Complete Plays, The (194 page)

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:
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;
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

A
CT
V

S
CENE
I. K
ING
J
OHN
’
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

S
CENE
II. L
EWIS
’
S
CAMP
AT
S
T
. E
DMUNDSBURY
.

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: