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Complete Plays, The

Page 154

by William Shakespeare


  His passion is so ripe, it needs must break.

  Pembroke

  And when it breaks, I fear will issue thence

  The foul corruption of a sweet child’s death.

  King John

  We cannot hold mortality’s strong hand:

  Good lords, although my will to give is living,

  The suit which you demand is gone and dead:

  He tells us Arthur is deceased to-night.

  Salisbury

  Indeed we fear’d his sickness was past cure.

  Pembroke

  Indeed we heard how near his death he was

  Before the child himself felt he was sick:

  This must be answer’d either here or hence.

  King John

  Why do you bend such solemn brows on me?

  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.

  Pembroke

  Stay yet, Lord Salisbury; I’ll go with thee,

  And find the inheritance of this poor child,

  His little kingdom of a forced grave.

  That blood which owed the breadth of all this isle,

  Three foot of it doth hold: bad world the while!

  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. I repent:

  There is no sure foundation set on blood,

  No certain life achieved by others’ death.

  Enter a 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

  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 come that they are all arrived.

  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

  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!

  O, make a league with me, till I have pleased

  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 givest out are landed here?

  Messenger

  Under the Dauphin.

  King John

  Thou hast made me giddy

  With these ill tidings.

  Enter the Bastard and Peter of Pomfret

  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,

  Then let the worst unheard fall on your bead.

  King John

  Bear with me cousin, for I was amazed

  Under the tide: but now I breathe again

  Aloft the flood, and can give audience

  To any tongue, speak it of what it will.

  Bastard

  How I have sped among the clergymen,

  The sums I have collected shall express.

  But as I travell’d hither through the land,

  I find the people strangely fantasied;

  Possess’d with rumours, full of idle dreams,

  Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear:

  And here 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,

  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;

  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.

  Exeunt Hubert with Peter

  O my gentle cousin,

  Hear’st thou the news abroad, who are arrived?

  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, who they say is kill’d to-night

  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.

  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.

  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

  King John

  My mother dead!

  Re-enter Hubert

  Hubert

  My lord, they say five moons were seen to-night;

  Four fixed, and the fifth did whirl about

  The other four in wondrous motion.

  King John

  Five moons!

  Hubert

  Old men and beldams in the streets

  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,

  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;

  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:

  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 murder’d him: I had a mighty cause

  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,

  And on the winking of authority

  To understand a law, to know the meaning

  Of dangerous majesty, when perchance it frowns

  More upon humour than advised respect.

  Hubert

  Here is your hand and seal for what I did.

  King John

  O, when the last account ’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,

  A fellow by the hand of nature mark’d,

  Quoted and sign’d to do a deed of shame,

  This murder had not come into my mind:

  But taking note of thy abhorr’d aspect,

  Finding thee fit for bloody villany,

  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 —

  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,

  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

  The deed, which both our tongues held vile to name.

  Out of my sight, and never see me more!

  My nobles leave me; and my state is braved,

  Even at my gates, with ranks of foreign powers:

  Nay, in the body of this fleshly land,

  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.

  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 enter’d yet

  The dreadful motion of a murderous thought;

  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,

  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

  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

  SCENE III. BEFORE THE CASTLE.

  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 disguised me quite.

  I am afraid; and yet I’ll venture it.

  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.

  Leaps down

  O me! my uncle’s spirit is in these stones:

  Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones!

  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,

  Whose private with me of the Dauphin’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

  Two long days’ journey, lords, or ere we meet.

  Enter the Bastard

  Bastard

  Once more to-day well met, distemper’d lords!

  The king by me requests your presence straight.

  Salisbury

  The king hath dispossess’d himself of us:

  We will not line his thin bestained cloak

  With our pure honours, nor attend the foot

  That leaves the print of blood where’er it walks.

  Return and tell him so: we know the worst.

  Bastard

  Whate’er you think, good words, I think, were best.

  Salisbury

  Our griefs, and not our manners, reason now.

  Bastard

  But there is little reason in your grief;

  Therefore ’twere reason you had manners now.

  Pembroke

  Sir, sir, impatience hath his privilege.

  Bastard

  ’Tis true, to hurt his master, no man else.

  Salisbury

  This is the prison. What is he lies here?

  Seeing Arthur

  Pembroke

  O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty!

  The earth had not a hole to hide this deed.

  Salisbury

  Murder, as hating what himself hath done,

  Doth lay it open to urge on revenge.

  Bigot

  Or, when he doom’d this beauty to a grave,

  Found it too precious-princely for a grave.

  Salisbury

  Sir Richard, what think you? have you beheld,

  Or have you read or heard? or could you think?

  Or do you almost think, although you see,

  That you do see? could thought, without this object,

  Form such another? This is the very top,

  The height, the crest, or crest unto the crest,

  Of murder’s arms: this is the bloodiest shame,

  The wildest savagery, the vilest stroke,

  That ever wall-eyed wrath or staring rage

  Presented to the tears of soft remorse.

  Pembroke

  All murders past do stand excused in this:

  And this, so sole and so unmatchable,

  Shall give a holiness, a purity,

  To the yet unbegotten sin of times;

  And prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest,

  Exampled by this heinous spectacle.

  Bastard

  It is a damned and a bloody work;

  The graceless action of a heavy hand,

  If that it be the work of any hand.

  Salisbury

  If that it be the work of any hand!

  We had a kind of light what would ensue:

&nb
sp; It is the shameful work of Hubert’s hand;

  The practise and the purpose of the king:

  From whose obedience I forbid my soul,

  Kneeling before this ruin of sweet life,

  And breathing to his breathless excellence

  The incense of a vow, a holy vow,

  Never to taste the pleasures of the world,

  Never to be infected with delight,

  Nor conversant with ease and idleness,

  Till I have set a glory to this hand,

  By giving it the worship of revenge.

  Pembroke

  Bigot

  Our souls religiously confirm thy words.

  Enter Hubert

  Hubert

  Lords, I am hot with haste in seeking you:

  Arthur doth live; the king hath sent for you.

  Salisbury

  O, he is old and blushes not at death.

  Avaunt, thou hateful villain, get thee gone!

  Hubert

  I am no villain.

  Salisbury

  Must I rob the law?

  Drawing his sword

  Bastard

  Your sword is bright, sir; put it up again.

  Salisbury

  Not till I sheathe it in a murderer’s skin.

  Hubert

  Stand back, Lord Salisbury, stand back, I say;

  By heaven, I think my sword’s as sharp as yours:

  I would not have you, lord, forget yourself,

  Nor tempt the danger of my true defence;

  Lest I, by marking of your rage, forget

  Your worth, your greatness and nobility.

  Bigot

  Out, dunghill! darest thou brave a nobleman?

  Hubert

  Not for my life: but yet I dare defend

  My innocent life against an emperor.

  Salisbury

  Thou art a murderer.

  Hubert

  Do not prove me so;

  Yet I am none: whose tongue soe’er speaks false,

  Not truly speaks; who speaks not truly, lies.

  Pembroke

  Cut him to pieces.

  Bastard

  Keep the peace, I say.

  Salisbury

  Stand by, or I shall gall you, Faulconbridge.

  Bastard

  Thou wert better gall the devil, Salisbury:

  If thou but frown on me, or stir thy foot,

  Or teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame,

  I’ll strike thee dead. Put up thy sword betime;

  Or I’ll so maul you and your toasting-iron,

  That you shall think the devil is come from hell.

  Bigot

  What wilt thou do, renowned Faulconbridge?

  Second a villain and a murderer?

  Hubert

  Lord Bigot, I am none.

  Bigot

  Who kill’d this prince?

  Hubert

  ’Tis not an hour since I left him well:

  I honour’d him, I loved him, and will weep

  My date of life out for his sweet life’s loss.

  Salisbury

  Trust not those cunning waters of his eyes,

  For villany is not without such rheum;

 

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