{"collection":"sks","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/sks/kj/kj.htm","path":"sks/kj/kj.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/sks/kj/kj.htm","text":"KING JOHN\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\nKING JOHN:\nPRINCE HENRY son to the king.\nARTHUR Duke of Bretagne, nephew to the king.\nThe Earl of\nPEMBROKE (PEMBROKE:)\nThe Earl of ESSEX (ESSEX:)\nThe Earl of\nSALISBURY (SALISBURY:)\nThe Lord BIGOT (BIGOT:)\nHUBERT DE BURGH (HUBERT:)\nROBERT\nFAULCONBRIDGE Son to Sir Robert Faulconbridge. (ROBERT:)\nPHILIP the BASTARD his half-brother. (BASTARD:)\nJAMES GURNEY servant to Lady Faulconbridge. (GURNEY:)\nPETER Of Pomfret a prophet. (PETER:)\nPHILIP King of France. (KING PHILIP:)\nLEWIS the Dauphin.\nLYMOGES Duke of AUSTRIA. (AUSTRIA:)\nCARDINAL PANDULPH the Pope's legate.\nMELUN a French Lord.\nCHATILLON ambassador from France to King John.\nQUEEN ELINOR mother to King John.\nCONSTANCE mother to Arthur.\nBLANCH of Spain niece to King John. (BLANCH:)\nLADY FAULCONBRIDGE:\nLords, Citizens of Angiers, Sheriff, Heralds,\nOfficers, Soldiers, Messengers, and other Attendants.\n(First Citizen:)\n(French Herald:)\n(English Herald:)\n(First Executioner:)\n(Messenger:)\nSCENE Partly in England, and partly in France.\nKING JOHN\nACT I\nSCENE I KING JOHN'S palace.\n[Enter KING JOHN, QUEEN ELINOR, PEMBROKE, ESSEX,\nSALISBURY, and others, with CHATILLON]\nKING JOHN Now, say, Chatillon, what would France with us?\nCHATILLON Thus, after greeting, speaks the King of France\nIn my behavior to the majesty,\nThe borrow'd majesty, of England here.\nQUEEN ELINOR A strange beginning: 'borrow'd majesty!'\nKING JOHN Silence, good mother; hear the embassy.\nCHATILLON Philip of France, in right and true behalf\nOf thy deceased brother Geffrey's son,\nArthur Plantagenet, lays most lawful claim\nTo this fair island and the territories,\nTo Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine,\nDesiring thee to lay aside the sword\nWhich sways usurpingly these several titles,\nAnd put these same into young Arthur's hand,\nThy nephew and right royal sovereign.\nKING JOHN What follows if we disallow of this?\nCHATILLON The proud control of fierce and bloody war,\nTo enforce these rights so forcibly withheld.\nKING JOHN Here have we war for war and blood for blood,\nControlment for controlment: so answer France.\nCHATILLON Then take my king's defiance from my mouth,\nThe farthest limit of my embassy.\nKING JOHN Bear mine to him, and so depart in peace:\nBe thou as lightning in the eyes of France;\nFor ere thou canst report I will be there,\nThe thunder of my cannon shall be heard:\nSo hence! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath\nAnd sullen presage of your own decay.\nAn honourable conduct let him have:\nPembroke, look to 't. Farewell, Chatillon.\n[Exeunt CHATILLON and PEMBROKE]\nQUEEN ELINOR What now, my son! have I not ever said\nHow that ambitious Constance would not cease\nTill she had kindled France and all the world,\nUpon the right and party of her son?\nThis might have been prevented and made whole\nWith very easy arguments of love,\nWhich now the manage of two kingdoms must\nWith fearful bloody issue arbitrate.\nKING JOHN Our strong possession and our right for us.\nQUEEN ELINOR Your strong possession much more than your right,\nOr else it must go wrong with you and me:\nSo much my conscience whispers in your ear,\nWhich none but heaven and you and I shall hear.\n[Enter a Sheriff]\nESSEX My liege, here is the strangest controversy\nCome from country to be judged by you,\nThat e'er I heard: shall I produce the men?\nKING JOHN Let them approach.\nOur abbeys and our priories shall pay\nThis expedition's charge.\n[Enter ROBERT and the BASTARD]\nWhat men are you?\nBASTARD Your faithful subject I, a gentleman\nBorn in Northamptonshire and eldest son,\nAs I suppose, to Robert Faulconbridge,\nA soldier, by the honour-giving hand\nOf Coeur-de-lion knighted in the field.\nKING JOHN What art thou?\nROBERT The son and heir to that same Faulconbridge.\nKING JOHN Is that the elder, and art thou the heir?\nYou came not of one mother then, it seems.\nBASTARD Most certain of one mother, mighty king;\nThat is well known; and, as I think, one father:\nBut for the certain knowledge of that truth\nI put you o'er to heaven and to my mother:\nOf that I doubt, as all men's children may.\nQUEEN ELINOR Out on thee, rude man! thou dost shame thy mother\nAnd wound her honour with this diffidence.\nBASTARD I, madam? no, I have no reason for it;\nThat is my brother's plea and none of mine;\nThe which if he can prove, a' pops me out\nAt least from fair five hundred pound a year:\nHeaven guard my mother's honour and my land!\nKING JOHN A good blunt fellow. Why, being younger born,\nDoth he lay claim to thine inheritance?\nBASTARD I know not why, except to get the land.\nBut once he slander'd me with bastardy:\nBut whether I be as true begot or no,\nThat still I lay upon my mother's head,\nBut that I am as well begot, my liege,--\nFair fall the bones that took the pains for me!--\nCompare our faces and be judge yourself.\nIf old sir Robert did beget us both\nAnd were our father and this son like him,\nO old sir Robert, father, on my knee\nI give heaven thanks I was not like to thee!\nKING JOHN Why, what a madcap hath heaven lent us here!\nQUEEN ELINOR He hath a trick of Coeur-de-lion's face;\nThe accent of his tongue affecteth him.\nDo you not read some tokens of my son\nIn the large composition of this man?\nKING JOHN Mine eye hath well examined his parts\nAnd finds them perfect Richard. Sirrah, speak,\nWhat doth move you to claim your brother's land?\nBASTARD Because he hath a half-face, like my father.\nWith half that face would he have all my land:\nA half-faced groat five hundred pound a year!\nROBERT My gracious liege, when that my father lived,\nYour brother did employ my father much,--\nBASTARD Well, sir, by this you cannot get my land:\nYour tale must be how he employ'd my mother.\nROBERT And once dispatch'd him in an embassy\nTo Germany, there with the emperor\nTo treat of high affairs touching that time.\nThe advantage of his absence took the king\nAnd in the mean time sojourn'd at my father's;\nWhere how he did prevail I shame to speak,\nBut truth is truth: large lengths of seas and shores\nBetween my father and my mother lay,\nAs I have heard my father speak himself,\nWhen this same lusty gentleman was got.\nUpon his death-bed he by will bequeath'd\nHis lands to me, and took it on his death\nThat this my mother's son was none of his;\nAnd if he were, he came into the world\nFull fourteen weeks before the course of time.\nThen, good my liege, let me have what is mine,\nMy father's land, as was my father's will.\nKING JOHN Sirrah, your brother is legitimate;\nYour father's wife did after wedlock bear him,\nAnd if she did play false, the fault was hers;\nWhich fault lies on the hazards of all husbands\nThat marry wives. Tell me, how if my brother,\nWho, as you say, took pains to get this son,\nHad of your father claim'd this son for his?\nIn sooth, good friend, your father might have kept\nThis calf bred from his cow from all the world;\nIn sooth he might; then, if he were my brother's,\nMy brother might not claim him; nor your father,\nBeing none of his, refuse him: this concludes;\nMy mother's son did get your father's heir;\nYour father's heir must have your father's land.\nROBERT Shall then my father's will be of no force\nTo dispossess that child which is not his?\nBASTARD Of no more force to dispossess me, sir,\nThan was his will to get me, as I think.\nQUEEN ELINOR Whether hadst thou rather be a Faulconbridge\nAnd like thy brother, to enjoy thy land,\nOr the reputed son of Coeur-de-lion,\nLord of thy presence and no land beside?\nBASTARD Madam, an if my brother had my shape,\nAnd I had his, sir Robert's his, like him;\nAnd if my legs were two such riding-rods,\nMy arms such eel-skins stuff'd, my face so thin\nThat in mine ear I durst not stick a rose\nLest men should say 'Look, where three-farthings goes!'\nAnd, to his shape, were heir to all this land,\nWould I might never stir from off this place,\nI would give it every foot to have this face;\nI would not be sir Nob in any case.\nQUEEN ELINOR I like thee well: wilt thou forsake thy fortune,\nBequeath thy land to him and follow me?\nI am a soldier and now bound to France.\nBASTARD Brother, take you my land, I'll take my chance.\nYour face hath got five hundred pound a year,\nYet sell your face for five pence and 'tis dear.\nMadam, I'll follow you unto the death.\nQUEEN ELINOR Nay, I would have you go before me thither.\nBASTARD Our country manners give our betters way.\nKING JOHN What is thy name?\nBASTARD Philip, my liege, so is my name begun,\nPhilip, good old sir Robert's wife's eldest son.\nKING JOHN From henceforth bear his name whose form thou bear'st:\nKneel thou down Philip, but rise more great,\nArise sir Richard and Plantagenet.\nBASTARD Brother by the mother's side, give me your hand:\nMy father gave me honour, yours gave land.\nNow blessed by the hour, by night or day,\nWhen I was got, sir Robert was away!\nQUEEN ELINOR The very spirit of Plantagenet!\nI am thy grandam, Richard; call me so.\nBASTARD Madam, by chance but not by truth; what though?\nSomething about, a little from the right,\nIn at the window, or else o'er the hatch:\nWho dares not stir by day must walk by night,\nAnd have is have, however men do catch:\nNear or far off, well won is still well shot,\nAnd I am I, howe'er I was begot.\nKING JOHN Go, Faulconbridge: now hast thou thy desire;\nA landless knight makes thee a landed squire.\nCome, madam, and come, Richard, we must speed\nFor France, for France, for it is more than need.\nBASTARD Brother, adieu: good fortune come to thee!\nFor thou wast got i' the way of honesty.\n[Exeunt all but BASTARD]\nA foot of honour better than I was;\nBut many a many foot of land the worse.\nWell, now can I make any Joan a lady.\n'Good den, sir Richard!'--'God-a-mercy, fellow!'--\nAnd if his name be George, I'll call him Peter;\nFor new-made honour doth forget men's names;\n'Tis too respective and too sociable\nFor your conversion. Now your traveller,\nHe and his toothpick at my worship's mess,\nAnd when my knightly stomach is sufficed,\nWhy then I suck my teeth and catechise\nMy picked man of countries: 'My dear sir,'\nThus, leaning on mine elbow, I begin,\n'I shall beseech you'--that is question now;\nAnd then comes answer like an Absey book:\n'O sir,' says answer, 'at your best command;\nAt your employment; at your service, sir;'\n'No, sir,' says question, 'I, sweet sir, at yours:'\nAnd so, ere answer knows what question would,\nSaving in dialogue of compliment,\nAnd talking of the Alps and Apennines,\nThe Pyrenean and the river Po,\nIt draws toward supper in conclusion so.\nBut this is worshipful society\nAnd fits the mounting spirit like myself,\nFor he is but a bastard to the time\nThat doth not smack of observation;\nAnd so am I, whether I smack or no;\nAnd not alone in habit and device,\nExterior form, outward accoutrement,\nBut from the inward motion to deliver\nSweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth:\nWhich, though I will not practise to deceive,\nYet, to avoid deceit, I mean to learn;\nFor it shall strew the footsteps of my rising.\nBut who comes in such haste in riding-robes?\nWhat woman-post is this? hath she no husband\nThat will take pains to blow a horn before her?\n[Enter LADY FAULCONBRIDGE and GURNEY]\nO me! it is my mother. How now, good lady!\nWhat brings you here to court so hastily?\nLADY FAULCONBRIDGE Where is that slave, thy brother? where is he,\nThat holds in chase mine honour up and down?\nBASTARD My brother Robert? old sir Robert's son?\nColbrand the giant, that same mighty man?\nIs it sir Robert's son that you seek so?\nLADY FAULCONBRIDGE Sir Robert's son! Ay, thou unreverend boy,\nSir Robert's son: why scorn'st thou at sir Robert?\nHe is sir Robert's son, and so art thou.\nBASTARD James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave awhile?\nGURNEY Good leave, good Philip.\nBASTARD Philip! sparrow: James,\nThere's toys abroad: anon I'll tell thee more.\n[Exit GURNEY]\nMadam, I was not old sir Robert's son:\nSir Robert might have eat his part in me\nUpon Good-Friday and ne'er broke his fast:\nSir Robert could do well: marry, to confess,\nCould he get me? Sir Robert could not do it:\nWe know his handiwork: therefore, good mother,\nTo whom am I beholding for these limbs?\nSir Robert never holp to make this leg.\nLADY FAULCONBRIDGE Hast thou conspired with thy brother too,\nThat for thine own gain shouldst defend mine honour?\nWhat means this scorn, thou most untoward knave?\nBASTARD Knight, knight, good mother, Basilisco-like.\nWhat! I am dubb'd! I have it on my shoulder.\nBut, mother, I am not sir Robert's son;\nI have disclaim'd sir Robert and my land;\nLegitimation, name and all is gone:\nThen, good my mother, let me know my father;\nSome proper man, I hope: who was it, mother?\nLADY FAULCONBRIDGE Hast thou denied thyself a Faulconbridge?\nBASTARD As faithfully as I deny the devil.\nLADY FAULCONBRIDGE King Richard Coeur-de-lion was thy father:\nBy long and vehement suit I was seduced\nTo make room for him in my husband's bed:\nHeaven lay not my transgression to my charge!\nThou art the issue of my dear offence,\nWhich was so strongly urged past my defence.\nBASTARD Now, by this light, were I to get again,\nMadam, I would not wish a better father.\nSome sins do bear their privilege on earth,\nAnd so doth yours; your fault was not your folly:\nNeeds must you lay your heart at his dispose,\nSubjected tribute to commanding love,\nAgainst whose fury and unmatched force\nThe aweless lion could not wage the fight,\nNor keep his princely heart from Richard's hand.\nHe that perforce robs lions of their hearts\nMay easily win a woman's. Ay, my mother,\nWith all my heart I thank thee for my father!\nWho lives and dares but say thou didst not well\nWhen I was got, I'll send his soul to hell.\nCome, lady, I will show thee to my kin;\nAnd they shall say, when Richard me begot,\nIf thou hadst said him nay, it had been sin:\nWho says it was, he lies; I say 'twas not.\n[Exeunt]\nKING JOHN\nACT II\nSCENE I France. Before Angiers.\n[Enter AUSTRIA and forces, drums, etc. on one side:\non the other KING PHILIP and his power; LEWIS,\nARTHUR, CONSTANCE and attendants]\nLEWIS Before Angiers well met, brave Austria.\nArthur, that great forerunner of thy blood,\nRichard, that robb'd the lion of his heart\nAnd fought the holy wars in Palestine,\nBy this brave duke came early to his grave:\nAnd for amends to his posterity,\nAt our importance hither is he come,\nTo spread his colours, boy, in thy behalf,\nAnd to rebuke the usurpation\nOf thy unnatural uncle, English John:\nEmbrace him, love him, give him welcome hither.\nARTHUR God shall forgive you Coeur-de-lion's death\nThe rather that you give his offspring life,\nShadowing their right under your wings of war:\nI give you welcome with a powerless hand,\nBut with a heart full of unstained love:\nWelcome before the gates of Angiers, duke.\nLEWIS A noble boy! Who would not do thee right?\nAUSTRIA Upon thy cheek lay I this zealous kiss,\nAs seal to this indenture of my love,\nThat to my home I will no more return,\nTill Angiers and the right thou hast in France,\nTogether with that pale, that white-faced shore,\nWhose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides\nAnd coops from other lands her islanders,\nEven till that England, hedged in with the main,\nThat water-walled bulwark, still secure\nAnd confident from foreign purposes,\nEven till that utmost corner of the west\nSalute thee for her king: till then, fair boy,\nWill I not think of home, but follow arms.\nCONSTANCE O, take his mother's thanks, a widow's thanks,\nTill your strong hand shall help to give him strength\nTo make a more requital to your love!\nAUSTRIA The peace of heaven is theirs that lift their swords\nIn such a just and charitable war.\nKING PHILIP Well then, to work: our cannon shall be bent\nAgainst the brows of this resisting town.\nCall for our chiefest men of discipline,\nTo cull the plots of best advantages:\nWe'll lay before this town our royal bones,\nWade to the market-place in Frenchmen's blood,\nBut we will make it subject to this boy.\nCONSTANCE Stay for an answer to your embassy,\nLest unadvised you stain your swords with blood:\nMy Lord Chatillon may from England bring,\nThat right in peace which here we urge in war,\nAnd then we shall repent each drop of blood\nThat hot rash haste so indirectly shed.\n[Enter CHATILLON]\nKING PHILIP A wonder, lady! lo, upon thy wish,\nOur messenger Chatillon is arrived!\nWhat England says, say briefly, gentle lord;\nWe coldly pause for thee; Chatillon, speak.\nCHATILLON Then turn your forces from this paltry siege\nAnd stir them up against a mightier task.\nEngland, impatient of your just demands,\nHath put himself in arms: the adverse winds,\nWhose leisure I have stay'd, have given him time\nTo land his legions all as soon as I;\nHis marches are expedient to this town,\nHis forces strong, his soldiers confident.\nWith him along is come the mother-queen,\nAn Ate, stirring him to blood and strife;\nWith her her niece, the Lady Blanch of Spain;\nWith them a bastard of the king's deceased,\nAnd all the unsettled humours of the land,\nRash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntaries,\nWith ladies' faces and fierce dragons' spleens,\nHave sold their fortunes at their native homes,\nBearing their birthrights proudly on their backs,\nTo make hazard of new fortunes here:\nIn brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits\nThan now the English bottoms have waft o'er\nDid nearer float upon the swelling tide,\nTo do offence and scath in Christendom.\n[Drum beats]\nThe interruption of their churlish drums\nCuts off more circumstance: they are at hand,\nTo parley or to fight; therefore prepare.\nKING PHILIP How much unlook'd for is this expedition!\nAUSTRIA By how much unexpected, by so much\nWe must awake endavour for defence;\nFor courage mounteth with occasion:\nLet them be welcome then: we are prepared.\n[Enter KING JOHN, QUEEN ELINOR, BLANCH, the BASTARD,\nLords, and forces]\nKING JOHN Peace be to France, if France in peace permit\nOur just and lineal entrance to our own;\nIf not, bleed France, and peace ascend to heaven,\nWhiles we, God's wrathful agent, do correct\nTheir proud contempt that beats His peace to heaven.\nKING PHILIP Peace be to England, if that war return\nFrom France to England, there to live in peace.\nEngland we love; and for that England's sake\nWith burden of our armour here we sweat.\nThis toil of ours should be a work of thine;\nBut thou from loving England art so far,\nThat thou hast under-wrought his lawful king\nCut off the sequence of posterity,\nOut-faced infant state and done a rape\nUpon the maiden virtue of the crown.\nLook here upon thy brother Geffrey's face;\nThese eyes, these brows, were moulded out of his:\nThis little abstract doth contain that large\nWhich died in Geffrey, and the hand of time\nShall draw this brief into as huge a volume.\nThat Geffrey was thy elder brother born,\nAnd this his son; England was Geffrey's right\nAnd this is Geffrey's: in the name of God\nHow comes it then that thou art call'd a king,\nWhen living blood doth in these temples beat,\nWhich owe the crown that thou o'ermasterest?\nKING JOHN From whom hast thou this great commission, France,\nTo draw my answer from thy articles?\nKING PHILIP From that supernal judge, that stirs good thoughts\nIn any breast of strong authority,\nTo look into the blots and stains of right:\nThat judge hath made me guardian to this boy:\nUnder whose warrant I impeach thy wrong\nAnd by whose help I mean to chastise it.\nKING JOHN Alack, thou dost usurp authority.\nKING PHILIP Excuse; it is to beat usurping down.\nQUEEN ELINOR Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?\nCONSTANCE Let me make answer; thy usurping son.\nQUEEN ELINOR Out, insolent! thy bastard shall be king,\nThat thou mayst be a queen, and cheque the world!\nCONSTANCE My bed was ever to thy son as true\nAs thine was to thy husband; and this boy\nLiker in feature to his father Geffrey\nThan thou and John in manners; being as like\nAs rain to water, or devil to his dam.\nMy boy a bastard! By my soul, I think\nHis father never was so true begot:\nIt cannot be, an if thou wert his mother.\nQUEEN ELINOR There's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.\nCONSTANCE There's a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee.\nAUSTRIA Peace!\nBASTARD Hear the crier.\nAUSTRIA What the devil art thou?\nBASTARD One that will play the devil, sir, with you,\nAn a' may catch your hide and you alone:\nYou are the hare of whom the proverb goes,\nWhose valour plucks dead lions by the beard;\nI'll smoke your skin-coat, an I catch you right;\nSirrah, look to't; i' faith, I will, i' faith.\nBLANCH O, well did he become that lion's robe\nThat did disrobe the lion of that robe!\nBASTARD It lies as sightly on the back of him\nAs great Alcides' shows upon an ass:\nBut, ass, I'll take that burthen from your back,\nOr lay on that shall make your shoulders crack.\nAUSTRIA What craker is this same that deafs our ears\nWith this abundance of superfluous breath?\nKING PHILIP Lewis, determine what we shall do straight.\nLEWIS Women and fools, break off your conference.\nKing John, this is the very sum of all;\nEngland and Ireland, Anjou, Touraine, Maine,\nIn right of Arthur do I claim of thee:\nWilt thou resign them and lay down thy arms?\nKING JOHN My life as soon: I do defy thee, France.\nArthur of Bretagne, yield thee to my hand;\nAnd out of my dear love I'll give thee more\nThan e'er the coward hand of France can win:\nSubmit thee, boy.\nQUEEN ELINOR Come to thy grandam, child.\nCONSTANCE Do, child, go to it grandam, child:\nGive grandam kingdom, and it grandam will\nGive it a plum, a cherry, and a fig:\nThere's a good grandam.\nARTHUR Good my mother, peace!\nI would that I were low laid in my grave:\nI am not worth this coil that's made for me.\nQUEEN ELINOR His mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps.\nCONSTANCE Now shame upon you, whether she does or no!\nHis grandam's wrongs, and not his mother's shames,\nDraws those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes,\nWhich heaven shall take in nature of a fee;\nAy, with these crystal beads heaven shall be bribed\nTo do him justice and revenge on you.\nQUEEN ELINOR Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!\nCONSTANCE Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth!\nCall not me slanderer; thou and thine usurp\nThe dominations, royalties and rights\nOf this oppressed boy: this is thy eld'st son's son,\nInfortunate in nothing but in thee:\nThy sins are visited in this poor child;\nThe canon of the law is laid on him,\nBeing but the second generation\nRemoved from thy sin-conceiving womb.\nKING JOHN Bedlam, have done.\nCONSTANCE I have but this to say,\nThat he is not only plagued for her sin,\nBut God hath made her sin and her the plague\nOn this removed issue, plague for her\nAnd with her plague; her sin his injury,\nHer injury the beadle to her sin,\nAll punish'd in the person of this child,\nAnd all for her; a plague upon her!\nQUEEN ELINOR Thou unadvised scold, I can produce\nA will that bars the title of thy son.\nCONSTANCE Ay, who doubts that? a will! a wicked will:\nA woman's will; a canker'd grandam's will!\nKING PHILIP Peace, lady! pause, or be more temperate:\nIt ill beseems this presence to cry aim\nTo these ill-tuned repetitions.\nSome trumpet summon hither to the walls\nThese men of Angiers: let us hear them speak\nWhose title they admit, Arthur's or John's.\n[Trumpet sounds. Enter certain Citizens upon the walls]\nFirst Citizen Who is it that hath warn'd us to the walls?\nKING PHILIP 'Tis France, for England.\nKING JOHN England, for itself.\nYou men of Angiers, and my loving subjects--\nKING PHILIP You loving men of Angiers, Arthur's subjects,\nOur trumpet call'd you to this gentle parle--\nKING JOHN For our advantage; therefore hear us first.\nThese flags of France, that are advanced here\nBefore the eye and prospect of your town,\nHave hither march'd to your endamagement:\nThe cannons have their bowels full of wrath,\nAnd ready mounted are they to spit forth\nTheir iron indignation 'gainst your walls:\nAll preparation for a bloody siege\nAll merciless proceeding by these French\nConfronts your city's eyes, your winking gates;\nAnd but for our approach those sleeping stones,\nThat as a waist doth girdle you about,\nBy the compulsion of their ordinance\nBy this time from their fixed beds of lime\nHad been dishabited, and wide havoc made\nFor bloody power to rush upon your peace.\nBut on the sight of us your lawful king,\nWho painfully with much expedient march\nHave brought a countercheque before your gates,\nTo save unscratch'd your city's threatened cheeks,\nBehold, the French amazed vouchsafe a parle;\nAnd now, instead of bullets wrapp'd in fire,\nTo make a shaking fever in your walls,\nThey shoot but calm words folded up in smoke,\nTo make a faithless error in your ears:\nWhich trust accordingly, kind citizens,\nAnd let us in, your king, whose labour'd spirits,\nForwearied in this action of swift speed,\nCrave harbourage within your city walls.\nKING PHILIP When I have said, make answer to us both.\nLo, in this right hand, whose protection\nIs most divinely vow'd upon the right\nOf him it holds, stands young Plantagenet,\nSon to the elder brother of this man,\nAnd king o'er him and all that he enjoys:\nFor this down-trodden equity, we tread\nIn warlike march these greens before your town,\nBeing no further enemy to you\nThan the constraint of hospitable zeal\nIn the relief of this oppressed child\nReligiously provokes. Be pleased then\nTo pay that duty which you truly owe\nTo that owes it, namely this young prince:\nAnd then our arms, like to a muzzled bear,\nSave in aspect, hath all offence seal'd up;\nOur cannons' malice vainly shall be spent\nAgainst the invulnerable clouds of heaven;\nAnd with a blessed and unvex'd retire,\nWith unhack'd swords and helmets all unbruised,\nWe will bear home that lusty blood again\nWhich here we came to spout against your town,\nAnd leave your children, wives and you in peace.\nBut if you fondly pass our proffer'd offer,\n'Tis not the roundure of your old-faced walls\nCan hide you from our messengers of war,\nThough all these English and their discipline\nWere harbour'd in their rude circumference.\nThen tell us, shall your city call us lord,\nIn that behalf which we have challenged it?\nOr shall we give the signal to our rage\nAnd stalk in blood to our possession?\nFirst Citizen In brief, we are the king of England's subjects:\nFor him, and in his right, we hold this town.\nKING JOHN Acknowledge then the king, and let me in.\nFirst Citizen That can we not; but he that proves the king,\nTo him will we prove loyal: till that time\nHave we ramm'd up our gates against the world.\nKING JOHN Doth not the crown of England prove the king?\nAnd if not that, I bring you witnesses,\nTwice fifteen thousand hearts of England's breed,--\nBASTARD Bastards, and else.\nKING JOHN To verify our title with their lives.\nKING PHILIP As many and as well-born bloods as those,--\nBASTARD Some bastards too.\nKING PHILIP Stand in his face to contradict his claim.\nFirst Citizen Till you compound whose right is worthiest,\nWe for the worthiest hold the right from both.\nKING JOHN Then God forgive the sin of all those souls\nThat to their everlasting residence,\nBefore the dew of evening fall, shall fleet,\nIn dreadful trial of our kingdom's king!\nKING PHILIP Amen, amen! Mount, chevaliers! to arms!\nBASTARD Saint George, that swinged the dragon, and e'er since\nSits on his horseback at mine hostess' door,\nTeach us some fence!\n[To AUSTRIA]\nSirrah, were I at home,\nAt your den, sirrah, with your lioness\nI would set an ox-head to your lion's hide,\nAnd make a monster of you.\nAUSTRIA Peace! no more.\nBASTARD O tremble, for you hear the lion roar.\nKING JOHN Up higher to the plain; where we'll set forth\nIn best appointment all our regiments.\nBASTARD Speed then, to take advantage of the field.\nKING PHILIP It shall be so; and at the other hill\nCommand the rest to stand. God and our right!\n[Exeunt]\n[Here after excursions, enter the Herald of France,\nwith trumpets, to the gates]\nFrench Herald You men of Angiers, open wide your gates,\nAnd let young Arthur, Duke of Bretagne, in,\nWho by the hand of France this day hath made\nMuch work for tears in many an English mother,\nWhose sons lie scattered on the bleeding ground;\nMany a widow's husband grovelling lies,\nColdly embracing the discolour'd earth;\nAnd victory, with little loss, doth play\nUpon the dancing banners of the French,\nWho are at hand, triumphantly display'd,\nTo enter conquerors and to proclaim\nArthur of Bretagne England's king and yours.\n[Enter English Herald, with trumpet]\nEnglish Herald Rejoice, you men of Angiers, ring your bells:\nKing John, your king and England's doth approach,\nCommander of this hot malicious day:\nTheir armours, that march'd hence so silver-bright,\nHither return all gilt with Frenchmen's blood;\nThere stuck no plume in any English crest\nThat is removed by a staff of France;\nOur colours do return in those same hands\nThat did display them when we first march'd forth;\nAnd, like a troop of jolly huntsmen, come\nOur lusty English, all with purpled hands,\nDyed in the dying slaughter of their foes:\nOpen your gates and gives the victors way.\nFirst Citizen Heralds, from off our towers we might behold,\nFrom first to last, the onset and retire\nOf both your armies; whose equality\nBy our best eyes cannot be censured:\nBlood hath bought blood and blows have answered blows;\nStrength match'd with strength, and power confronted power:\nBoth are alike; and both alike we like.\nOne must prove greatest: while they weigh so even,\nWe hold our town for neither, yet for both.\n[Re-enter KING JOHN and KING PHILIP, with their\npowers, severally]\nKING JOHN France, hast thou yet more blood to cast away?\nSay, shall the current of our right run on?\nWhose passage, vex'd with thy impediment,\nShall leave his native channel and o'erswell\nWith course disturb'd even thy confining shores,\nUnless thou let his silver water keep\nA peaceful progress to the ocean.\nKING PHILIP England, thou hast not saved one drop of blood,\nIn this hot trial, more than we of France;\nRather, lost more. And by this hand I swear,\nThat sways the earth this climate overlooks,\nBefore we will lay down our just-borne arms,\nWe'll put thee down, 'gainst whom these arms we bear,\nOr add a royal number to the dead,\nGracing the scroll that tells of this war's loss\nWith slaughter coupled to the name of kings.\nBASTARD Ha, majesty! how high thy glory towers,\nWhen the rich blood of kings is set on fire!\nO, now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel;\nThe swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs;\nAnd now he feasts, mousing the flesh of men,\nIn undetermined differences of kings.\nWhy stand these royal fronts amazed thus?\nCry, 'havoc!' kings; back to the stained field,\nYou equal potents, fiery kindled spirits!\nThen let confusion of one part confirm\nThe other's peace: till then, blows, blood and death!\nKING JOHN Whose party do the townsmen yet admit?\nKING PHILIP Speak, citizens, for England; who's your king?\nFirst Citizen The king of England; when we know the king.\nKING PHILIP Know him in us, that here hold up his right.\nKING JOHN In us, that are our own great deputy\nAnd bear possession of our person here,\nLord of our presence, Angiers, and of you.\nFirst Citizen A greater power then we denies all this;\nAnd till it be undoubted, we do lock\nOur former scruple in our strong-barr'd gates;\nKing'd of our fears, until our fears, resolved,\nBe by some certain king purged and deposed.\nBASTARD By heaven, these scroyles of Angiers flout you, kings,\nAnd stand securely on their battlements,\nAs in a theatre, whence they gape and point\nAt your industrious scenes and acts of death.\nYour royal presences be ruled by me:\nDo like the mutines of Jerusalem,\nBe friends awhile and both conjointly bend\nYour sharpest deeds of malice on this town:\nBy east and west let France and England mount\nTheir battering cannon charged to the mouths,\nTill their soul-fearing clamours have brawl'd down\nThe flinty ribs of this contemptuous city:\nI'ld play incessantly upon these jades,\nEven till unfenced desolation\nLeave them as naked as the vulgar air.\nThat done, dissever your united strengths,\nAnd part your mingled colours once again;\nTurn face to face and bloody point to point;\nThen, in a moment, Fortune shall cull forth\nOut of one side her happy minion,\nTo whom in favour she shall give the day,\nAnd kiss him with a glorious victory.\nHow like you this wild counsel, mighty states?\nSmacks it not something of the policy?\nKING JOHN Now, by the sky that hangs above our heads,\nI like it well. France, shall we knit our powers\nAnd lay this Angiers even to the ground;\nThen after fight who shall be king of it?\nBASTARD An if thou hast the mettle of a king,\nBeing wronged as we are by this peevish town,\nTurn thou the mouth of thy artillery,\nAs we will ours, against these saucy walls;\nAnd when that we have dash'd them to the ground,\nWhy then defy each other and pell-mell\nMake work upon ourselves, for heaven or hell.\nKING PHILIP Let it be so. Say, where will you assault?\nKING JOHN We from the west will send destruction\nInto this city's bosom.\nAUSTRIA I from the north.\nKING PHILIP Our thunder from the south\nShall rain their drift of bullets on this town.\nBASTARD O prudent discipline! From north to south:\nAustria and France shoot in each other's mouth:\nI'll stir them to it. Come, away, away!\nFirst Citizen Hear us, great kings: vouchsafe awhile to stay,\nAnd I shall show you peace and fair-faced league;\nWin you this city without stroke or wound;\nRescue those breathing lives to die in beds,\nThat here come sacrifices for the field:\nPersever not, but hear me, mighty kings.\nKING JOHN Speak on with favour; we are bent to hear.\nFirst Citizen That daughter there of Spain, the Lady Blanch,\nIs niece to England: look upon the years\nOf Lewis the Dauphin and that lovely maid:\nIf lusty love should go in quest of beauty,\nWhere should he find it fairer than in Blanch?\nIf zealous love should go in search of virtue,\nWhere should he find it purer than in Blanch?\nIf love ambitious sought a match of birth,\nWhose veins bound richer blood than Lady Blanch?\nSuch as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth,\nIs the young Dauphin every way complete:\nIf not complete of, say he is not she;\nAnd she again wants nothing, to name want,\nIf want it be not that she is not he:\nHe is the half part of a blessed man,\nLeft to be finished by such as she;\nAnd she a fair divided excellence,\nWhose fulness of perfection lies in him.\nO, two such silver currents, when they join,\nDo glorify the banks that bound them in;\nAnd two such shores to two such streams made one,\nTwo such controlling bounds shall you be, kings,\nTo these two princes, if you marry them.\nThis union shall do more than battery can\nTo our fast-closed gates; for at this match,\nWith swifter spleen than powder can enforce,\nThe mouth of passage shall we fling wide ope,\nAnd give you entrance: but without this match,\nThe sea enraged is not half so deaf,\nLions more confident, mountains and rocks\nMore free from motion, no, not Death himself\nIn moral fury half so peremptory,\nAs we to keep this city.\nBASTARD Here's a stay\nThat shakes the rotten carcass of old Death\nOut of his rags! Here's a large mouth, indeed,\nThat spits forth death and mountains, rocks and seas,\nTalks as familiarly of roaring lions\nAs maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs!\nWhat cannoneer begot this lusty blood?\nHe speaks plain cannon fire, and smoke and bounce;\nHe gives the bastinado with his tongue:\nOur ears are cudgell'd; not a word of his\nBut buffets better than a fist of France:\nZounds! I was never so bethump'd with words\nSince I first call'd my brother's father dad.\nQUEEN ELINOR Son, list to this conjunction, make this match;\nGive with our niece a dowry large enough:\nFor by this knot thou shalt so surely tie\nThy now unsured assurance to the crown,\nThat yon green boy shall have no sun to ripe\nThe bloom that promiseth a mighty fruit.\nI see a yielding in the looks of France;\nMark, how they whisper: urge them while their souls\nAre capable of this ambition,\nLest zeal, now melted by the windy breath\nOf soft petitions, pity and remorse,\nCool and congeal again to what it was.\nFirst Citizen Why answer not the double majesties\nThis friendly treaty of our threaten'd town?\nKING PHILIP Speak England first, that hath been forward first\nTo speak unto this city: what say you?\nKING JOHN If that the Dauphin there, thy princely son,\nCan in this book of beauty read 'I love,'\nHer dowry shall weigh equal with a queen:\nFor Anjou and fair Touraine, Maine, Poictiers,\nAnd all that we upon this side the sea,\nExcept this city now by us besieged,\nFind liable to our crown and dignity,\nShall gild her bridal bed and make her rich\nIn titles, honours and promotions,\nAs she in beauty, education, blood,\nHolds hand with any princess of the world.\nKING PHILIP What say'st thou, boy? look in the lady's face.\nLEWIS I do, my lord; and in her eye I find\nA wonder, or a wondrous miracle,\nThe shadow of myself form'd in her eye:\nWhich being but the shadow of your son,\nBecomes a sun and makes your son a shadow:\nI do protest I never loved myself\nTill now infixed I beheld myself\nDrawn in the flattering table of her eye.\n[Whispers with BLANCH]\nBASTARD Drawn in the flattering table of her eye!\nHang'd in the frowning wrinkle of her brow!\nAnd quarter'd in her heart! he doth espy\nHimself love's traitor: this is pity now,\nThat hang'd and drawn and quartered, there should be\nIn such a love so vile a lout as he.\nBLANCH My uncle's will in this respect is mine:\nIf he see aught in you that makes him like,\nThat any thing he sees, which moves his liking,\nI can with ease translate it to my will;\nOr if you will, to speak more properly,\nI will enforce it easily to my love.\nFurther I will not flatter you, my lord,\nThat all I see in you is worthy love,\nThan this; that nothing do I see in you,\nThough churlish thoughts themselves should be your judge,\nThat I can find should merit any hate.\nKING JOHN What say these young ones? What say you my niece?\nBLANCH That she is bound in honour still to do\nWhat you in wisdom still vouchsafe to say.\nKING JOHN Speak then, prince Dauphin; can you love this lady?\nLEWIS Nay, ask me if I can refrain from love;\nFor I do love her most unfeignedly.\nKING JOHN Then do I give Volquessen, Touraine, Maine,\nPoictiers and Anjou, these five provinces,\nWith her to thee; and this addition more,\nFull thirty thousand marks of English coin.\nPhilip of France, if thou be pleased withal,\nCommand thy son and daughter to join hands.\nKING PHILIP It likes us well; young princes, close your hands.\nAUSTRIA And your lips too; for I am well assured\nThat I did so when I was first assured.\nKING PHILIP Now, citizens of Angiers, ope your gates,\nLet in that amity which you have made;\nFor at Saint Mary's chapel presently\nThe rites of marriage shall be solemnized.\nIs not the Lady Constance in this troop?\nI know she is not, for this match made up\nHer presence would have interrupted much:\nWhere is she and her son? tell me, who knows.\nLEWIS She is sad and passionate at your highness' tent.\nKING PHILIP And, by my faith, this league that we have made\nWill give her sadness very little cure.\nBrother of England, how may we content\nThis widow lady? In her right we came;\nWhich we, God knows, have turn'd another way,\nTo our own vantage.\nKING JOHN We will heal up all;\nFor we'll create young Arthur Duke of Bretagne\nAnd Earl of Richmond; and this rich fair town\nWe make him lord of. Call the Lady Constance;\nSome speedy messenger bid her repair\nTo our solemnity: I trust we shall,\nIf not fill up the measure of her will,\nYet in some measure satisfy her so\nThat we shall stop her exclamation.\nGo we, as well as haste will suffer us,\nTo this unlook'd for, unprepared pomp.\n[Exeunt all but the BASTARD]\nBASTARD Mad world! mad kings! mad composition!\nJohn, to stop Arthur's title in the whole,\nHath willingly departed with a part,\nAnd France, whose armour conscience buckled on,\nWhom zeal and charity brought to the field\nAs God's own soldier, rounded in the ear\nWith that same purpose-changer, that sly devil,\nThat broker, that still breaks the pate of faith,\nThat daily break-vow, he that wins of all,\nOf kings, of beggars, old men, young men, maids,\nWho, having no external thing to lose\nBut the word 'maid,' cheats the poor maid of that,\nThat smooth-faced gentleman, tickling Commodity,\nCommodity, the bias of the world,\nThe world, who of itself is peised well,\nMade to run even upon even ground,\nTill this advantage, this vile-drawing bias,\nThis sway of motion, this Commodity,\nMakes it take head from all indifferency,\nFrom all direction, purpose, course, intent:\nAnd this same bias, this Commodity,\nThis bawd, this broker, this all-changing word,\nClapp'd on the outward eye of fickle France,\nHath drawn him from his own determined aid,\nFrom a resolved and honourable war,\nTo a most base and vile-concluded peace.\nAnd why rail I on this Commodity?\nBut for because he hath not woo'd me yet:\nNot that I have the power to clutch my hand,\nWhen his fair angels would salute my palm;\nBut for my hand, as unattempted yet,\nLike a poor beggar, raileth on the rich.\nWell, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail\nAnd say there is no sin but to be rich;\nAnd being rich, my virtue then shall be\nTo say there is no vice but beggary.\nSince kings break faith upon commodity,\nGain, be my lord, for I will worship thee.\n[Exit]\nKING JOHN\nACT III\nSCENE I The French King's pavilion.\n[Enter CONSTANCE, ARTHUR, and SALISBURY]\nCONSTANCE Gone to be married! gone to swear a peace!\nFalse blood to false blood join'd! gone to be friends!\nShall Lewis have Blanch, and Blanch those provinces?\nIt is not so; thou hast misspoke, misheard:\nBe well advised, tell o'er thy tale again:\nIt cannot be; thou dost but say 'tis so:\nI trust I may not trust thee; for thy word\nIs but the vain breath of a common man:\nBelieve me, I do not believe thee, man;\nI have a king's oath to the contrary.\nThou shalt be punish'd for thus frighting me,\nFor I am sick and capable of fears,\nOppress'd with wrongs and therefore full of fears,\nA widow, husbandless, subject to fears,\nA woman, naturally born to fears;\nAnd though thou now confess thou didst but jest,\nWith my vex'd spirits I cannot take a truce,\nBut they will quake and tremble all this day.\nWhat dost thou mean by shaking of thy head?\nWhy dost thou look so sadly on my son?\nWhat means that hand upon that breast of thine?\nWhy holds thine eye that lamentable rheum,\nLike a proud river peering o'er his bounds?\nBe these sad signs confirmers of thy words?\nThen speak again; not all thy former tale,\nBut this one word, whether thy tale be true.\nSALISBURY As true as I believe you think them false\nThat give you cause to prove my saying true.\nCONSTANCE O, if thou teach me to believe this sorrow,\nTeach thou this sorrow how to make me die,\nAnd let belief and life encounter so\nAs doth the fury of two desperate men\nWhich in the very meeting fall and die.\nLewis marry Blanch! O boy, then where art thou?\nFrance friend with England, what becomes of me?\nFellow, be gone: I cannot brook thy sight:\nThis news hath made thee a most ugly man.\nSALISBURY What other harm have I, good lady, done,\nBut spoke the harm that is by others done?\nCONSTANCE Which harm within itself so heinous is\nAs it makes harmful all that speak of it.\nARTHUR I do beseech you, madam, be content.\nCONSTANCE If thou, that bid'st me be content, wert grim,\nUgly and slanderous to thy mother's womb,\nFull of unpleasing blots and sightless stains,\nLame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious,\nPatch'd with foul moles and eye-offending marks,\nI would not care, I then would be content,\nFor then I should not love thee, no, nor thou\nBecome thy great birth nor deserve a crown.\nBut thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy,\nNature and Fortune join'd to make thee great:\nOf Nature's gifts thou mayst with lilies boast,\nAnd with the half-blown rose. But Fortune, O,\nShe is corrupted, changed and won from thee;\nShe adulterates hourly with thine uncle John,\nAnd with her golden hand hath pluck'd on France\nTo tread down fair respect of sovereignty,\nAnd made his majesty the bawd to theirs.\nFrance is a bawd to Fortune and King John,\nThat strumpet Fortune, that usurping John!\nTell me, thou fellow, is not France forsworn?\nEnvenom him with words, or get thee gone\nAnd leave those woes alone which I alone\nAm bound to under-bear.\nSALISBURY Pardon me, madam,\nI may not go without you to the kings.\nCONSTANCE Thou mayst, thou shalt; I will not go with thee:\nI will instruct my sorrows to be proud;\nFor grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.\nTo me and to the state of my great grief\nLet kings assemble; for my grief's so great\nThat no supporter but the huge firm earth\nCan hold it up: here I and sorrows sit;\nHere is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.\n[Seats herself on the ground]\n[Enter KING JOHN, KING PHILLIP, LEWIS, BLANCH,\nQUEEN ELINOR, the BASTARD, AUSTRIA, and Attendants]\nKING PHILIP 'Tis true, fair daughter; and this blessed day\nEver in France shall be kept festival:\nTo solemnize this day the glorious sun\nStays in his course and plays the alchemist,\nTurning with splendor of his precious eye\nThe meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold:\nThe yearly course that brings this day about\nShall never see it but a holiday.\nCONSTANCE A wicked day, and not a holy day!\n[Rising]\nWhat hath this day deserved? what hath it done,\nThat it in golden letters should be set\nAmong the high tides in the calendar?\nNay, rather turn this day out of the week,\nThis day of shame, oppression, perjury.\nOr, if it must stand still, let wives with child\nPray that their burthens may not fall this day,\nLest that their hopes prodigiously be cross'd:\nBut on this day let seamen fear no wreck;\nNo bargains break that are not this day made:\nThis day, all things begun come to ill end,\nYea, faith itself to hollow falsehood change!\nKING PHILIP By heaven, lady, you shall have no cause\nTo curse the fair proceedings of this day:\nHave I not pawn'd to you my majesty?\nCONSTANCE You have beguiled me with a counterfeit\nResembling majesty, which, being touch'd and tried,\nProves valueless: you are forsworn, forsworn;\nYou came in arms to spill mine enemies' blood,\nBut now in arms you strengthen it with yours:\nThe grappling vigour and rough frown of war\nIs cold in amity and painted peace,\nAnd our oppression hath made up this league.\nArm, arm, you heavens, against these perjured kings!\nA widow cries; be husband to me, heavens!\nLet not the hours of this ungodly day\nWear out the day in peace; but, ere sunset,\nSet armed discord 'twixt these perjured kings!\nHear me, O, hear me!\nAUSTRIA Lady Constance, peace!\nCONSTANCE War! war! no peace! peace is to me a war\nO Lymoges! O Austria! thou dost shame\nThat bloody spoil: thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward!\nThou little valiant, great in villany!\nThou ever strong upon the stronger side!\nThou Fortune's champion that dost never fight\nBut when her humorous ladyship is by\nTo teach thee safety! thou art perjured too,\nAnd soothest up greatness. What a fool art thou,\nA ramping fool, to brag and stamp and swear\nUpon my party! Thou cold-blooded slave,\nHast thou not spoke like thunder on my side,\nBeen sworn my soldier, bidding me depend\nUpon thy stars, thy fortune and thy strength,\nAnd dost thou now fall over to my fores?\nThou wear a lion's hide! doff it for shame,\nAnd hang a calf's-skin on those recreant limbs.\nAUSTRIA O, that a man should speak those words to me!\nBASTARD And hang a calf's-skin on those recreant limbs.\nAUSTRIA Thou darest not say so, villain, for thy life.\nBASTARD And hang a calf's-skin on those recreant limbs.\nKING JOHN We like not this; thou dost forget thyself.\n[Enter CARDINAL PANDULPH]\nKING PHILIP Here comes the holy legate of the pope.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH Hail, you anointed deputies of heaven!\nTo thee, King John, my holy errand is.\nI Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal,\nAnd from Pope Innocent the legate here,\nDo in his name religiously demand\nWhy thou against the church, our holy mother,\nSo wilfully dost spurn; and force perforce\nKeep Stephen Langton, chosen archbishop\nOf Canterbury, from that holy see?\nThis, in our foresaid holy father's name,\nPope Innocent, I do demand of thee.\nKING JOHN What earthy name to interrogatories\nCan task the free breath of a sacred king?\nThou canst not, cardinal, devise a name\nSo slight, unworthy and ridiculous,\nTo charge me to an answer, as the pope.\nTell him this tale; and from the mouth of England\nAdd thus much more, that no Italian priest\nShall tithe or toll in our dominions;\nBut as we, under heaven, are supreme head,\nSo under Him that great supremacy,\nWhere we do reign, we will alone uphold,\nWithout the assistance of a mortal hand:\nSo tell the pope, all reverence set apart\nTo him and his usurp'd authority.\nKING PHILIP Brother of England, you blaspheme in this.\nKING JOHN Though you and all the kings of Christendom\nAre led so grossly by this meddling priest,\nDreading the curse that money may buy out;\nAnd by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust,\nPurchase corrupted pardon of a man,\nWho in that sale sells pardon from himself,\nThough you and all the rest so grossly led\nThis juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish,\nYet I alone, alone do me oppose\nAgainst the pope and count his friends my foes.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH Then, by the lawful power that I have,\nThou shalt stand cursed and excommunicate.\nAnd blessed shall he be that doth revolt\nFrom his allegiance to an heretic;\nAnd meritorious shall that hand be call'd,\nCanonized and worshipped as a saint,\nThat takes away by any secret course\nThy hateful life.\nCONSTANCE O, lawful let it be\nThat I have room with Rome to curse awhile!\nGood father cardinal, cry thou amen\nTo my keen curses; for without my wrong\nThere is no tongue hath power to curse him right.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH There's law and warrant, lady, for my curse.\nCONSTANCE And for mine too: when law can do no right,\nLet it be lawful that law bar no wrong:\nLaw cannot give my child his kingdom here,\nFor he that holds his kingdom holds the law;\nTherefore, since law itself is perfect wrong,\nHow can the law forbid my tongue to curse?\nCARDINAL PANDULPH Philip of France, on peril of a curse,\nLet go the hand of that arch-heretic;\nAnd raise the power of France upon his head,\nUnless he do submit himself to Rome.\nQUEEN ELINOR Look'st thou pale, France? do not let go thy hand.\nCONSTANCE Look to that, devil; lest that France repent,\nAnd by disjoining hands, hell lose a soul.\nAUSTRIA King Philip, listen to the cardinal.\nBASTARD And hang a calf's-skin on his recreant limbs.\nAUSTRIA Well, ruffian, I must pocket up these wrongs, Because--\nBASTARD Your breeches best may carry them.\nKING JOHN Philip, what say'st thou to the cardinal?\nCONSTANCE What should he say, but as the cardinal?\nLEWIS Bethink you, father; for the difference\nIs purchase of a heavy curse from Rome,\nOr the light loss of England for a friend:\nForego the easier.\nBLANCH That's the curse of Rome.\nCONSTANCE O Lewis, stand fast! the devil tempts thee here\nIn likeness of a new untrimmed bride.\nBLANCH The Lady Constance speaks not from her faith,\nBut from her need.\nCONSTANCE O, if thou grant my need,\nWhich only lives but by the death of faith,\nThat need must needs infer this principle,\nThat faith would live again by death of need.\nO then, tread down my need, and faith mounts up;\nKeep my need up, and faith is trodden down!\nKING JOHN The king is moved, and answers not to this.\nCONSTANCE O, be removed from him, and answer well!\nAUSTRIA Do so, King Philip; hang no more in doubt.\nBASTARD Hang nothing but a calf's-skin, most sweet lout.\nKING PHILIP I am perplex'd, and know not what to say.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH What canst thou say but will perplex thee more,\nIf thou stand excommunicate and cursed?\nKING PHILIP Good reverend father, make my person yours,\nAnd tell me how you would bestow yourself.\nThis royal hand and mine are newly knit,\nAnd the conjunction of our inward souls\nMarried in league, coupled and linked together\nWith all religious strength of sacred vows;\nThe latest breath that gave the sound of words\nWas deep-sworn faith, peace, amity, true love\nBetween our kingdoms and our royal selves,\nAnd even before this truce, but new before,\nNo longer than we well could wash our hands\nTo clap this royal bargain up of peace,\nHeaven knows, they were besmear'd and over-stain'd\nWith slaughter's pencil, where revenge did paint\nThe fearful difference of incensed kings:\nAnd shall these hands, so lately purged of blood,\nSo newly join'd in love, so strong in both,\nUnyoke this seizure and this kind regreet?\nPlay fast and loose with faith? so jest with heaven,\nMake such unconstant children of ourselves,\nAs now again to snatch our palm from palm,\nUnswear faith sworn, and on the marriage-bed\nOf smiling peace to march a bloody host,\nAnd make a riot on the gentle brow\nOf true sincerity? O, holy sir,\nMy reverend father, let it not be so!\nOut of your grace, devise, ordain, impose\nSome gentle order; and then we shall be blest\nTo do your pleasure and continue friends.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH All form is formless, order orderless,\nSave what is opposite to England's love.\nTherefore to arms! be champion of our church,\nOr let the church, our mother, breathe her curse,\nA mother's curse, on her revolting son.\nFrance, thou mayst hold a serpent by the tongue,\nA chafed lion by the mortal paw,\nA fasting tiger safer by the tooth,\nThan keep in peace that hand which thou dost hold.\nKING PHILIP I may disjoin my hand, but not my faith.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH So makest thou faith an enemy to faith;\nAnd like a civil war set'st oath to oath,\nThy tongue against thy tongue. O, let thy vow\nFirst made to heaven, first be to heaven perform'd,\nThat is, to be the champion of our church!\nWhat since thou sworest is sworn against thyself\nAnd may not be performed by thyself,\nFor that which thou hast sworn to do amiss\nIs not amiss when it is truly done,\nAnd being not done, where doing tends to ill,\nThe truth is then most done not doing it:\nThe better act of purposes mistook\nIs to mistake again; though indirect,\nYet indirection thereby grows direct,\nAnd falsehood falsehood cures, as fire cools fire\nWithin the scorched veins of one new-burn'd.\nIt is religion that doth make vows kept;\nBut thou hast sworn against religion,\nBy what thou swear'st against the thing thou swear'st,\nAnd makest an oath the surety for thy truth\nAgainst an oath: the truth thou art unsure\nTo swear, swears only not to be forsworn;\nElse what a mockery should it be to swear!\nBut thou dost swear only to be forsworn;\nAnd most forsworn, to keep what thou dost swear.\nTherefore thy later vows against thy first\nIs in thyself rebellion to thyself;\nAnd better conquest never canst thou make\nThan arm thy constant and thy nobler parts\nAgainst these giddy loose suggestions:\nUpon which better part our prayers come in,\nIf thou vouchsafe them. But if not, then know\nThe peril of our curses light on thee\nSo heavy as thou shalt not shake them off,\nBut in despair die under their black weight.\nAUSTRIA Rebellion, flat rebellion!\nBASTARD Will't not be?\nWill not a calfs-skin stop that mouth of thine?\nLEWIS Father, to arms!\nBLANCH Upon thy wedding-day?\nAgainst the blood that thou hast married?\nWhat, shall our feast be kept with slaughter'd men?\nShall braying trumpets and loud churlish drums,\nClamours of hell, be measures to our pomp?\nO husband, hear me! ay, alack, how new\nIs husband in my mouth! even for that name,\nWhich till this time my tongue did ne'er pronounce,\nUpon my knee I beg, go not to arms\nAgainst mine uncle.\nCONSTANCE O, upon my knee,\nMade hard with kneeling, I do pray to thee,\nThou virtuous Dauphin, alter not the doom\nForethought by heaven!\nBLANCH Now shall I see thy love: what motive may\nBe stronger with thee than the name of wife?\nCONSTANCE That which upholdeth him that thee upholds,\nHis honour: O, thine honour, Lewis, thine honour!\nLEWIS I muse your majesty doth seem so cold,\nWhen such profound respects do pull you on.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH I will denounce a curse upon his head.\nKING PHILIP Thou shalt not need. England, I will fall from thee.\nCONSTANCE O fair return of banish'd majesty!\nQUEEN ELINOR O foul revolt of French inconstancy!\nKING JOHN France, thou shalt rue this hour within this hour.\nBASTARD Old Time the clock-setter, that bald sexton Time,\nIs it as he will? well then, France shall rue.\nBLANCH The sun's o'ercast with blood: fair day, adieu!\nWhich is the side that I must go withal?\nI am with both: each army hath a hand;\nAnd in their rage, I having hold of both,\nThey swirl asunder and dismember me.\nHusband, I cannot pray that thou mayst win;\nUncle, I needs must pray that thou mayst lose;\nFather, I may not wish the fortune thine;\nGrandam, I will not wish thy fortunes thrive:\nWhoever wins, on that side shall I lose\nAssured loss before the match be play'd.\nLEWIS Lady, with me, with me thy fortune lies.\nBLANCH There where my fortune lives, there my life dies.\nKING JOHN Cousin, go draw our puissance together.\n[Exit BASTARD]\nFrance, I am burn'd up with inflaming wrath;\nA rage whose heat hath this condition,\nThat nothing can allay, nothing but blood,\nThe blood, and dearest-valued blood, of France.\nKING PHILIP Thy rage sham burn thee up, and thou shalt turn\nTo ashes, ere our blood shall quench that fire:\nLook to thyself, thou art in jeopardy.\nKING JOHN No more than he that threats. To arms let's hie!\n[Exeunt]\nKING JOHN\nACT III\nSCENE II The same. Plains near Angiers.\n[Alarums, excursions. Enter the BASTARD, with\nAUSTRIA'S head]\nBASTARD Now, by my life, this day grows wondrous hot;\nSome airy devil hovers in the sky\nAnd pours down mischief. Austria's head lie there,\nWhile Philip breathes.\n[Enter KING JOHN, ARTHUR, and HUBERT]\nKING JOHN Hubert, keep this boy. Philip, make up:\nMy mother is assailed in our tent,\nAnd ta'en, I fear.\nBASTARD My lord, I rescued her;\nHer highness is in safety, fear you not:\nBut on, my liege; for very little pains\nWill bring this labour to an happy end.\n[Exeunt]\nKING JOHN\nACT III\nSCENE III The same.\n[Alarums, excursions, retreat. Enter KING JOHN,\nQUEEN ELINOR, ARTHUR, the BASTARD, HUBERT,\nand Lords]\nKING JOHN [To QUEEN ELINOR] So shall it be; your grace shall\nstay behind\nSo strongly guarded.\n[To ARTHUR]\nCousin, look not sad:\nThy grandam loves thee; and thy uncle will\nAs dear be to thee as thy father was.\nARTHUR O, this will make my mother die with grief!\nKING JOHN [To the BASTARD] Cousin, away for England!\nhaste before:\nAnd, ere our coming, see thou shake the bags\nOf hoarding abbots; imprisoned angels\nSet at liberty: the fat ribs of peace\nMust by the hungry now be fed upon:\nUse our commission in his utmost force.\nBASTARD Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back,\nWhen gold and silver becks me to come on.\nI leave your highness. Grandam, I will pray,\nIf ever I remember to be holy,\nFor your fair safety; so, I kiss your hand.\nELINOR Farewell, gentle cousin.\nKING JOHN Coz, farewell.\n[Exit the BASTARD]\nQUEEN ELINOR Come hither, little kinsman; hark, a word.\nKING JOHN Come hither, Hubert. O my gentle Hubert,\nWe owe thee much! within this wall of flesh\nThere is a soul counts thee her creditor\nAnd with advantage means to pay thy love:\nAnd my good friend, thy voluntary oath\nLives in this bosom, dearly cherished.\nGive me thy hand. I had a thing to say,\nBut I will fit it with some better time.\nBy heaven, Hubert, I am almost ashamed\nTo say what good respect I have of thee.\nHUBERT I am much bounden to your majesty.\nKING JOHN Good friend, thou hast no cause to say so yet,\nBut thou shalt have; and creep time ne'er so slow,\nYet it shall come from me to do thee good.\nI had a thing to say, but let it go:\nThe sun is in the heaven, and the proud day,\nAttended with the pleasures of the world,\nIs all too wanton and too full of gawds\nTo give me audience: if the midnight bell\nDid, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth,\nSound on into the drowsy race of night;\nIf this same were a churchyard where we stand,\nAnd thou possessed with a thousand wrongs,\nOr if that surly spirit, melancholy,\nHad baked thy blood and made it heavy-thick,\nWhich else runs tickling up and down the veins,\nMaking that idiot, laughter, keep men's eyes\nAnd strain their cheeks to idle merriment,\nA passion hateful to my purposes,\nOr if that thou couldst see me without eyes,\nHear me without thine ears, and make reply\nWithout a tongue, using conceit alone,\nWithout eyes, ears and harmful sound of words;\nThen, in despite of brooded watchful day,\nI would into thy bosom pour my thoughts:\nBut, ah, I will not! yet I love thee well;\nAnd, by my troth, I think thou lovest me well.\nHUBERT So well, that what you bid me undertake,\nThough that my death were adjunct to my act,\nBy heaven, I would do it.\nKING JOHN Do not I know thou wouldst?\nGood Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, throw thine eye\nOn yon young boy: I'll tell thee what, my friend,\nHe is a very serpent in my way;\nAnd whereso'er this foot of mine doth tread,\nHe lies before me: dost thou understand me?\nThou art his keeper.\nHUBERT And I'll keep him so,\nThat he shall not offend your majesty.\nKING JOHN Death.\nHUBERT My lord?\nKING JOHN A grave.\nHUBERT He shall not live.\nKING JOHN Enough.\nI could be merry now. Hubert, I love thee;\nWell, I'll not say what I intend for thee:\nRemember. Madam, fare you well:\nI'll send those powers o'er to your majesty.\nELINOR My blessing go with thee!\nKING JOHN For England, cousin, go:\nHubert shall be your man, attend on you\nWith all true duty. On toward Calais, ho!\n[Exeunt]\nKING JOHN\nACT III\nSCENE IV The same. KING PHILIP'S tent.\n[Enter KING PHILIP, LEWIS, CARDINAL PANDULPH,\nand Attendants]\nKING PHILIP So, by a roaring tempest on the flood,\nA whole armado of convicted sail\nIs scatter'd and disjoin'd from fellowship.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH Courage and comfort! all shall yet go well.\nKING PHILIP What can go well, when we have run so ill?\nAre we not beaten? Is not Angiers lost?\nArthur ta'en prisoner? divers dear friends slain?\nAnd bloody England into England gone,\nO'erbearing interruption, spite of France?\nLEWIS What he hath won, that hath he fortified:\nSo hot a speed with such advice disposed,\nSuch temperate order in so fierce a cause,\nDoth want example: who hath read or heard\nOf any kindred action like to this?\nKING PHILIP Well could I bear that England had this praise,\nSo we could find some pattern of our shame.\n[Enter CONSTANCE]\nLook, who comes here! a grave unto a soul;\nHolding the eternal spirit against her will,\nIn the vile prison of afflicted breath.\nI prithee, lady, go away with me.\nCONSTANCE Lo, now I now see the issue of your peace.\nKING PHILIP Patience, good lady! comfort, gentle Constance!\nCONSTANCE No, I defy all counsel, all redress,\nBut that which ends all counsel, true redress,\nDeath, death; O amiable lovely death!\nThou odouriferous stench! sound rottenness!\nArise forth from the couch of lasting night,\nThou hate and terror to prosperity,\nAnd I will kiss thy detestable bones\nAnd put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows\nAnd ring these fingers with thy household worms\nAnd stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust\nAnd be a carrion monster like thyself:\nCome, grin on me, and I will think thou smilest\nAnd buss thee as thy wife. Misery's love,\nO, come to me!\nKING PHILIP O fair affliction, peace!\nCONSTANCE No, no, I will not, having breath to cry:\nO, that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth!\nThen with a passion would I shake the world;\nAnd rouse from sleep that fell anatomy\nWhich cannot hear a lady's feeble voice,\nWhich scorns a modern invocation.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow.\nCONSTANCE Thou art not holy to belie me so;\nI am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;\nMy name is Constance; I was Geffrey's wife;\nYoung Arthur is my son, and he is lost:\nI am not mad: I would to heaven I were!\nFor then, 'tis like I should forget myself:\nO, if I could, what grief should I forget!\nPreach some philosophy to make me mad,\nAnd thou shalt be canonized, cardinal;\nFor being not mad but sensible of grief,\nMy reasonable part produces reason\nHow I may be deliver'd of these woes,\nAnd teaches me to kill or hang myself:\nIf I were mad, I should forget my son,\nOr madly think a babe of clouts were he:\nI am not mad; too well, too well I feel\nThe different plague of each calamity.\nKING PHILIP Bind up those tresses. O, what love I note\nIn the fair multitude of those her hairs!\nWhere but by chance a silver drop hath fallen,\nEven to that drop ten thousand wiry friends\nDo glue themselves in sociable grief,\nLike true, inseparable, faithful loves,\nSticking together in calamity.\nCONSTANCE To England, if you will.\nKING PHILIP Bind up your hairs.\nCONSTANCE Yes, that I will; and wherefore will I do it?\nI tore them from their bonds and cried aloud\n'O that these hands could so redeem my son,\nAs they have given these hairs their liberty!'\nBut now I envy at their liberty,\nAnd will again commit them to their bonds,\nBecause my poor child is a prisoner.\nAnd, father cardinal, I have heard you say\nThat we shall see and know our friends in heaven:\nIf that be true, I shall see my boy again;\nFor since the birth of Cain, the first male child,\nTo him that did but yesterday suspire,\nThere was not such a gracious creature born.\nBut now will canker-sorrow eat my bud\nAnd chase the native beauty from his cheek\nAnd he will look as hollow as a ghost,\nAs dim and meagre as an ague's fit,\nAnd so he'll die; and, rising so again,\nWhen I shall meet him in the court of heaven\nI shall not know him: therefore never, never\nMust I behold my pretty Arthur more.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH You hold too heinous a respect of grief.\nCONSTANCE He talks to me that never had a son.\nKING PHILIP You are as fond of grief as of your child.\nCONSTANCE Grief fills the room up of my absent child,\nLies in his bed, walks up and down with me,\nPuts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,\nRemembers me of all his gracious parts,\nStuffs out his vacant garments with his form;\nThen, have I reason to be fond of grief?\nFare you well: had you such a loss as I,\nI could give better comfort than you do.\nI will not keep this form upon my head,\nWhen there is such disorder in my wit.\nO Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!\nMy life, my joy, my food, my all the world!\nMy widow-comfort, and my sorrows' cure!\n[Exit]\nKING PHILIP I fear some outrage, and I'll follow her.\n[Exit]\nLEWIS There's nothing in this world can make me joy:\nLife is as tedious as a twice-told tale\nVexing the dull ear of a drowsy man;\nAnd bitter shame hath spoil'd the sweet world's taste\nThat it yields nought but shame and bitterness.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH Before the curing of a strong disease,\nEven in the instant of repair and health,\nThe fit is strongest; evils that take leave,\nOn their departure most of all show evil:\nWhat have you lost by losing of this day?\nLEWIS All days of glory, joy and happiness.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH If you had won it, certainly you had.\nNo, no; when Fortune means to men most good,\nShe looks upon them with a threatening eye.\n'Tis strange to think how much King John hath lost\nIn this which he accounts so clearly won:\nAre not you grieved that Arthur is his prisoner?\nLEWIS As heartily as he is glad he hath him.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH Your mind is all as youthful as your blood.\nNow hear me speak with a prophetic spirit;\nFor even the breath of what I mean to speak\nShall blow each dust, each straw, each little rub,\nOut of the path which shall directly lead\nThy foot to England's throne; and therefore mark.\nJohn hath seized Arthur; and it cannot be\nThat, whiles warm life plays in that infant's veins,\nThe misplaced John should entertain an hour,\nOne minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest.\nA sceptre snatch'd with an unruly hand\nMust be as boisterously maintain'd as gain'd;\nAnd he that stands upon a slippery place\nMakes nice of no vile hold to stay him up:\nThat John may stand, then Arthur needs must fall;\nSo be it, for it cannot be but so.\nLEWIS But what shall I gain by young Arthur's fall?\nCARDINAL PANDULPH You, in the right of Lady Blanch your wife,\nMay then make all the claim that Arthur did.\nLEWIS And lose it, life and all, as Arthur did.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH How green you are and fresh in this old world!\nJohn lays you plots; the times conspire with you;\nFor he that steeps his safety in true blood\nShall find but bloody safety and untrue.\nThis act so evilly born shall cool the hearts\nOf all his people and freeze up their zeal,\nThat none so small advantage shall step forth\nTo cheque his reign, but they will cherish it;\nNo natural exhalation in the sky,\nNo scope of nature, no distemper'd day,\nNo common wind, no customed event,\nBut they will pluck away his natural cause\nAnd call them meteors, prodigies and signs,\nAbortives, presages and tongues of heaven,\nPlainly denouncing vengeance upon John.\nLEWIS May be he will not touch young Arthur's life,\nBut hold himself safe in his prisonment.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH O, sir, when he shall hear of your approach,\nIf that young Arthur be not gone already,\nEven at that news he dies; and then the hearts\nOf all his people shall revolt from him\nAnd kiss the lips of unacquainted change\nAnd pick strong matter of revolt and wrath\nOut of the bloody fingers' ends of John.\nMethinks I see this hurly all on foot:\nAnd, O, what better matter breeds for you\nThan I have named! The bastard Faulconbridge\nIs now in England, ransacking the church,\nOffending charity: if but a dozen French\nWere there in arms, they would be as a call\nTo train ten thousand English to their side,\nOr as a little snow, tumbled about,\nAnon becomes a mountain. O noble Dauphin,\nGo with me to the king: 'tis wonderful\nWhat may be wrought out of their discontent,\nNow that their souls are topful of offence.\nFor England go: I will whet on the king.\nLEWIS Strong reasons make strong actions: let us go:\nIf you say ay, the king will not say no.\n[Exeunt]\nKING JOHN\nACT IV\nSCENE I A room in a castle.\n[Enter HUBERT and Executioners]\nHUBERT Heat me these irons hot; and look thou stand\nWithin the arras: when I strike my foot\nUpon the bosom of the ground, rush forth,\nAnd bind the boy which you shall find with me\nFast to the chair: be heedful: hence, and watch.\nFirst Executioner I hope your warrant will bear out the deed.\nHUBERT Uncleanly scruples! fear not you: look to't.\n[Exeunt Executioners]\nYoung lad, come forth; I have to say with you.\n[Enter ARTHUR]\nARTHUR Good morrow, Hubert.\nHUBERT Good morrow, little prince.\nARTHUR As little prince, having so great a title\nTo be more prince, as may be. You are sad.\nHUBERT Indeed, I have been merrier.\nARTHUR Mercy on me!\nMethinks no body should be sad but I:\nYet, I remember, when I was in France,\nYoung gentlemen would be as sad as night,\nOnly for wantonness. By my christendom,\nSo I were out of prison and kept sheep,\nI should be as merry as the day is long;\nAnd so I would be here, but that I doubt\nMy uncle practises more harm to me:\nHe is afraid of me and I of him:\nIs it my fault that I was Geffrey's son?\nNo, indeed, is't not; and I would to heaven\nI were your son, so you would love me, Hubert.\nHUBERT [Aside] If I talk to him, with his innocent prate\nHe will awake my mercy which lies dead:\nTherefore I will be sudden and dispatch.\nARTHUR Are you sick, Hubert? you look pale to-day:\nIn sooth, I would you were a little sick,\nThat I might sit all night and watch with you:\nI warrant I love you more than you do me.\nHUBERT [Aside] His words do take possession of my bosom.\nRead here, young Arthur.\n[Showing a paper]\n[Aside]\nHow now, foolish rheum!\nTurning dispiteous torture out of door!\nI must be brief, lest resolution drop\nOut at mine eyes in tender womanish tears.\nCan you not read it? Is it not fair writ?\nARTHUR Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul effect:\nMust you with hot irons burn out both mine eyes?\nHUBERT Young boy, I must.\nARTHUR And will you?\nHUBERT And I will.\nARTHUR Have you the heart? When your head did but ache,\nI knit my handercher about your brows,\nThe best I had, a princess wrought it me,\nAnd I did never ask it you again;\nAnd with my hand at midnight held your head,\nAnd like the watchful minutes to the hour,\nStill and anon cheer'd up the heavy time,\nSaying, 'What lack you?' and 'Where lies your grief?'\nOr 'What good love may I perform for you?'\nMany a poor man's son would have lien still\nAnd ne'er have spoke a loving word to you;\nBut you at your sick service had a prince.\nNay, you may think my love was crafty love\nAnd call it cunning: do, an if you will:\nIf heaven be pleased that you must use me ill,\nWhy then you must. Will you put out mine eyes?\nThese eyes that never did nor never shall\nSo much as frown on you.\nHUBERT I have sworn to do it;\nAnd with hot irons must I burn them out.\nARTHUR Ah, none but in this iron age would do it!\nThe iron of itself, though heat red-hot,\nApproaching near these eyes, would drink my tears\nAnd quench his fiery indignation\nEven in the matter of mine innocence;\nNay, after that, consume away in rust\nBut for containing fire to harm mine eye.\nAre you more stubborn-hard than hammer'd iron?\nAn if an angel should have come to me\nAnd told me Hubert should put out mine eyes,\nI would not have believed him,--no tongue but Hubert's.\nHUBERT Come forth.\n[Stamps]\n[Re-enter Executioners, with a cord, irons, &c]\nDo as I bid you do.\nARTHUR O, save me, Hubert, save me! my eyes are out\nEven with the fierce looks of these bloody men.\nHUBERT Give me the iron, I say, and bind him here.\nARTHUR Alas, what need you be so boisterous-rough?\nI will not struggle, I will stand stone-still.\nFor heaven sake, Hubert, let me not be bound!\nNay, hear me, Hubert, drive these men away,\nAnd I will sit as quiet as a lamb;\nI will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word,\nNor look upon the iron angerly:\nThrust but these men away, and I'll forgive you,\nWhatever torment you do put me to.\nHUBERT Go, stand within; let me alone with him.\nFirst Executioner I am best pleased to be from such a deed.\n[Exeunt Executioners]\nARTHUR Alas, I then have chid away my friend!\nHe hath a stern look, but a gentle heart:\nLet him come back, that his compassion may\nGive life to yours.\nHUBERT Come, boy, prepare yourself.\nARTHUR Is there no remedy?\nHUBERT None, but to lose your eyes.\nARTHUR O heaven, that there were but a mote in yours,\nA grain, a dust, a gnat, a wandering hair,\nAny annoyance in that precious sense!\nThen feeling what small things are boisterous there,\nYour vile intent must needs seem horrible.\nHUBERT Is this your promise? go to, hold your tongue.\nARTHUR Hubert, the utterance of a brace of tongues\nMust needs want pleading for a pair of eyes:\nLet me not hold my tongue, let me not, Hubert;\nOr, Hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue,\nSo I may keep mine eyes: O, spare mine eyes.\nThough to no use but still to look on you!\nLo, by my truth, the instrument is cold\nAnd would not harm me.\nHUBERT I can heat it, boy.\nARTHUR No, in good sooth: the fire is dead with grief,\nBeing create for comfort, to be used\nIn undeserved extremes: see else yourself;\nThere is no malice in this burning coal;\nThe breath of heaven has blown his spirit out\nAnd strew'd repentent ashes on his head.\nHUBERT But with my breath I can revive it, boy.\nARTHUR An if you do, you will but make it blush\nAnd glow with shame of your proceedings, Hubert:\nNay, it perchance will sparkle in your eyes;\nAnd like a dog that is compell'd to fight,\nSnatch at his master that doth tarre him on.\nAll things that you should use to do me wrong\nDeny their office: only you do lack\nThat mercy which fierce fire and iron extends,\nCreatures of note for mercy-lacking uses.\nHUBERT Well, see to live; I will not touch thine eye\nFor all the treasure that thine uncle owes:\nYet am I sworn and I did purpose, boy,\nWith this same very iron to burn them out.\nARTHUR O, now you look like Hubert! all this while\nYou were disguised.\nHUBERT Peace; no more. Adieu.\nYour uncle must not know but you are dead;\nI'll fill these dogged spies with false reports:\nAnd, pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure,\nThat Hubert, for the wealth of all the world,\nWill not offend thee.\nARTHUR O heaven! I thank you, Hubert.\nHUBERT Silence; no more: go closely in with me:\nMuch danger do I undergo for thee.\n[Exeunt]\nKING JOHN\nACT IV\nSCENE II KING JOHN'S palace.\n[Enter KING JOHN, PEMBROKE, SALISBURY, and other Lords]\nKING JOHN Here once again we sit, once again crown'd,\nAnd looked upon, I hope, with cheerful eyes.\nPEMBROKE This 'once again,' but that your highness pleased,\nWas once superfluous: you were crown'd before,\nAnd that high royalty was ne'er pluck'd off,\nThe faiths of men ne'er stained with revolt;\nFresh expectation troubled not the land\nWith any long'd-for change or better state.\nSALISBURY Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp,\nTo guard a title that was rich before,\nTo gild refined gold, to paint the lily,\nTo throw a perfume on the violet,\nTo smooth the ice, or add another hue\nUnto the rainbow, or with taper-light\nTo seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,\nIs wasteful and ridiculous excess.\nPEMBROKE But that your royal pleasure must be done,\nThis act is as an ancient tale new told,\nAnd in the last repeating troublesome,\nBeing urged at a time unseasonable.\nSALISBURY In this the antique and well noted face\nOf plain old form is much disfigured;\nAnd, like a shifted wind unto a sail,\nIt makes the course of thoughts to fetch about,\nStartles and frights consideration,\nMakes sound opinion sick and truth suspected,\nFor putting on so new a fashion'd robe.\nPEMBROKE When workmen strive to do better than well,\nThey do confound their skill in covetousness;\nAnd oftentimes excusing of a fault\nDoth make the fault the worse by the excuse,\nAs patches set upon a little breach\nDiscredit more in hiding of the fault\nThan did the fault before it was so patch'd.\nSALISBURY To this effect, before you were new crown'd,\nWe breathed our counsel: but it pleased your highness\nTo overbear it, and we are all well pleased,\nSince all and every part of what we would\nDoth make a stand at what your highness will.\nKING JOHN Some reasons of this double coronation\nI have possess'd you with and think them strong;\nAnd more, more strong, then lesser is my fear,\nI shall indue you with: meantime but ask\nWhat you would have reform'd that is not well,\nAnd well shall you perceive how willingly\nI will both hear and grant you your requests.\nPEMBROKE Then I, as one that am the tongue of these,\nTo sound the purpose of all their hearts,\nBoth for myself and them, but, chief of all,\nYour safety, for the which myself and them\nBend their best studies, heartily request\nThe enfranchisement of Arthur; whose restraint\nDoth move the murmuring lips of discontent\nTo break into this dangerous argument,--\nIf what in rest you have in right you hold,\nWhy then your fears, which, as they say, attend\nThe steps of wrong, should move you to mew up\nYour tender kinsman and to choke his days\nWith barbarous ignorance and deny his youth\nThe rich advantage of good exercise?\nThat the time's enemies may not have this\nTo grace occasions, let it be our suit\nThat you have bid us ask his liberty;\nWhich for our goods we do no further ask\nThan whereupon our weal, on you depending,\nCounts it your weal he have his liberty.\n[Enter HUBERT]\nKING JOHN Let it be so: I do commit his youth\nTo your direction. Hubert, what news with you?\n[Taking him apart]\nPEMBROKE This is the man should do the bloody deed;\nHe show'd his warrant to a friend of mine:\nThe image of a wicked heinous fault\nLives in his eye; that close aspect of his\nDoes show the mood of a much troubled breast;\nAnd I do fearfully believe 'tis done,\nWhat we so fear'd he had a charge to do.\nSALISBURY The colour of the king doth come and go\nBetween his purpose and his conscience,\nLike heralds 'twixt two dreadful battles set:\nHis passion is so ripe, it needs must break.\nPEMBROKE And when it breaks, I fear will issue thence\nThe foul corruption of a sweet child's death.\nKING JOHN We cannot hold mortality's strong hand:\nGood lords, although my will to give is living,\nThe suit which you demand is gone and dead:\nHe tells us Arthur is deceased to-night.\nSALISBURY Indeed we fear'd his sickness was past cure.\nPEMBROKE Indeed we heard how near his death he was\nBefore the child himself felt he was sick:\nThis must be answer'd either here or hence.\nKING JOHN Why do you bend such solemn brows on me?\nThink you I bear the shears of destiny?\nHave I commandment on the pulse of life?\nSALISBURY It is apparent foul play; and 'tis shame\nThat greatness should so grossly offer it:\nSo thrive it in your game! and so, farewell.\nPEMBROKE Stay yet, Lord Salisbury; I'll go with thee,\nAnd find the inheritance of this poor child,\nHis little kingdom of a forced grave.\nThat blood which owed the breadth of all this isle,\nThree foot of it doth hold: bad world the while!\nThis must not be thus borne: this will break out\nTo all our sorrows, and ere long I doubt.\n[Exeunt Lords]\nKING JOHN They burn in indignation. I repent:\nThere is no sure foundation set on blood,\nNo certain life achieved by others' death.\n[Enter a Messenger]\nA fearful eye thou hast: where is that blood\nThat I have seen inhabit in those cheeks?\nSo foul a sky clears not without a storm:\nPour down thy weather: how goes all in France?\nMessenger From France to England. Never such a power\nFor any foreign preparation\nWas levied in the body of a land.\nThe copy of your speed is learn'd by them;\nFor when you should be told they do prepare,\nThe tidings come that they are all arrived.\nKING JOHN O, where hath our intelligence been drunk?\nWhere hath it slept? Where is my mother's care,\nThat such an army could be drawn in France,\nAnd she not hear of it?\nMessenger My liege, her ear\nIs stopp'd with dust; the first of April died\nYour noble mother: and, as I hear, my lord,\nThe Lady Constance in a frenzy died\nThree days before: but this from rumour's tongue\nI idly heard; if true or false I know not.\nKING JOHN Withhold thy speed, dreadful occasion!\nO, make a league with me, till I have pleased\nMy discontented peers! What! mother dead!\nHow wildly then walks my estate in France!\nUnder whose conduct came those powers of France\nThat thou for truth givest out are landed here?\nMessenger Under the Dauphin.\nKING JOHN Thou hast made me giddy\nWith these ill tidings.\n[Enter the BASTARD and PETER of Pomfret]\nNow, what says the world\nTo your proceedings? do not seek to stuff\nMy head with more ill news, for it is full.\nBASTARD But if you be afeard to hear the worst,\nThen let the worst unheard fall on your bead.\nKING JOHN Bear with me cousin, for I was amazed\nUnder the tide: but now I breathe again\nAloft the flood, and can give audience\nTo any tongue, speak it of what it will.\nBASTARD How I have sped among the clergymen,\nThe sums I have collected shall express.\nBut as I travell'd hither through the land,\nI find the people strangely fantasied;\nPossess'd with rumours, full of idle dreams,\nNot knowing what they fear, but full of fear:\nAnd here a prophet, that I brought with me\nFrom forth the streets of Pomfret, whom I found\nWith many hundreds treading on his heels;\nTo whom he sung, in rude harsh-sounding rhymes,\nThat, ere the next Ascension-day at noon,\nYour highness should deliver up your crown.\nKING JOHN Thou idle dreamer, wherefore didst thou so?\nPETER Foreknowing that the truth will fall out so.\nKING JOHN Hubert, away with him; imprison him;\nAnd on that day at noon whereon he says\nI shall yield up my crown, let him be hang'd.\nDeliver him to safety; and return,\nFor I must use thee.\n[Exeunt HUBERT with PETER]\nO my gentle cousin,\nHear'st thou the news abroad, who are arrived?\nBASTARD The French, my lord; men's mouths are full of it:\nBesides, I met Lord Bigot and Lord Salisbury,\nWith eyes as red as new-enkindled fire,\nAnd others more, going to seek the grave\nOf Arthur, who they say is kill'd to-night\nOn your suggestion.\nKING JOHN Gentle kinsman, go,\nAnd thrust thyself into their companies:\nI have a way to win their loves again;\nBring them before me.\nBASTARD I will seek them out.\nKING JOHN Nay, but make haste; the better foot before.\nO, let me have no subject enemies,\nWhen adverse foreigners affright my towns\nWith dreadful pomp of stout invasion!\nBe Mercury, set feathers to thy heels,\nAnd fly like thought from them to me again.\nBASTARD The spirit of the time shall teach me speed.\n[Exit]\nKING JOHN Spoke like a sprightful noble gentleman.\nGo after him; for he perhaps shall need\nSome messenger betwixt me and the peers;\nAnd be thou he.\nMessenger With all my heart, my liege.\n[Exit]\nKING JOHN My mother dead!\n[Re-enter HUBERT]\nHUBERT My lord, they say five moons were seen to-night;\nFour fixed, and the fifth did whirl about\nThe other four in wondrous motion.\nKING JOHN Five moons!\nHUBERT Old men and beldams in the streets\nDo prophesy upon it dangerously:\nYoung Arthur's death is common in their mouths:\nAnd when they talk of him, they shake their heads\nAnd whisper one another in the ear;\nAnd he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist,\nWhilst he that hears makes fearful action,\nWith wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes.\nI saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,\nThe whilst his iron did on the anvil cool,\nWith open mouth swallowing a tailor's news;\nWho, with his shears and measure in his hand,\nStanding on slippers, which his nimble haste\nHad falsely thrust upon contrary feet,\nTold of a many thousand warlike French\nThat were embattailed and rank'd in Kent:\nAnother lean unwash'd artificer\nCuts off his tale and talks of Arthur's death.\nKING JOHN Why seek'st thou to possess me with these fears?\nWhy urgest thou so oft young Arthur's death?\nThy hand hath murder'd him: I had a mighty cause\nTo wish him dead, but thou hadst none to kill him.\nHUBERT No had, my lord! why, did you not provoke me?\nKING JOHN It is the curse of kings to be attended\nBy slaves that take their humours for a warrant\nTo break within the bloody house of life,\nAnd on the winking of authority\nTo understand a law, to know the meaning\nOf dangerous majesty, when perchance it frowns\nMore upon humour than advised respect.\nHUBERT Here is your hand and seal for what I did.\nKING JOHN O, when the last account 'twixt heaven and earth\nIs to be made, then shall this hand and seal\nWitness against us to damnation!\nHow oft the sight of means to do ill deeds\nMake deeds ill done! Hadst not thou been by,\nA fellow by the hand of nature mark'd,\nQuoted and sign'd to do a deed of shame,\nThis murder had not come into my mind:\nBut taking note of thy abhorr'd aspect,\nFinding thee fit for bloody villany,\nApt, liable to be employ'd in danger,\nI faintly broke with thee of Arthur's death;\nAnd thou, to be endeared to a king,\nMade it no conscience to destroy a prince.\nHUBERT My lord--\nKING JOHN Hadst thou but shook thy head or made a pause\nWhen I spake darkly what I purposed,\nOr turn'd an eye of doubt upon my face,\nAs bid me tell my tale in express words,\nDeep shame had struck me dumb, made me break off,\nAnd those thy fears might have wrought fears in me:\nBut thou didst understand me by my signs\nAnd didst in signs again parley with sin;\nYea, without stop, didst let thy heart consent,\nAnd consequently thy rude hand to act\nThe deed, which both our tongues held vile to name.\nOut of my sight, and never see me more!\nMy nobles leave me; and my state is braved,\nEven at my gates, with ranks of foreign powers:\nNay, in the body of this fleshly land,\nThis kingdom, this confine of blood and breath,\nHostility and civil tumult reigns\nBetween my conscience and my cousin's death.\nHUBERT Arm you against your other enemies,\nI'll make a peace between your soul and you.\nYoung Arthur is alive: this hand of mine\nIs yet a maiden and an innocent hand,\nNot painted with the crimson spots of blood.\nWithin this bosom never enter'd yet\nThe dreadful motion of a murderous thought;\nAnd you have slander'd nature in my form,\nWhich, howsoever rude exteriorly,\nIs yet the cover of a fairer mind\nThan to be butcher of an innocent child.\nKING JOHN Doth Arthur live? O, haste thee to the peers,\nThrow this report on their incensed rage,\nAnd make them tame to their obedience!\nForgive the comment that my passion made\nUpon thy feature; for my rage was blind,\nAnd foul imaginary eyes of blood\nPresented thee more hideous than thou art.\nO, answer not, but to my closet bring\nThe angry lords with all expedient haste.\nI conjure thee but slowly; run more fast.\n[Exeunt]\nKING JOHN\nACT IV\nSCENE III Before the castle.\n[Enter ARTHUR, on the walls]\nARTHUR The wall is high, and yet will I leap down:\nGood ground, be pitiful and hurt me not!\nThere's few or none do know me: if they did,\nThis ship-boy's semblance hath disguised me quite.\nI am afraid; and yet I'll venture it.\nIf I get down, and do not break my limbs,\nI'll find a thousand shifts to get away:\nAs good to die and go, as die and stay.\n[Leaps down]\nO me! my uncle's spirit is in these stones:\nHeaven take my soul, and England keep my bones!\n[Dies]\n[Enter PEMBROKE, SALISBURY, and BIGOT]\nSALISBURY Lords, I will meet him at Saint Edmundsbury:\nIt is our safety, and we must embrace\nThis gentle offer of the perilous time.\nPEMBROKE Who brought that letter from the cardinal?\nSALISBURY The Count Melun, a noble lord of France,\nWhose private with me of the Dauphin's love\nIs much more general than these lines import.\nBIGOT To-morrow morning let us meet him then.\nSALISBURY Or rather then set forward; for 'twill be\nTwo long days' journey, lords, or ere we meet.\n[Enter the BASTARD]\nBASTARD Once more to-day well met, distemper'd lords!\nThe king by me requests your presence straight.\nSALISBURY The king hath dispossess'd himself of us:\nWe will not line his thin bestained cloak\nWith our pure honours, nor attend the foot\nThat leaves the print of blood where'er it walks.\nReturn and tell him so: we know the worst.\nBASTARD Whate'er you think, good words, I think, were best.\nSALISBURY Our griefs, and not our manners, reason now.\nBASTARD But there is little reason in your grief;\nTherefore 'twere reason you had manners now.\nPEMBROKE Sir, sir, impatience hath his privilege.\nBASTARD 'Tis true, to hurt his master, no man else.\nSALISBURY This is the prison. What is he lies here?\n[Seeing ARTHUR]\nPEMBROKE O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty!\nThe earth had not a hole to hide this deed.\nSALISBURY Murder, as hating what himself hath done,\nDoth lay it open to urge on revenge.\nBIGOT Or, when he doom'd this beauty to a grave,\nFound it too precious-princely for a grave.\nSALISBURY Sir Richard, what think you? have you beheld,\nOr have you read or heard? or could you think?\nOr do you almost think, although you see,\nThat you do see? could thought, without this object,\nForm such another? This is the very top,\nThe height, the crest, or crest unto the crest,\nOf murder's arms: this is the bloodiest shame,\nThe wildest savagery, the vilest stroke,\nThat ever wall-eyed wrath or staring rage\nPresented to the tears of soft remorse.\nPEMBROKE All murders past do stand excused in this:\nAnd this, so sole and so unmatchable,\nShall give a holiness, a purity,\nTo the yet unbegotten sin of times;\nAnd prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest,\nExampled by this heinous spectacle.\nBASTARD It is a damned and a bloody work;\nThe graceless action of a heavy hand,\nIf that it be the work of any hand.\nSALISBURY If that it be the work of any hand!\nWe had a kind of light what would ensue:\nIt is the shameful work of Hubert's hand;\nThe practise and the purpose of the king:\nFrom whose obedience I forbid my soul,\nKneeling before this ruin of sweet life,\nAnd breathing to his breathless excellence\nThe incense of a vow, a holy vow,\nNever to taste the pleasures of the world,\nNever to be infected with delight,\nNor conversant with ease and idleness,\nTill I have set a glory to this hand,\nBy giving it the worship of revenge.\nPEMBROKE |\n| Our souls religiously confirm thy words.\nBIGOT |\n[Enter HUBERT]\nHUBERT Lords, I am hot with haste in seeking you:\nArthur doth live; the king hath sent for you.\nSALISBURY O, he is old and blushes not at death.\nAvaunt, thou hateful villain, get thee gone!\nHUBERT I am no villain.\nSALISBURY Must I rob the law?\n[Drawing his sword]\nBASTARD Your sword is bright, sir; put it up again.\nSALISBURY Not till I sheathe it in a murderer's skin.\nHUBERT Stand back, Lord Salisbury, stand back, I say;\nBy heaven, I think my sword's as sharp as yours:\nI would not have you, lord, forget yourself,\nNor tempt the danger of my true defence;\nLest I, by marking of your rage, forget\nYour worth, your greatness and nobility.\nBIGOT Out, dunghill! darest thou brave a nobleman?\nHUBERT Not for my life: but yet I dare defend\nMy innocent life against an emperor.\nSALISBURY Thou art a murderer.\nHUBERT Do not prove me so;\nYet I am none: whose tongue soe'er speaks false,\nNot truly speaks; who speaks not truly, lies.\nPEMBROKE Cut him to pieces.\nBASTARD Keep the peace, I say.\nSALISBURY Stand by, or I shall gall you, Faulconbridge.\nBASTARD Thou wert better gall the devil, Salisbury:\nIf thou but frown on me, or stir thy foot,\nOr teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame,\nI'll strike thee dead. Put up thy sword betime;\nOr I'll so maul you and your toasting-iron,\nThat you shall think the devil is come from hell.\nBIGOT What wilt thou do, renowned Faulconbridge?\nSecond a villain and a murderer?\nHUBERT Lord Bigot, I am none.\nBIGOT Who kill'd this prince?\nHUBERT 'Tis not an hour since I left him well:\nI honour'd him, I loved him, and will weep\nMy date of life out for his sweet life's loss.\nSALISBURY Trust not those cunning waters of his eyes,\nFor villany is not without such rheum;\nAnd he, long traded in it, makes it seem\nLike rivers of remorse and innocency.\nAway with me, all you whose souls abhor\nThe uncleanly savours of a slaughter-house;\nFor I am stifled with this smell of sin.\nBIGOT Away toward Bury, to the Dauphin there!\nPEMBROKE There tell the king he may inquire us out.\n[Exeunt Lords]\nBASTARD Here's a good world! Knew you of this fair work?\nBeyond the infinite and boundless reach\nOf mercy, if thou didst this deed of death,\nArt thou damn'd, Hubert.\nHUBERT Do but hear me, sir.\nBASTARD Ha! I'll tell thee what;\nThou'rt damn'd as black--nay, nothing is so black;\nThou art more deep damn'd than Prince Lucifer:\nThere is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell\nAs thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.\nHUBERT Upon my soul--\nBASTARD If thou didst but consent\nTo this most cruel act, do but despair;\nAnd if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread\nThat ever spider twisted from her womb\nWill serve to strangle thee, a rush will be a beam\nTo hang thee on; or wouldst thou drown thyself,\nPut but a little water in a spoon,\nAnd it shall be as all the ocean,\nEnough to stifle such a villain up.\nI do suspect thee very grievously.\nHUBERT If I in act, consent, or sin of thought,\nBe guilty of the stealing that sweet breath\nWhich was embounded in this beauteous clay,\nLet hell want pains enough to torture me.\nI left him well.\nBASTARD Go, bear him in thine arms.\nI am amazed, methinks, and lose my way\nAmong the thorns and dangers of this world.\nHow easy dost thou take all England up!\nFrom forth this morsel of dead royalty,\nThe life, the right and truth of all this realm\nIs fled to heaven; and England now is left\nTo tug and scamble and to part by the teeth\nThe unowed interest of proud-swelling state.\nNow for the bare-pick'd bone of majesty\nDoth dogged war bristle his angry crest\nAnd snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace:\nNow powers from home and discontents at home\nMeet in one line; and vast confusion waits,\nAs doth a raven on a sick-fall'n beast,\nThe imminent decay of wrested pomp.\nNow happy he whose cloak and cincture can\nHold out this tempest. Bear away that child\nAnd follow me with speed: I'll to the king:\nA thousand businesses are brief in hand,\nAnd heaven itself doth frown upon the land.\n[Exeunt]\nKING JOHN\nACT V\nSCENE I KING JOHN'S palace.\n[Enter KING JOHN, CARDINAL PANDULPH, and Attendants]\nKING JOHN Thus have I yielded up into your hand\nThe circle of my glory.\n[Giving the crown]\nCARDINAL PANDULPH Take again\nFrom this my hand, as holding of the pope\nYour sovereign greatness and authority.\nKING JOHN Now keep your holy word: go meet the French,\nAnd from his holiness use all your power\nTo stop their marches 'fore we are inflamed.\nOur discontented counties do revolt;\nOur people quarrel with obedience,\nSwearing allegiance and the love of soul\nTo stranger blood, to foreign royalty.\nThis inundation of mistemper'd humour\nRests by you only to be qualified:\nThen pause not; for the present time's so sick,\nThat present medicine must be minister'd,\nOr overthrow incurable ensues.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH It was my breath that blew this tempest up,\nUpon your stubborn usage of the pope;\nBut since you are a gentle convertite,\nMy tongue shall hush again this storm of war\nAnd make fair weather in your blustering land.\nOn this Ascension-day, remember well,\nUpon your oath of service to the pope,\nGo I to make the French lay down their arms.\n[Exit]\nKING JOHN Is this Ascension-day? Did not the prophet\nSay that before Ascension-day at noon\nMy crown I should give off? Even so I have:\nI did suppose it should be on constraint:\nBut, heaven be thank'd, it is but voluntary.\n[Enter the BASTARD]\nBASTARD All Kent hath yielded; nothing there holds out\nBut Dover castle: London hath received,\nLike a kind host, the Dauphin and his powers:\nYour nobles will not hear you, but are gone\nTo offer service to your enemy,\nAnd wild amazement hurries up and down\nThe little number of your doubtful friends.\nKING JOHN Would not my lords return to me again,\nAfter they heard young Arthur was alive?\nBASTARD They found him dead and cast into the streets,\nAn empty casket, where the jewel of life\nBy some damn'd hand was robb'd and ta'en away.\nKING JOHN That villain Hubert told me he did live.\nBASTARD So, on my soul, he did, for aught he knew.\nBut wherefore do you droop? why look you sad?\nBe great in act, as you have been in thought;\nLet not the world see fear and sad distrust\nGovern the motion of a kingly eye:\nBe stirring as the time; be fire with fire;\nThreaten the threatener and outface the brow\nOf bragging horror: so shall inferior eyes,\nThat borrow their behaviors from the great,\nGrow great by your example and put on\nThe dauntless spirit of resolution.\nAway, and glister like the god of war,\nWhen he intendeth to become the field:\nShow boldness and aspiring confidence.\nWhat, shall they seek the lion in his den,\nAnd fright him there? and make him tremble there?\nO, let it not be said: forage, and run\nTo meet displeasure farther from the doors,\nAnd grapple with him ere he comes so nigh.\nKING JOHN The legate of the pope hath been with me,\nAnd I have made a happy peace with him;\nAnd he hath promised to dismiss the powers\nLed by the Dauphin.\nBASTARD O inglorious league!\nShall we, upon the footing of our land,\nSend fair-play orders and make compromise,\nInsinuation, parley and base truce\nTo arms invasive? shall a beardless boy,\nA cocker'd silken wanton, brave our fields,\nAnd flesh his spirit in a warlike soil,\nMocking the air with colours idly spread,\nAnd find no cheque? Let us, my liege, to arms:\nPerchance the cardinal cannot make your peace;\nOr if he do, let it at least be said\nThey saw we had a purpose of defence.\nKING JOHN Have thou the ordering of this present time.\nBASTARD Away, then, with good courage! yet, I know,\nOur party may well meet a prouder foe.\n[Exeunt]\nKING JOHN\nACT V\nSCENE II LEWIS's camp at St. Edmundsbury.\n[Enter, in arms, LEWIS, SALISBURY, MELUN, PEMBROKE,\nBIGOT, and Soldiers]\nLEWIS My Lord Melun, let this be copied out,\nAnd keep it safe for our remembrance:\nReturn the precedent to these lords again;\nThat, having our fair order written down,\nBoth they and we, perusing o'er these notes,\nMay know wherefore we took the sacrament\nAnd keep our faiths firm and inviolable.\nSALISBURY Upon our sides it never shall be broken.\nAnd, noble Dauphin, albeit we swear\nA voluntary zeal and an unurged faith\nTo your proceedings; yet believe me, prince,\nI am not glad that such a sore of time\nShould seek a plaster by contemn'd revolt,\nAnd heal the inveterate canker of one wound\nBy making many. O, it grieves my soul,\nThat I must draw this metal from my side\nTo be a widow-maker! O, and there\nWhere honourable rescue and defence\nCries out upon the name of Salisbury!\nBut such is the infection of the time,\nThat, for the health and physic of our right,\nWe cannot deal but with the very hand\nOf stern injustice and confused wrong.\nAnd is't not pity, O my grieved friends,\nThat we, the sons and children of this isle,\nWere born to see so sad an hour as this;\nWherein we step after a stranger march\nUpon her gentle bosom, and fill up\nHer enemies' ranks,--I must withdraw and weep\nUpon the spot of this enforced cause,--\nTo grace the gentry of a land remote,\nAnd follow unacquainted colours here?\nWhat, here? O nation, that thou couldst remove!\nThat Neptune's arms, who clippeth thee about,\nWould bear thee from the knowledge of thyself,\nAnd grapple thee unto a pagan shore;\nWhere these two Christian armies might combine\nThe blood of malice in a vein of league,\nAnd not to spend it so unneighbourly!\nLEWIS A noble temper dost thou show in this;\nAnd great affections wrestling in thy bosom\nDoth make an earthquake of nobility.\nO, what a noble combat hast thou fought\nBetween compulsion and a brave respect!\nLet me wipe off this honourable dew,\nThat silverly doth progress on thy cheeks:\nMy heart hath melted at a lady's tears,\nBeing an ordinary inundation;\nBut this effusion of such manly drops,\nThis shower, blown up by tempest of the soul,\nStartles mine eyes, and makes me more amazed\nThan had I seen the vaulty top of heaven\nFigured quite o'er with burning meteors.\nLift up thy brow, renowned Salisbury,\nAnd with a great heart heave away the storm:\nCommend these waters to those baby eyes\nThat never saw the giant world enraged;\nNor met with fortune other than at feasts,\nFull of warm blood, of mirth, of gossiping.\nCome, come; for thou shalt thrust thy hand as deep\nInto the purse of rich prosperity\nAs Lewis himself: so, nobles, shall you all,\nThat knit your sinews to the strength of mine.\nAnd even there, methinks, an angel spake:\n[Enter CARDINAL PANDULPH]\nLook, where the holy legate comes apace,\nTo give us warrant from the hand of heaven\nAnd on our actions set the name of right\nWith holy breath.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH Hail, noble prince of France!\nThe next is this, King John hath reconciled\nHimself to Rome; his spirit is come in,\nThat so stood out against the holy church,\nThe great metropolis and see of Rome:\nTherefore thy threatening colours now wind up;\nAnd tame the savage spirit of wild war,\nThat like a lion foster'd up at hand,\nIt may lie gently at the foot of peace,\nAnd be no further harmful than in show.\nLEWIS Your grace shall pardon me, I will not back:\nI am too high-born to be propertied,\nTo be a secondary at control,\nOr useful serving-man and instrument,\nTo any sovereign state throughout the world.\nYour breath first kindled the dead coal of wars\nBetween this chastised kingdom and myself,\nAnd brought in matter that should feed this fire;\nAnd now 'tis far too huge to be blown out\nWith that same weak wind which enkindled it.\nYou taught me how to know the face of right,\nAcquainted me with interest to this land,\nYea, thrust this enterprise into my heart;\nAnd come ye now to tell me John hath made\nHis peace with Rome? What is that peace to me?\nI, by the honour of my marriage-bed,\nAfter young Arthur, claim this land for mine;\nAnd, now it is half-conquer'd, must I back\nBecause that John hath made his peace with Rome?\nAm I Rome's slave? What penny hath Rome borne,\nWhat men provided, what munition sent,\nTo underprop this action? Is't not I\nThat undergo this charge? who else but I,\nAnd such as to my claim are liable,\nSweat in this business and maintain this war?\nHave I not heard these islanders shout out\n'Vive le roi!' as I have bank'd their towns?\nHave I not here the best cards for the game,\nTo win this easy match play'd for a crown?\nAnd shall I now give o'er the yielded set?\nNo, no, on my soul, it never shall be said.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH You look but on the outside of this work.\nLEWIS Outside or inside, I will not return\nTill my attempt so much be glorified\nAs to my ample hope was promised\nBefore I drew this gallant head of war,\nAnd cull'd these fiery spirits from the world,\nTo outlook conquest and to win renown\nEven in the jaws of danger and of death.\n[Trumpet sounds]\nWhat lusty trumpet thus doth summon us?\n[Enter the BASTARD, attended]\nBASTARD According to the fair play of the world,\nLet me have audience; I am sent to speak:\nMy holy lord of Milan, from the king\nI come, to learn how you have dealt for him;\nAnd, as you answer, I do know the scope\nAnd warrant limited unto my tongue.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH The Dauphin is too wilful-opposite,\nAnd will not temporize with my entreaties;\nHe flatly says he'll not lay down his arms.\nBASTARD By all the blood that ever fury breathed,\nThe youth says well. Now hear our English king;\nFor thus his royalty doth speak in me.\nHe is prepared, and reason too he should:\nThis apish and unmannerly approach,\nThis harness'd masque and unadvised revel,\nThis unhair'd sauciness and boyish troops,\nThe king doth smile at; and is well prepared\nTo whip this dwarfish war, these pigmy arms,\nFrom out the circle of his territories.\nThat hand which had the strength, even at your door,\nTo cudgel you and make you take the hatch,\nTo dive like buckets in concealed wells,\nTo crouch in litter of your stable planks,\nTo lie like pawns lock'd up in chests and trunks,\nTo hug with swine, to seek sweet safety out\nIn vaults and prisons, and to thrill and shake\nEven at the crying of your nation's crow,\nThinking his voice an armed Englishman;\nShall that victorious hand be feebled here,\nThat in your chambers gave you chastisement?\nNo: know the gallant monarch is in arms\nAnd like an eagle o'er his aery towers,\nTo souse annoyance that comes near his nest.\nAnd you degenerate, you ingrate revolts,\nYou bloody Neroes, ripping up the womb\nOf your dear mother England, blush for shame;\nFor your own ladies and pale-visaged maids\nLike Amazons come tripping after drums,\nTheir thimbles into armed gauntlets change,\nTheir needles to lances, and their gentle hearts\nTo fierce and bloody inclination.\nLEWIS There end thy brave, and turn thy face in peace;\nWe grant thou canst outscold us: fare thee well;\nWe hold our time too precious to be spent\nWith such a brabbler.\nCARDINAL PANDULPH Give me leave to speak.\nBASTARD No, I will speak.\nLEWIS We will attend to neither.\nStrike up the drums; and let the tongue of war\nPlead for our interest and our being here.\nBASTARD Indeed your drums, being beaten, will cry out;\nAnd so shall you, being beaten: do but start\nAn echo with the clamour of thy drum,\nAnd even at hand a drum is ready braced\nThat shall reverberate all as loud as thine;\nSound but another, and another shall\nAs loud as thine rattle the welkin's ear\nAnd mock the deep-mouth'd thunder: for at hand,\nNot trusting to this halting legate here,\nWhom he hath used rather for sport than need\nIs warlike John; and in his forehead sits\nA bare-ribb'd death, whose office is this day\nTo feast upon whole thousands of the French.\nLEWIS Strike up our drums, to find this danger out.\nBASTARD And thou shalt find it, Dauphin, do not doubt.\n[Exeunt]\nKING JOHN\nACT V\nSCENE III The field of battle.\n[Alarums. Enter KING JOHN and HUBERT]\nKING JOHN How goes the day with us? O, tell me, Hubert.\nHUBERT Badly, I fear. How fares your majesty?\nKING JOHN This fever, that hath troubled me so long,\nLies heavy on me; O, my heart is sick!\n[Enter a Messenger]\nMessenger My lord, your valiant kinsman, Faulconbridge,\nDesires your majesty to leave the field\nAnd send him word by me which way you go.\nKING JOHN Tell him, toward Swinstead, to the abbey there.\nMessenger Be of good comfort; for the great supply\nThat was expected by the Dauphin here,\nAre wreck'd three nights ago on Goodwin Sands.\nThis news was brought to Richard but even now:\nThe French fight coldly, and retire themselves.\nKING JOHN Ay me! this tyrant fever burns me up,\nAnd will not let me welcome this good news.\nSet on toward Swinstead: to my litter straight;\nWeakness possesseth me, and I am faint.\n[Exeunt]\nKING JOHN\nACT V\nSCENE IV Another part of the field.\n[Enter SALISBURY, PEMBROKE, and BIGOT]\nSALISBURY I did not think the king so stored with friends.\nPEMBROKE Up once again; put spirit in the French:\nIf they miscarry, we miscarry too.\nSALISBURY That misbegotten devil, Faulconbridge,\nIn spite of spite, alone upholds the day.\nPEMBROKE They say King John sore sick hath left the field.\n[Enter MELUN, wounded]\nMELUN Lead me to the revolts of England here.\nSALISBURY When we were happy we had other names.\nPEMBROKE It is the Count Melun.\nSALISBURY Wounded to death.\nMELUN Fly, noble English, you are bought and sold;\nUnthread the rude eye of rebellion\nAnd welcome home again discarded faith.\nSeek out King John and fall before his feet;\nFor if the French be lords of this loud day,\nHe means to recompense the pains you take\nBy cutting off your heads: thus hath he sworn\nAnd I with him, and many moe with me,\nUpon the altar at Saint Edmundsbury;\nEven on that altar where we swore to you\nDear amity and everlasting love.\nSALISBURY May this be possible? may this be true?\nMELUN Have I not hideous death within my view,\nRetaining but a quantity of life,\nWhich bleeds away, even as a form of wax\nResolveth from his figure 'gainst the fire?\nWhat in the world should make me now deceive,\nSince I must lose the use of all deceit?\nWhy should I then be false, since it is true\nThat I must die here and live hence by truth?\nI say again, if Lewis do win the day,\nHe is forsworn, if e'er those eyes of yours\nBehold another day break in the east:\nBut even this night, whose black contagious breath\nAlready smokes about the burning crest\nOf the old, feeble and day-wearied sun,\nEven this ill night, your breathing shall expire,\nPaying the fine of rated treachery\nEven with a treacherous fine of all your lives,\nIf Lewis by your assistance win the day.\nCommend me to one Hubert with your king:\nThe love of him, and this respect besides,\nFor that my grandsire was an Englishman,\nAwakes my conscience to confess all this.\nIn lieu whereof, I pray you, bear me hence\nFrom forth the noise and rumour of the field,\nWhere I may think the remnant of my thoughts\nIn peace, and part this body and my soul\nWith contemplation and devout desires.\nSALISBURY We do believe thee: and beshrew my soul\nBut I do love the favour and the form\nOf this most fair occasion, by the which\nWe will untread the steps of damned flight,\nAnd like a bated and retired flood,\nLeaving our rankness and irregular course,\nStoop low within those bounds we have o'erlook'd\nAnd cabby run on in obedience\nEven to our ocean, to our great King John.\nMy arm shall give thee help to bear thee hence;\nFor I do see the cruel pangs of death\nRight in thine eye. Away, my friends! New flight;\nAnd happy newness, that intends old right.\n[Exeunt, leading off MELUN]\nKING JOHN\nACT V\nSCENE V The French camp.\n[Enter LEWIS and his train]\nLEWIS The sun of heaven methought was loath to set,\nBut stay'd and made the western welkin blush,\nWhen English measure backward their own ground\nIn faint retire. O, bravely came we off,\nWhen with a volley of our needless shot,\nAfter such bloody toil, we bid good night;\nAnd wound our tattering colours clearly up,\nLast in the field, and almost lords of it!\n[Enter a Messenger]\nMessenger Where is my prince, the Dauphin?\nLEWIS Here: what news?\nMessenger The Count Melun is slain; the English lords\nBy his persuasion are again fall'n off,\nAnd your supply, which you have wish'd so long,\nAre cast away and sunk on Goodwin Sands.\nLEWIS Ah, foul shrewd news! beshrew thy very heart!\nI did not think to be so sad to-night\nAs this hath made me. Who was he that said\nKing John did fly an hour or two before\nThe stumbling night did part our weary powers?\nMessenger Whoever spoke it, it is true, my lord.\nLEWIS Well; keep good quarter and good care to-night:\nThe day shall not be up so soon as I,\nTo try the fair adventure of to-morrow.\n[Exeunt]\nKING JOHN\nACT V\nSCENE VI An open place in the neighbourhood of Swinstead Abbey.\n[Enter the BASTARD and HUBERT, severally]\nHUBERT Who's there? speak, ho! speak quickly, or I shoot.\nBASTARD A friend. What art thou?\nHUBERT Of the part of England.\nBASTARD Whither dost thou go?\nHUBERT What's that to thee? why may not I demand\nOf thine affairs, as well as thou of mine?\nBASTARD Hubert, I think?\nHUBERT Thou hast a perfect thought:\nI will upon all hazards well believe\nThou art my friend, that know'st my tongue so well.\nWho art thou?\nBASTARD Who thou wilt: and if thou please,\nThou mayst befriend me so much as to think\nI come one way of the Plantagenets.\nHUBERT Unkind remembrance! thou and eyeless night\nHave done me shame: brave soldier, pardon me,\nThat any accent breaking from thy tongue\nShould 'scape the true acquaintance of mine ear.\nBASTARD Come, come; sans compliment, what news abroad?\nHUBERT Why, here walk I in the black brow of night,\nTo find you out.\nBASTARD Brief, then; and what's the news?\nHUBERT O, my sweet sir, news fitting to the night,\nBlack, fearful, comfortless and horrible.\nBASTARD Show me the very wound of this ill news:\nI am no woman, I'll not swoon at it.\nHUBERT The king, I fear, is poison'd by a monk:\nI left him almost speechless; and broke out\nTo acquaint you with this evil, that you might\nThe better arm you to the sudden time,\nThan if you had at leisure known of this.\nBASTARD How did he take it? who did taste to him?\nHUBERT A monk, I tell you; a resolved villain,\nWhose bowels suddenly burst out: the king\nYet speaks and peradventure may recover.\nBASTARD Who didst thou leave to tend his majesty?\nHUBERT Why, know you not? the lords are all come back,\nAnd brought Prince Henry in their company;\nAt whose request the king hath pardon'd them,\nAnd they are all about his majesty.\nBASTARD Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven,\nAnd tempt us not to bear above our power!\nI'll tell tree, Hubert, half my power this night,\nPassing these flats, are taken by the tide;\nThese Lincoln Washes have devoured them;\nMyself, well mounted, hardly have escaped.\nAway before: conduct me to the king;\nI doubt he will be dead or ere I come.\n[Exeunt]\nKING JOHN\nACT V\nSCENE VII The orchard in Swinstead Abbey.\n[Enter PRINCE HENRY, SALISBURY, and BIGOT]\nPRINCE HENRY It is too late: the life of all his blood\nIs touch'd corruptibly, and his pure brain,\nWhich some suppose the soul's frail dwelling-house,\nDoth by the idle comments that it makes\nForetell the ending of mortality.\n[Enter PEMBROKE]\nPEMBROKE His highness yet doth speak, and holds belief\nThat, being brought into the open air,\nIt would allay the burning quality\nOf that fell poison which assaileth him.\nPRINCE HENRY Let him be brought into the orchard here.\nDoth he still rage?\n[Exit BIGOT]\nPEMBROKE He is more patient\nThan when you left him; even now he sung.\nPRINCE HENRY O vanity of sickness! fierce extremes\nIn their continuance will not feel themselves.\nDeath, having prey'd upon the outward parts,\nLeaves them invisible, and his siege is now\nAgainst the mind, the which he pricks and wounds\nWith many legions of strange fantasies,\nWhich, in their throng and press to that last hold,\nConfound themselves. 'Tis strange that death\nshould sing.\nI am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,\nWho chants a doleful hymn to his own death,\nAnd from the organ-pipe of frailty sings\nHis soul and body to their lasting rest.\nSALISBURY Be of good comfort, prince; for you are born\nTo set a form upon that indigest\nWhich he hath left so shapeless and so rude.\n[Enter Attendants, and BIGOT, carrying KING JOHN in a chair]\nKING JOHN Ay, marry, now my soul hath elbow-room;\nIt would not out at windows nor at doors.\nThere is so hot a summer in my bosom,\nThat all my bowels crumble up to dust:\nI am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen\nUpon a parchment, and against this fire\nDo I shrink up.\nPRINCE HENRY How fares your majesty?\nKING JOHN Poison'd,--ill fare--dead, forsook, cast off:\nAnd none of you will bid the winter come\nTo thrust his icy fingers in my maw,\nNor let my kingdom's rivers take their course\nThrough my burn'd bosom, nor entreat the north\nTo make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips\nAnd comfort me with cold. I do not ask you much,\nI beg cold comfort; and you are so strait\nAnd so ingrateful, you deny me that.\nPRINCE HENRY O that there were some virtue in my tears,\nThat might relieve you!\nKING JOHN The salt in them is hot.\nWithin me is a hell; and there the poison\nIs as a fiend confined to tyrannize\nOn unreprievable condemned blood.\n[Enter the BASTARD]\nBASTARD O, I am scalded with my violent motion,\nAnd spleen of speed to see your majesty!\nKING JOHN O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye:\nThe tackle of my heart is crack'd and burn'd,\nAnd all the shrouds wherewith my life should sail\nAre turned to one thread, one little hair:\nMy heart hath one poor string to stay it by,\nWhich holds but till thy news be uttered;\nAnd then all this thou seest is but a clod\nAnd module of confounded royalty.\nBASTARD The Dauphin is preparing hitherward,\nWhere heaven He knows how we shall answer him;\nFor in a night the best part of my power,\nAs I upon advantage did remove,\nWere in the Washes all unwarily\nDevoured by the unexpected flood.\n[KING JOHN dies]\nSALISBURY You breathe these dead news in as dead an ear.\nMy liege! my lord! but now a king, now thus.\nPRINCE HENRY Even so must I run on, and even so stop.\nWhat surety of the world, what hope, what stay,\nWhen this was now a king, and now is clay?\nBASTARD Art thou gone so? I do but stay behind\nTo do the office for thee of revenge,\nAnd then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven,\nAs it on earth hath been thy servant still.\nNow, now, you stars that move in your right spheres,\nWhere be your powers? show now your mended faiths,\nAnd instantly return with me again,\nTo push destruction and perpetual shame\nOut of the weak door of our fainting land.\nStraight let us seek, or straight we shall be sought;\nThe Dauphin rages at our very heels.\nSALISBURY It seems you know not, then, so much as we:\nThe Cardinal Pandulph is within at rest,\nWho half an hour since came from the Dauphin,\nAnd brings from him such offers of our peace\nAs we with honour and respect may take,\nWith purpose presently to leave this war.\nBASTARD He will the rather do it when he sees\nOurselves well sinewed to our defence.\nSALISBURY Nay, it is in a manner done already;\nFor many carriages he hath dispatch'd\nTo the sea-side, and put his cause and quarrel\nTo the disposing of the cardinal:\nWith whom yourself, myself and other lords,\nIf you think meet, this afternoon will post\nTo consummate this business happily.\nBASTARD Let it be so: and you, my noble prince,\nWith other princes that may best be spared,\nShall wait upon your father's funeral.\nPRINCE HENRY At Worcester must his body be interr'd;\nFor so he will'd it.\nBASTARD Thither shall it then:\nAnd happily may your sweet self put on\nThe lineal state and glory of the land!\nTo whom with all submission, on my knee\nI do bequeath my faithful services\nAnd true subjection everlastingly.\nSALISBURY And the like tender of our love we make,\nTo rest without a spot for evermore.\nPRINCE HENRY I have a kind soul that would give you thanks\nAnd knows not how to do it but with tears.\nBASTARD O, let us pay the time but needful woe,\nSince it hath been beforehand with our griefs.\nThis England never did, nor never shall,\nLie at the proud foot of a conqueror,\nBut when it first did help to wound itself.\nNow these her princes are come home again,\nCome the three corners of the world in arms,\nAnd we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,\nIf England to itself do rest but true.\n[Exeunt]","title":"King John","type":"page"}