The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare (moboreader .TXT) 📕

Have I commandment on the pulse of life?

SALISBURY. It is apparent foul-play; and ‘tis shame That greatness should so grossly offer it.

So thrive it in your game! and so, farewell.

PEMBROKE. Stay yet, Lord Salisbury, I’ll go with thee And find th’ inheritance of this poor child, His little kingdom of a forced grave.

That blood which ow’d the breadth of all this isle Three foot of it doth hold-bad world the while!

This must not be thus borne: this will break out To all our sorrows, and ere long I doubt. Exeunt LORDS

KING JOHN. They burn in indignation. I repent.

There is no sure foundation set on blood, No certain life achiev’d by others’ death.

Enter a MESSENGER

A fearful eye thou hast; where is that blood That I have seen inhabit in those cheeks?

So foul a sky clears not without a storm.

Pour down thy weather-how goes all in France?

MESSENGER. From France to England. Never such a pow’r For any foreign preparation

Was levied in the body of a land.

The copy of your speed is learn’d by them, For when you should be told they do prepare, The tidings comes that they are all arriv’d.

KING JOHN. O, where hath our intelligence been drunk?

Where hath it slept? Where is my mother’s care, That such an army could be drawn in France, And she not hear of it?

MESSENGER. My liege, her ear

Is stopp’d with dust: the first of April died Your noble mother; and as I hear, my lord, The Lady Constance in a frenzy died

Three days before; but this from rumour’s tongue I idly heard-if true or false I know not.

KING JOHN. Withhold thy speed, dreadful occasion!

O, make a league with me, till I have pleas’d My discontented peers! What! mother dead!

How wildly then walks my estate in France!

Under whose conduct came those pow’rs of France That thou for truth giv’st out are landed here?

MESSENGER. Under the Dauphin.

KING JOHN. Thou hast made me giddy

With these in tidings.

Enter the BASTARD and PETER OF POMFRET

Now! What says the world

To your proceedings? Do not seek to stuff My head with more ill news, for it is fun.

BASTARD. But if you be afear’d to hear the worst, Then let the worst, unheard, fall on your head.

KING JOHN. Bear with me, cousin, for I was amaz’d Under the tide; but now I breathe again Aloft the flood, and can give audience To any tongue, speak it of what it will.

BASTARD. How I have sped among the clergymen The sums I have collected shall express.

But as I travell’d hither through the land, I find the people strangely fantasied; Possess’d with rumours, full of idle dreams.

Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear; And here’s a prophet that I brought with me From forth the streets of Pomfret, whom I found With many hundreds treading on his heels; To whom he sung, in rude harsh-sounding rhymes, That, ere the next Ascension-day at noon, Your Highness should deliver up your crown.

KING JOHN. Thou idle dreamer, wherefore didst thou so?

PETER. Foreknowing that the truth will fall out so.

KING JOHN. Hubert, away with him; imprison him; And on that day at noon whereon he says I shall yield up my crown let him be hang’d.

Deliver him to safety; and return,

For I must use thee.

Exit HUBERT with PETER

O my gentle cousin,

Hear’st thou the news abroad, who are arriv’d?

BASTARD. The French, my lord; men’s mouths are full of it; Besides, I met Lord Bigot and Lord Salisbury, With eyes as red as new-enkindled fire, And others more, going to seek the grave Of Arthur, whom they say is kill’d tonight On your suggestion.

KING JOHN. Gentle kinsman, go

And thrust thyself into their companies.

I have a way to will their loves again; Bring them before me.

BASTARD. I Will seek them out.

KING JOHN. Nay, but make haste; the better foot before.

O, let me have no subject enemies

When adverse foreigners affright my towns With dreadful pomp of stout invasion!

Be Mercury, set feathers to thy heels, And fly like thought from them to me again.

BASTARD. The spirit of the time shall teach me speed.

KING JOHN. Spoke like a sprightful noble gentleman.

Exit BASTARD

Go after him; for he perhaps shall need Some messenger betwixt me and the peers; And be thou he.

MESSENGER. With all my heart, my liege. Exit KING JOHN. My mother dead!

Re-enter HUBERT

HUBERT. My lord, they say five moons were seen tonight; Four fixed, and the fifth did whirl about The other four in wondrous motion.

KING JOHN. Five moons!

HUBERT. Old men and beldams in the streets Do prophesy upon it dangerously;

Young Arthur’s death is common in their mouths; And when they talk of him, they shake their heads, And whisper one another in the ear;

And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer’s wrist, Whilst he that hears makes fearful action With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes.

I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open mouth swallowing a tailor’s news; Who, with his shears and measure in his hand, Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet, Told of a many thousand warlike French That were embattailed and rank’d in Kent.

Another lean unwash’d artificer

Cuts off his tale, and talks of Arthur’s death.

KING JOHN. Why seek’st thou to possess me with these fears?

Why urgest thou so oft young Arthur’s death?

Thy hand hath murd’red him. I had a mighty cause To wish him dead, but thou hadst none to kill him.

HUBERT. No had, my lord! Why, did you not provoke me?

KING JOHN. It is the curse of kings to be attended By slaves that take their humours for a warrant To break within the bloody house of life, And on the winking of authority

To understand a law; to know the meaning Of dangerous majesty, when perchance it frowns More upon humour than advis’d respect.

HUBERT. Here is your hand and seal for what I did.

KING JOHN. O, when the last account ‘twixt heaven and earth Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal Witness against us to damnation!

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds Make deeds ill done! Hadst not thou been by, A fellow by the hand of nature mark’d, Quoted and sign’d to do a deed of shame, This murder had not come into my mind; But, taking note of thy abhorr’d aspect, Finding thee fit for bloody villainy, Apt, liable to be employ’d in danger, I faintly broke with thee of Arthur’s death; And thou, to be endeared to a king,

Made it no conscience to destroy a prince.

HUBERT. My lord—

KING JOHN. Hadst thou but shook thy head or made pause, When I spake darkly what I purposed,

Or turn’d an eye of doubt upon my face, As bid me tell my tale in express words, Deep shame had struck me dumb, made me break off, And those thy fears might have wrought fears in me.

But thou didst understand me by my signs, And didst in signs again parley with sin; Yea, without stop, didst let thy heart consent, And consequently thy rude hand to act The deed which both our tongues held vile to name.

Out of my sight, and never see me more!

My nobles leave me; and my state is braved, Even at my gates, with ranks of foreign pow’rs; Nay, in the body of the fleshly land, This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath, Hostility and civil tumult reigns

Between my conscience and my cousin’s death.

HUBERT. Arm you against your other enemies, I’ll make a peace between your soul and you.

Young Arthur is alive. This hand of mine Is yet a maiden and an innocent hand, Not painted with the crimson spots of blood.

Within this bosom never ent’red yet

The dreadful motion of a murderous thought And you have slander’d nature in my form, Which, howsoever rude exteriorly,

Is yet the cover of a fairer mind

Than to be butcher of an innocent child.

KING JOHN. Doth Arthur live? O, haste thee to the peers, Throw this report on their incensed rage And make them tame to their obedience!

Forgive the comment that my passion made Upon thy feature; for my rage was blind, And foul imaginary eyes of blood

Presented thee more hideous than thou art.

O, answer not; but to my closet bring The angry lords with all expedient haste.

I conjure thee but slowly; run more fast. Exeunt

SCENE 3.

England. Before the castle

Enter ARTHUR, on the walls

ARTHUR. The wall is high, and yet will I leap down.

Good ground, be pitiful and hurt me not!

There’s few or none do know me; if they did, This ship-boy’s semblance hath disguis’d me quite.

I am afraid; and yet I’ll venture it.

If I get down and do not break my limbs, I’ll find a thousand shifts to get away.

As good to die and go, as die and stay. [Leaps down]

O me! my uncle’s spirit is in these stones.

Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones!

[Dies]

Enter PEMBROKE, SALISBURY, and BIGOT

SALISBURY. Lords, I will meet him at Saint Edmundsbury; It is our safety, and we must embrace This gentle offer of the perilous time.

PEMBROKE. Who brought that letter from the Cardinal?

SALISBURY. The Count Melun, a noble lord of France, Whose private with me of the Dauphin’s love Is much more general than these lines import.

BIGOT. Tomorrow morning let us meet him then.

SALISBURY. Or rather then set forward; for ‘twill be Two long days’ journey, lords, or ere we meet.

Enter the BASTARD

BASTARD. Once more to-day well met, distemper’d lords!

The King by me requests your presence straight.

SALISBURY. The King hath dispossess’d himself of us.

We will not line his thin bestained cloak With our pure honours, nor attend the foot That leaves the print of blood where’er it walks.

Return and tell him so. We know the worst.

BASTARD. Whate’er you think, good words, I think, were best.

SALISBURY. Our griefs, and not our manners, reason now.

BASTARD. But there is little reason in your grief; Therefore ‘twere reason you had manners now.

PEMBROKE. Sir, sir, impatience hath his privilege.

BASTARD. ‘Tis true-to hurt his master, no man else.

SALISBURY. This is the prison. What is he lies here?

PEMBROKE. O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty!

The earth had not a hole to hide this deed.

SALISBURY. Murder, as hating what himself hath done, Doth lay it open to urge on revenge.

BIGOT. Or, when he doom’d this beauty to a grave, Found it too precious-princely for a grave.

SALISBURY. Sir Richard, what think you? Have you beheld, Or have you read or heard, or could you think?

Or do you almost think, although you see, That you do see? Could thought, without this object, Form such another? This is the very top, The height, the crest, or crest unto the crest, Of murder’s arms; this is the bloodiest shame, The wildest savagery, the vilest stroke, That ever wall-ey’d wrath or staring rage Presented to the tears of soft remorse.

PEMBROKE. All murders past do stand excus’d in this; And this, so sole and so unmatchable, Shall give a holiness, a purity,

To the yet unbegotten sin of times,

And prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest, Exampled by this heinous spectacle.

BASTARD. It is a damned and a bloody work; The graceless action of a heavy hand, If that