Complete Plays, The
Page 156
My lord, your valiant kinsman, Faulconbridge,
Desires your majesty to leave the field
And send him word by me which way you go.
King John
Tell him, toward Swinstead, to the abbey there.
Messenger
Be of good comfort; for the great supply
That was expected by the Dauphin here,
Are wreck’d three nights ago on Goodwin Sands.
This news was brought to Richard but even now:
The French fight coldly, and retire themselves.
King John
Ay me! this tyrant fever burns me up,
And will not let me welcome this good news.
Set on toward Swinstead: to my litter straight;
Weakness possesseth me, and I am faint.
Exeunt
SCENE IV. ANOTHER PART OF THE FIELD.
Enter Salisbury, Pembroke, and Bigot
Salisbury
I did not think the king so stored with friends.
Pembroke
Up once again; put spirit in the French:
If they miscarry, we miscarry too.
Salisbury
That misbegotten devil, Faulconbridge,
In spite of spite, alone upholds the day.
Pembroke
They say King John sore sick hath left the field.
Enter Melun, wounded
Melun
Lead me to the revolts of England here.
Salisbury
When we were happy we had other names.
Pembroke
It is the Count Melun.
Salisbury
Wounded to death.
Melun
Fly, noble English, you are bought and sold;
Unthread the rude eye of rebellion
And welcome home again discarded faith.
Seek out King John and fall before his feet;
For if the French be lords of this loud day,
He means to recompense the pains you take
By cutting off your heads: thus hath he sworn
And I with him, and many moe with me,
Upon the altar at Saint Edmundsbury;
Even on that altar where we swore to you
Dear amity and everlasting love.
Salisbury
May this be possible? may this be true?
Melun
Have I not hideous death within my view,
Retaining but a quantity of life,
Which bleeds away, even as a form of wax
Resolveth from his figure ’gainst the fire?
What in the world should make me now deceive,
Since I must lose the use of all deceit?
Why should I then be false, since it is true
That I must die here and live hence by truth?
I say again, if Lewis do win the day,
He is forsworn, if e’er those eyes of yours
Behold another day break in the east:
But even this night, whose black contagious breath
Already smokes about the burning crest
Of the old, feeble and day-wearied sun,
Even this ill night, your breathing shall expire,
Paying the fine of rated treachery
Even with a treacherous fine of all your lives,
If Lewis by your assistance win the day.
Commend me to one Hubert with your king:
The love of him, and this respect besides,
For that my grandsire was an Englishman,
Awakes my conscience to confess all this.
In lieu whereof, I pray you, bear me hence
From forth the noise and rumour of the field,
Where I may think the remnant of my thoughts
In peace, and part this body and my soul
With contemplation and devout desires.
Salisbury
We do believe thee: and beshrew my soul
But I do love the favour and the form
Of this most fair occasion, by the which
We will untread the steps of damned flight,
And like a bated and retired flood,
Leaving our rankness and irregular course,
Stoop low within those bounds we have o’erlook’d
And cabby run on in obedience
Even to our ocean, to our great King John.
My arm shall give thee help to bear thee hence;
For I do see the cruel pangs of death
Right in thine eye. Away, my friends! New flight;
And happy newness, that intends old right.
Exeunt, leading off Melun
SCENE V. THE FRENCH CAMP.
Enter Lewis and his train
Lewis
The sun of heaven methought was loath to set,
But stay’d and made the western welkin blush,
When English measure backward their own ground
In faint retire. O, bravely came we off,
When with a volley of our needless shot,
After such bloody toil, we bid good night;
And wound our tattering colours clearly up,
Last in the field, and almost lords of it!
Enter a Messenger
Messenger
Where is my prince, the Dauphin?
Lewis
Here: what news?
Messenger
The Count Melun is slain; the English lords
By his persuasion are again fall’n off,
And your supply, which you have wish’d so long,
Are cast away and sunk on Goodwin Sands.
Lewis
Ah, foul shrewd news! beshrew thy very heart!
I did not think to be so sad to-night
As this hath made me. Who was he that said
King John did fly an hour or two before
The stumbling night did part our weary powers?
Messenger
Whoever spoke it, it is true, my lord.
Lewis
Well; keep good quarter and good care to-night:
The day shall not be up so soon as I,
To try the fair adventure of to-morrow.
Exeunt
SCENE VI. AN OPEN PLACE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF SWINSTEAD ABBEY.
Enter the Bastard and Hubert, severally
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: and 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 poison’d 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 pardon’d 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 tree, 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
SCENE VII. THE ORCHARD IN SWINSTEAD ABBEY.
Enter Prince Henry, Salisbury, and Bigot
Prince Henry
It is too late: the life of all his blood
Is touch’d 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 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.
Doth he still rage?
Exit Bigot
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 prey’d upon the outward parts,
Leaves them invisible, and his siege is now
Against the mind, the which he pricks and wounds
With many legions of strange fantasies,
Whi ch, 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.
Enter Attendants, and Bigot, carrying King John in a chair
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
Poison’d,— 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 burn’d bosom, nor entreat the north
To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips
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 crack’d and burn’d,
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 heaven 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.
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
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.
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 Pandulph 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 defence.
Salisbury
Nay, it is in a manner done already;
For many carriages he hath dispatch’d
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 interr’d;
For so he will’d it.
Bastard
Thither shall it then:
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.
Salisbury
And the like tender of our love we make,
To rest without a spot for evermore.
Prince Henry
I have a kind soul that would give you thanks
And knows not how to do it but with tears.
Bastard
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. Nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true.
Exeunt
The Life and Death of Richard the Second
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY
ACT I
SCENE I. LONDON. KING RICHARD II’S PALACE.
SCENE II. THE DUKE OF LANCASTER’S PALACE.
SCENE III. THE LISTS AT COVENTRY.
SCENE IV. THE COURT.
ACT II
SCENE I. ELY HOUSE.
SCENE II. THE PALACE.
SCENE III. WILDS IN GLOUCESTERSHIRE.
SCENE IV. A CAMP IN WALES.
ACT III
SCENE I. BRISTOL. BEFORE THE CASTLE.
SCENE II. THE COAST OF WALES. A CASTLE IN VIEW.
SCENE III. WALES. BEFORE FLINT CASTLE.
SCENE IV. LANGLEY. THE DUKE OF YORK’S GARDEN.
ACT IV
SCENE I. WESTMINSTER HALL.
ACT V
SCENE I. LONDON. A STREET LEADING TO THE TOWER.
SCENE II. THE DUKE OF YORK’S PALACE.
SCENE III. A ROYAL PALACE.
SCENE IV. THE SAME.
SCENE V. POMFRET CASTLE.
SCENE VI. WINDSOR CASTLE.
CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY
King Richard The Second.
John Of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster - uncle to the King.
Edmund Langley, Duke of York - uncle to the King.
Henry, surnamed Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, son of John of Gaunt, afterwards King Henry IV.
Duke Of Aumerle, son of the Duke of York.
Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk.
Duke Of Surrey.
Earl Of Salisbury.
Earl Berkeley.
Bushy, Bagot and Green, favourites of King Richard.
Earl Of Northumberland.
Henry Percy, surnamed Hotspur, his son.
Lord Ross.
Lord Willoughby.
Lord Fitzwater.
Bishop Of Carlisle.
Abbot Of Westminster.
Lord Marshal.
Sir Stephen Scroop.
Sir Pierce Of Exton.
Captain of a band of Welshmen.
Two Gardeners
Queen to King Richard.
Duchess Of York.
Duchess Of Gloucester, widow of Thomas of Woodstock.