consummate this business happily.

  BASTARD

  Let it be so.—And you, my noble prince,

  With other princes that may best be spared,

  Shall wait upon your father’s funeral.

  PRINCE HENRY

  At Worcester must his body be interred,

  For so he willed it.

  BASTARD Thither shall it then, 100

  And happily may your sweet self put on

  The lineal state and glory of the land,

  To whom with all submission, on my knee,

  I do bequeath my faithful services

  And true subjection everlastingly. 105

  He kneels

  SALISBURY

  And the like tender of our love we make,

  To rest without a spot for evermore.

  Salisbury, Pembroke and Bigot kneel

  PRINCE HENRY

  I have a kind of soul that would give thanks,

  And knows not how to do it but with tears.

  He weeps

  BASTARD ⌈rising⌉

  O, let us pay the time but needful woe,

  Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.

  This England never did, nor never shall,

  Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror

  But when it first did help to wound itself.

  Now these her princes are come home again,

  Come the three corners of the world in arms

  And we shall shock them. Naught shall make us rue

  If England to itself do rest but true.

  ⌈Flourish.⌉ Exeunt ⌈with the body⌉

  THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

  ENTRY of ‘a book of The Merchant of Venice or otherwise called The Jew of Venice’ in the Stationers’ Register on 22July 1598 probably represents an attempt by Shakespeare’s company to prevent the unauthorized printing of a popular play: it eventually appeared in print as ‘The Comical History of the Merchant of Venice’ in 1600, when it was said to have ‘been divers times acted by the Lord Chamberlain his servants’; probably Shakespeare wrote it in 1596 or 1597. The alternative title—The Jew of Venice—may reflect Shylock’s impact on the play’s first audiences.

  The play is constructed on the basis of two romantic tales using motifs well known to sixteenth-century readers. The story of Giannetto (Shakespeare’s Bassanio) and the Lady (Portia) of Belmont comes from an Italian collection of fifty stories published under the title of II Pecorone (‘the big sheep’, or ‘dunce’) and attributed to one Ser Giovanni of Fiorentino. Written in the later part of the fourteenth century, the volume did not appear until 1558. No sixteenth-century translation is known, so (unless there was a lost intermediary) Shakespeare must have read it in Italian. It gave him the main outline of the plot involving Antonio (the merchant), Bassanio (the wooer), Portia, and the Jew (Shylock). The pound of flesh motif was available also in other versions, one of which, in Alexander Silvayn’s The Orator (translated 1596), influenced the climactic scene (4.1) in which Shylock attempts to exact the full penalty of his bond.

  In the story from II Pecorone the lady (a widow) challenges her suitors to seduce her, on pain of the forfeiture of their wealth, and thwarts them by drugging their wine. Shakespeare more romantically shows a maiden required by her father’s will to accept only a wooer who will forswear marriage if he fails to make the right choice among caskets of gold, silver and lead. The story of the caskets was readily available in versions by John Gower (in his Confessio Amantis) and Giovanni Boccaccio (in his Decameron), and in an anonymous anthology (the Gesta Romanorum). Shakespeare added the character ofJessica, Shylock’s daughter who elopes with the Christian Lorenzo—perhaps influenced by episodes in Christopher Marlowe’s play The Jew of Malta (c.1589)—and made many adjustments to the stories from which he borrowed.

  The Merchant of Venice is a natural development from Shakespeare’s earlier comedies, especially The Two Gentlemen of Verona, with its heroine disguised as a boy and its portrayal of the competing demands of love and friendship. But Portia is the first of his great romantic heroines, and Shylock his first great comic antagonist. Though the play grew out of fairy tales, its moral scheme is not entirely clear cut: the Christians are open to criticism, the Jew is true to his own code of conduct. The response of twentieth-century and later audiences has been complicated by racial issues; in any case, the role of Shylock affords such strong opportunities for an actor capable of arousing an undercurrent of sympathy for a vindictive character that it has sometimes unbalanced the play in performance. But the so-called trial scene (4.1) is unfailing in its impact on audiences, and the closing episodes modulate skilfully from romantic lyricism to high comedy, while sustaining the play’s concern with true and false values.

  THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

  ANTONIO, a merchant of Venice

  BASSANIO, his friend and Portia’s suitor

  LEONARDO, Bassanio’s servant

  SHYLOCK, a Jew

  JESSICA, his daughter

  TUBAL, a Jew

  LANCELOT, a clown, first Shylock’s servant and then Bassanio’s

  GOBBO, his father

  PORTIA, an heiress

  NERISSA, her waiting-gentlewoman

  DUKE of Venice

  Magnificoes of Venice

  A jailer, attendants, and servants

  The Comical History of the Merchant of Venice, or Otherwise Called the Jew of Venice

  1.1 Enter Antonio, Salerio, and Solanio

  ANTONIO

  In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.

  It wearies me, you say it wearies you,

  But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,

  What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,

  I am to learn;

  And such a want-wit sadness makes of me

  That I have much ado to know myself.

  SALERIO

  Your mind is tossing on the ocean,

  There where your argosies with portly sail,

  Like signors and rich burghers on the flood—

  Or as it were the pageants of the sea—

  Do overpeer the petty traffickers

  That curtsy to them, do them reverence,

  As they fly by them with their woven wings.

  SOLANIO (to Antonio)

  Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth

  The better part of my affections would

  Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still

  Plucking the grass to know where sits the wind,

  Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads,

  And every object that might make me fear

  Misfortune to my ventures out of doubt

  Would make me sad.

  SALERIO My wind cooling my broth

  Would blow me to an ague when I thought

  What harm a wind too great might do at sea.

  I should not see the sandy hour-glass run

  But I should think of shallows and of flats,

  And see my wealthy Andrew, decks in sand,

  Vailing her hightop lower than her ribs

  To kiss he
r burial. Should I go to church

  And see the holy edifice of stone 30

  And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks

  Which, touching but my gentle vessel’s side,

  Would scatter all her spices on the stream,

  Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks,

  And, in a word, but even now worth this,

  And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought

  To think on this, and shall I lack the thought

  That such a thing bechanced would make me sad?

  But tell not me. I know Antonio

  Is sad to think upon his merchandise.

  ANTONIO

  Believe me, no. I thank my fortune for it,

  My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,

  Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate

  Upon the fortune of this present year.

  Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad.

  SOLANIO

  Why then, you are in love.

  ANTONIOFie, fie.

  SOLANIO

  Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad

  Because you are not merry, and ’twere as easy

  For you to laugh, and leap, and say you are merry

  Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus,

  Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time:

  Some that will evermore peep through their eyes

  And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper,

  And other of such vinegar aspect

  That they’ll not show their teeth in way of smile

  Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

  Enter Bassanio, Lorenzo, and Graziano

  Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kinsman,

  Graziano, and Lorenzo. Fare ye well.

  We leave you now with better company.

  SALERIO

  I would have stayed till I had made you merry

  If worthier friends had not prevented me.

  ANTONIO

  Your worth is very dear in my regard.

  I take it your own business calls on you,

  And you embrace th’occasion to depart.

  SALERIO Good morrow, my good lords. 65

  BASSANIO

  Good signors both, when shall we laugh? Say, when?

  You grow exceeding strange. Must it be so?

  SALERIO

  We’ll make our leisures to attend on yours.