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

SALISBURY. If that it be the work of any hand!

We had a kind of light what would ensue.

It is the shameful work of Hubert’s hand; The practice and the purpose of the King; From whose obedience I forbid my soul Kneeling before this ruin of sweet life, And breathing to his breathless excellence The incense of a vow, a holy vow,

Never to taste the pleasures of the world, Never to be infected with delight,

Nor conversant with ease and idleness, Till I have set a glory to this hand

By giving it the worship of revenge.

PEMBROKE. and BIGOT. Our souls religiously confirm thy words.

Enter HUBERT

HUBERT. Lords, I am hot with haste in seeking you.

Arthur doth live; the King hath sent for you.

SALISBURY. O, he is bold, and blushes not at death!

Avaunt, thou hateful villain, get thee gone!

HUBERT. I am no villain.

SALISBURY. Must I rob the law? [Drawing his sword]

BASTARD. Your sword is bright, sir; put it up again.

SALISBURY. Not till I sheathe it in a murderer’s skin.

HUBERT. Stand back, Lord Salisbury, stand back, I say; By heaven, I think my sword’s as sharp as yours.

I would not have you, lord, forget yourself, Nor tempt the danger of my true defence; Lest I, by marking of your rage, forget Your worth, your greatness and nobility.

BIGOT. Out, dunghill! Dar’st thou brave a nobleman?

HUBERT. Not for my life; but yet I dare defend My innocent life against an emperor.

SALISBURY. Thou art a murderer.

HUBERT. Do not prove me so.

Yet I am none. Whose tongue soe’er speaks false, Not truly speaks; who speaks not truly, lies.

PEMBROKE. Cut him to pieces.

BASTARD. Keep the peace, I say.

SALISBURY. Stand by, or I shall gall you, Faulconbridge.

BASTARD. Thou wert better gall the devil, Salisbury.

If thou but frown on me, or stir thy foot, Or teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame, I’ll strike thee dead. Put up thy sword betime; Or I’ll so maul you and your toasting-iron That you shall think the devil is come from hell.

BIGOT. What wilt thou do, renowned Faulconbridge?

Second a villain and a murderer?

HUBERT. Lord Bigot, I am none.

BIGOT. Who kill’d this prince?

HUBERT. ‘Tis not an hour since I left him well.

I honour’d him, I lov’d him, and will weep My date of life out for his sweet life’s loss.

SALISBURY. Trust not those cunning waters of his eyes, For villainy is not without such rheum; And he, long traded in it, makes it seem Like rivers of remorse and innocency.

Away with me, all you whose souls abhor Th’ uncleanly savours of a slaughter-house; For I am stifled with this smell of sin.

BIGOT. Away toward Bury, to the Dauphin there!

PEMBROKE. There tell the King he may inquire us out.

Exeunt LORDS

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

Beyond the infinite and boundless reach Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death, Art thou damn’d, Hubert.

HUBERT. Do but hear me, sir.

BASTARD. Ha! I’ll tell thee what:

Thou’rt damn’d as black-nay, nothing is so black-Thou art more deep damn’d than Prince Lucifer; There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.

HUBERT. Upon my soul—

BASTARD. If thou didst but consent

To this most cruel act, do but despair; And if thou want’st a cord, the smallest thread That ever spider twisted from her womb Will serve to strangle thee; a rush will be a beam To hang thee on; or wouldst thou drown thyself, Put but a little water in a spoon

And it shall be as all the ocean,

Enough to stifle such a villain up

I do suspect thee very grievously.

HUBERT. If I in act, consent, or sin of thought, Be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath Which was embounded in this beauteous clay, Let hell want pains enough to torture me!

I left him well.

BASTARD. Go, bear him in thine arms.

I am amaz’d, methinks, and lose my way Among the thorns and dangers of this world.

How easy dost thou take all England up!

From forth this morsel of dead royalty The life, the right, and truth of all this realm Is fled to heaven; and England now is left To tug and scamble, and to part by th’ teeth The unowed interest of proud-swelling state.

Now for the bare-pick’d bone of majesty Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace; Now powers from home and discontents at home Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits, As doth a raven on a sick-fall’n beast, The imminent decay of wrested pomp.

Now happy he whose cloak and cincture can Hold out this tempest. Bear away that child, And follow me with speed. I’ll to the King; A thousand businesses are brief in hand, And heaven itself doth frown upon the land. Exeunt

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ACT V. SCENE 1.

England. KING JOHN’S palace

Enter KING JOHN, PANDULPH, and attendants KING JOHN. Thus have I yielded up into your hand The circle of my glory.

PANDULPH. [Gives back the crown] Take again From this my hand, as holding of the Pope, Your sovereign greatness and authority.

KING JOHN. Now keep your holy word; go meet the French; And from his Holiness use all your power To stop their marches fore we are inflam’d.

Our discontented counties do revolt;

Our people quarrel with obedience,

Swearing allegiance and the love of soul To stranger blood, to foreign royalty.

This inundation of mistemp’red humour Rests by you only to be qualified.

Then pause not; for the present time’s so sick That present med’cine must be minist’red Or overthrow incurable ensues.

PANDULPH. It was my breath that blew this tempest up, Upon your stubborn usage of the Pope; But since you are a gentle convertite, My tongue shall hush again this storm of war And make fair weather in your blust’ring land.

On this Ascension-day, remember well, Upon your oath of service to the Pope, Go I to make the French lay down their arms. Exit KING JOHN. Is this Ascension-day? Did not the prophet Say that before Ascension-day at noon My crown I should give off? Even so I have.

I did suppose it should be on constraint; But, heaven be thank’d, it is but voluntary.

Enter the BASTARD

BASTARD. All Kent hath yielded; nothing there holds out But Dover Castle. London hath receiv’d, Like a kind host, the Dauphin and his powers.

Your nobles will not hear you, but are gone To offer service to your enemy;

And wild amazement hurries up and down The little number of your doubtful friends.

KING JOHN. Would not my lords return to me again After they heard young Arthur was alive?

BASTARD. They found him dead, and cast into the streets, An empty casket, where the jewel of life By some damn’d hand was robbed and ta’en away.

KING JOHN. That villain Hubert told me he did live.

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

But wherefore do you droop? Why look you sad?

Be great in act, as you have been in thought; Let not the world see fear and sad distrust Govern the motion of a kingly eye.

Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire; Threaten the threat’ner, and outface the brow Of bragging horror; so shall inferior eyes, That borrow their behaviours from the great, Grow great by your example and put on The dauntless spirit of resolution.

Away, and glister like the god of war When he intendeth to become the field; Show boldness and aspiring confidence.

What, shall they seek the lion in his den, And fright him there, and make him tremble there?

O, let it not be said! Forage, and run To meet displeasure farther from the doors And grapple with him ere he come so nigh.

KING JOHN. The legate of the Pope hath been with me, And I have made a happy peace with him; And he hath promis’d to dismiss the powers Led by the Dauphin.

BASTARD. O inglorious league!

Shall we, upon the footing of our land, Send fair-play orders, and make compromise, Insinuation, parley, and base truce,

To arms invasive? Shall a beardless boy, A cock’red silken wanton, brave our fields And flesh his spirit in a warlike soil, Mocking the air with colours idly spread, And find no check? Let us, my liege, to arms.

Perchance the Cardinal cannot make your peace; Or, if he do, let it at least be said They saw we had a purpose of defence.

KING JOHN. Have thou the ordering of this present time.

BASTARD. Away, then, with good courage!

Yet, I know

Our party may well meet a prouder foe. Exeunt

SCENE 2.

England. The DAUPHIN’S camp at Saint Edmundsbury Enter, in arms, LEWIS, SALISBURY, MELUN, PEMBROKE, BIGOT, and soldiers LEWIS. My Lord Melun, let this be copied out And keep it safe for our remembrance; Return the precedent to these lords again, That, having our fair order written down, Both they and we, perusing o’er these notes, May know wherefore we took the sacrament, And keep our faiths firm and inviolable.

SALISBURY. Upon our sides it never shall be broken.

And, noble Dauphin, albeit we swear

A voluntary zeal and an unurg’d faith To your proceedings; yet, believe me, Prince, I am not glad that such a sore of time Should seek a plaster by contemn’d revolt, And heal the inveterate canker of one wound By making many. O, it grieves my soul That I must draw this metal from my side To be a widow-maker! O, and there

Where honourable rescue and defence

Cries out upon the name of Salisbury!

But such is the infection of the time That, for the health and physic of our right, We cannot deal but with the very hand Of stern injustice and confused wrong.

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

That we, the sons and children of this isle, Were born to see so sad an hour as this; Wherein we step after a stranger-march Upon her gentle bosom, and fill up

Her enemies’ ranks-I must withdraw and weep Upon the spot of this enforced cause-To grace the gentry of a land remote

And follow unacquainted colours here?

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

That Neptune’s arms, who clippeth thee about, Would bear thee from the knowledge of thyself And grapple thee unto a pagan shore,

Where these two Christian armies might combine The blood of malice in a vein of league, And not to spend it so unneighbourly!

LEWIS. A noble temper dost thou show in this; And great affections wrestling in thy bosom Doth make an earthquake of nobility.

O, what a noble combat hast thou fought Between compulsion and a brave respect!

Let me wipe off this honourable dew

That silverly doth progress on thy cheeks.

My heart hath melted at a lady’s tears, Being an ordinary inundation;

But this effusion of such manly drops, This show’r, blown up by tempest of the soul, Startles mine eyes and makes me more amaz’d Than had I seen the vaulty top of heaven Figur’d quite o’er with burning meteors.

Lift up thy brow, renowned Salisbury, And with a