Complete Plays, The

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Complete Plays, The Page 155

by William Shakespeare


  And he, long traded in it, makes it seem

  Like rivers of remorse and innocency.

  Away with me, all you whose souls abhor

  The uncleanly savours of a slaughter-house;

  For I am stifled with this smell of sin.

  Bigot

  Away toward Bury, to the Dauphin there!

  Pembroke

  There tell the king he may inquire us out.

  Exeunt Lords

  Bastard

  Here’s a good world! Knew you of this fair work?

  Beyond the infinite and boundless reach

  Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death,

  Art thou damn’d, Hubert.

  Hubert

  Do but hear me, sir.

  Bastard

  Ha! I’ll tell thee what;

  Thou’rt damn’d as black — nay, nothing is so black;

  Thou art more deep damn’d than Prince Lucifer:

  There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell

  As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.

  Hubert

  Upon my soul —

  Bastard

  If thou didst but consent

  To this most cruel act, do but despair;

  And if thou want’st a cord, the smallest thread

  That ever spider twisted from her womb

  Will serve to strangle thee, a rush will be a beam

  To hang thee on; or wouldst thou drown thyself,

  Put but a little water in a spoon,

  And it shall be as all the ocean,

  Enough to stifle such a villain up.

  I do suspect thee very grievously.

  Hubert

  If I in act, consent, or sin of thought,

  Be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath

  Which was embounded in this beauteous clay,

  Let hell want pains enough to torture me.

  I left him well.

  Bastard

  Go, bear him in thine arms.

  I am amazed, methinks, and lose my way

  Among the thorns and dangers of this world.

  How easy dost thou take all England up!

  From forth this morsel of dead royalty,

  The life, the right and truth of all this realm

  Is fled to heaven; and England now is left

  To tug and scamble and to part by the teeth

  The unowed interest of proud-swelling state.

  Now for the bare-pick’d bone of majesty

  Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest

  And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace:

  Now powers from home and discontents at home

  Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits,

  As doth a raven on a sick-fall’n beast,

  The imminent decay of wrested pomp.

  Now happy he whose cloak and cincture can

  Hold out this tempest. Bear away that child

  And follow me with speed: I’ll to the king:

  A thousand businesses are brief in hand,

  And heaven itself doth frown upon the land.

  Exeunt

  ACT V

  SCENE I. KING JOHN’S PALACE.

  Enter King John, Cardinal Pandulph, and Attendants

  King John

  Thus have I yielded up into your hand

  The circle of my glory.

  Giving the crown

  Cardinal Pandulph

  Take again

  From this my hand, as holding of the pope

  Your sovereign greatness and authority.

  King John

  Now keep your holy word: go meet the French,

  And from his holiness use all your power

  To stop their marches ’fore we are inflamed.

  Our discontented counties do revolt;

  Our people quarrel with obedience,

  Swearing allegiance and the love of soul

  To stranger blood, to foreign royalty.

  This inundation of mistemper’d humour

  Rests by you only to be qualified:

  Then pause not; for the present time’s so sick,

  That present medicine must be minister’d,

  Or overthrow incurable ensues.

  Cardinal Pandulph

  It was my breath that blew this tempest up,

  Upon your stubborn usage of the pope;

  But since you are a gentle convertite,

  My tongue shall hush again this storm of war

  And make fair weather in your blustering land.

  On this Ascension-day, remember well,

  Upon your oath of service to the pope,

  Go I to make the French lay down their arms.

  Exit

  King John

  Is this Ascension-day? Did not the prophet

  Say that before Ascension-day at noon

  My crown I should give off? Even so I have:

  I did suppose it should be on constraint:

  But, heaven be thank’d, it is but voluntary.

  Enter the Bastard

  Bastard

  All Kent hath yielded; nothing there holds out

  But Dover castle: London hath received,

  Like a kind host, the Dauphin and his powers:

  Your nobles will not hear you, but are gone

  To offer service to your enemy,

  And wild amazement hurries up and down

  The little number of your doubtful friends.

  King John

  Would not my lords return to me again,

  After they heard young Arthur was alive?

  Bastard

  They found him dead and cast into the streets,

  An empty casket, where the jewel of life

  By some damn’d hand was robb’d and ta’en away.

  King John

  That villain Hubert told me he did live.

  Bastard

  So, on my soul, he did, for aught he knew.

  But wherefore do you droop? why look you sad?

  Be great in act, as you have been in thought;

  Let not the world see fear and sad distrust

  Govern the motion of a kingly eye:

  Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire;

  Threaten the threatener and outface the brow

  Of bragging horror: so shall inferior eyes,

  That borrow their behaviors from the great,

  Grow great by your example and put on

  The dauntless spirit of resolution.

  Away, and glister like the god of war,

  When he intendeth to become the field:

  Show boldness and aspiring confidence.

  What, shall they seek the lion in his den,

  And fright him there? and make him tremble there?

  O, let it not be said: forage, and run

  To meet displeasure farther from the doors,

  And grapple with him ere he comes so nigh.

  King John

  The legate of the pope hath been with me,

  And I have made a happy peace with him;

  And he hath promised to dismiss the powers

  Led by the Dauphin.

  Bastard

  O inglorious league!

  Shall we, upon the footing of our land,

  Send fair-play orders and make compromise,

  Insinuation, parley and base truce

  To arms invasive? shall a beardless boy,

  A cocker’d silken wanton, brave our fields,

  And flesh his spirit in a warlike soil,

  Mocking the air with colours idly spread,

  And find no cheque? Let us, my liege, to arms:

  Perchance the cardinal cannot make your peace;

  Or if he do, let it at least be said

  They saw we had a purpose of defence.

  King John

  Have thou the ordering of this present time.

  Bastard

  Away, then, with good courage! yet, I know,

  Our party may well meet a prouder foe.

 
; Exeunt

  SCENE II. LEWIS’S CAMP AT ST. EDMUNDSBURY.

  Enter, in arms, Lewis, Salisbury, Melun, Pembroke, Bigot, and Soldiers

  Lewis

  My Lord Melun, let this be copied out,

  And keep it safe for our remembrance:

  Return the precedent to these lords again;

  That, having our fair order written down,

  Both they and we, perusing o’er these notes,

  May know wherefore we took the sacrament

  And keep our faiths firm and inviolable.

  Salisbury

  Upon our sides it never shall be broken.

  And, noble Dauphin, albeit we swear

  A voluntary zeal and an unurged faith

  To your proceedings; yet believe me, prince,

  I am not glad that such a sore of time

  Should seek a plaster by contemn’d revolt,

  And heal the inveterate canker of one wound

  By making many. O, it grieves my soul,

  That I must draw this metal from my side

  To be a widow-maker! O, and there

  Where honourable rescue and defence

  Cries out upon the name of Salisbury!

  But such is the infection of the time,

  That, for the health and physic of our right,

  We cannot deal but with the very hand

  Of stern injustice and confused wrong.

  And is’t not pity, O my grieved friends,

  That we, the sons and children of this isle,

  Were born to see so sad an hour as this;

  Wherein we step after a stranger march

  Upon her gentle bosom, and fill up

  Her enemies’ ranks,— I must withdraw and weep

  Upon the spot of this enforced cause,—

  To grace the gentry of a land remote,

  And follow unacquainted colours here?

  What, here? O nation, that thou couldst remove!

  That Neptune’s arms, who clippeth thee about,

  Would bear thee from the knowledge of thyself,

  And grapple thee unto a pagan shore;

  Where these two Christian armies might combine

  The blood of malice in a vein of league,

  And not to spend it so unneighbourly!

  Lewis

  A noble temper dost thou show in this;

  And great affections wrestling in thy bosom

  Doth make an earthquake of nobility.

  O, what a noble combat hast thou fought

  Between compulsion and a brave respect!

  Let me wipe off this honourable dew,

  That silverly doth progress on thy cheeks:

  My heart hath melted at a lady’s tears,

  Being an ordinary inundation;

  But this effusion of such manly drops,

  This shower, blown up by tempest of the soul,

  Startles mine eyes, and makes me more amazed

  Than had I seen the vaulty top of heaven

  Figured quite o’er with burning meteors.

  Lift up thy brow, renowned Salisbury,

  And with a great heart heave away the storm:

  Commend these waters to those baby eyes

  That never saw the giant world enraged;

  Nor met with fortune other than at feasts,

  Full of warm blood, of mirth, of gossiping.

  Come, come; for thou shalt thrust thy hand as deep

  Into the purse of rich prosperity

  As Lewis himself: so, nobles, shall you all,

  That knit your sinews to the strength of mine.

  And even there, methinks, an angel spake:

  Enter Cardinal Pandulph

  Look, where the holy legate comes apace,

  To give us warrant from the hand of heaven

  And on our actions set the name of right

  With holy breath.

  Cardinal Pandulph

  Hail, noble prince of France!

  The next is this, King John hath reconciled

  Himself to Rome; his spirit is come in,

  That so stood out against the holy church,

  The great metropolis and see of Rome:

  Therefore thy threatening colours now wind up;

  And tame the savage spirit of wild war,

  That like a lion foster’d up at hand,

  It may lie gently at the foot of peace,

  And be no further harmful than in show.

  Lewis

  Your grace shall pardon me, I will not back:

  I am too high-born to be propertied,

  To be a secondary at control,

  Or useful serving-man and instrument,

  To any sovereign state throughout the world.

  Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars

  Between this chastised kingdom and myself,

  And brought in matter that should feed this fire;

  And now ’tis far too huge to be blown out

  With that same weak wind which enkindled it.

  You taught me how to know the face of right,

  Acquainted me with interest to this land,

  Yea, thrust this enterprise into my heart;

  And come ye now to tell me John hath made

  His peace with Rome? What is that peace to me?

  I, by the honour of my marriage-bed,

  After young Arthur, claim this land for mine;

  And, now it is half-conquer’d, must I back

  Because that John hath made his peace with Rome?

  Am I Rome’s slave? What penny hath Rome borne,

  What men provided, what munition sent,

  To underprop this action? Is’t not I

  That undergo this charge? who else but I,

  And such as to my claim are liable,

  Sweat in this business and maintain this war?

  Have I not heard these islanders shout out

  ‘Vive le roi!’ as I have bank’d their towns?

  Have I not here the best cards for the game,

  To win this easy match play’d for a crown?

  And shall I now give o’er the yielded set?

  No, no, on my soul, it never shall be said.

  Cardinal Pandulph

  You look but on the outside of this work.

  Lewis

  Outside or inside, I will not return

  Till my attempt so much be glorified

  As to my ample hope was promised

  Before I drew this gallant head of war,

  And cull’d these fiery spirits from the world,

  To outlook conquest and to win renown

  Even in the jaws of danger and of death.

  Trumpet sounds

  What lusty trumpet thus doth summon us?

  Enter the Bastard, attended

  Bastard

  According to the fair play of the world,

  Let me have audience; I am sent to speak:

  My holy lord of Milan, from the king

  I come, to learn how you have dealt for him;

  And, as you answer, I do know the scope

  And warrant limited unto my tongue.

  Cardinal Pandulph

  The Dauphin is too wilful-opposite,

  And will not temporize with my entreaties;

  He flatly says he’ll not lay down his arms.

  Bastard

  By all the blood that ever fury breathed,

  The youth says well. Now hear our English king;

  For thus his royalty doth speak in me.

  He is prepared, and reason too he should:

  This apish and unmannerly approach,

  This harness’d masque and unadvised revel,

  This unhair’d sauciness and boyish troops,

  The king doth smile at; and is well prepared

  To whip this dwarfish war, these pigmy arms,

  From out the circle of his territories.

  That hand which had the strength, even at your door,

  To cudgel you and make you take the hatch, />
  To dive like buckets in concealed wells,

  To crouch in litter of your stable planks,

  To lie like pawns lock’d up in chests and trunks,

  To hug with swine, to seek sweet safety out

  In vaults and prisons, and to thrill and shake

  Even at the crying of your nation’s crow,

  Thinking his voice an armed Englishman;

  Shall that victorious hand be feebled here,

  That in your chambers gave you chastisement?

  No: know the gallant monarch is in arms

  And like an eagle o’er his aery towers,

  To souse annoyance that comes near his nest.

  And you degenerate, you ingrate revolts,

  You bloody Neroes, ripping up the womb

  Of your dear mother England, blush for shame;

  For your own ladies and pale-visaged maids

  Like Amazons come tripping after drums,

  Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change,

  Their needles to lances, and their gentle hearts

  To fierce and bloody inclination.

  Lewis

  There end thy brave, and turn thy face in peace;

  We grant thou canst outscold us: fare thee well;

  We hold our time too precious to be spent

  With such a brabbler.

  Cardinal Pandulph

  Give me leave to speak.

  Bastard

  No, I will speak.

  Lewis

  We will attend to neither.

  Strike up the drums; and let the tongue of war

  Plead for our interest and our being here.

  Bastard

  Indeed your drums, being beaten, will cry out;

  And so shall you, being beaten: do but start

  An echo with the clamour of thy drum,

  And even at hand a drum is ready braced

  That shall reverberate all as loud as thine;

  Sound but another, and another shall

  As loud as thine rattle the welkin’s ear

  And mock the deep-mouth’d thunder: for at hand,

  Not trusting to this halting legate here,

  Whom he hath used rather for sport than need

  Is warlike John; and in his forehead sits

  A bare-ribb’d death, whose office is this day

  To feast upon whole thousands of the French.

  Lewis

  Strike up our drums, to find this danger out.

  Bastard

  And thou shalt find it, Dauphin, do not doubt.

  Exeunt

  SCENE III. THE FIELD OF BATTLE.

  Alarums. Enter King John and Hubert

  King John

  How goes the day with us? O, tell me, Hubert.

  Hubert

  Badly, I fear. How fares your majesty?

  King John

  This fever, that hath troubled me so long,

  Lies heavy on me; O, my heart is sick!

  Enter a Messenger

  Messenger

 

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