Complete Plays, The
Page 154
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;