King John by William Shakespeare (feel good books to read txt) 📕

grant you your requests. Pembroke

Then I, as one that am the tongue of these
To sound the purpose of all their hearts,
Both for myself and them, but, chief of all,
Your safety, for the which myself and them
Bend their best studies, heartily request
The enfranchisement of Arthur; whose restraint
Doth move the murmuring lips of discontent
To break into this dangerous argument⁠—
If what in rest you have in right you hold,
Why then your fears, which, as they say, attend
The steps of wrong, should move you to mew up
Your tender kinsman and to choke his days
With barbarous ignorance and deny his youth
The rich advantage of good exercise?
That the time’s enemies may not have this
To grace occasions, let it be our suit
That you have bid us ask his liberty;
Which for our goods we do no further ask
Than whereupon our weal, on you depending,
Counts it your weal he have his liberty.

Enter Hubert. King John

Let it be so: I do commit his youth
To your direction. Hubert, what news with you? Taking him apart.

Pembroke

This is the man should do the bloody deed;
He show’d his warrant to a friend of mine:
The image of a wicked heinous fault
Lives in his eye; that close aspect of his
Does show the mood of a much troubled breast;
And I do fearfully believe ’tis done,
What we so fear’d he had a charge to do.

Salisbury

The colour of the king doth come and go
Between his purpose and his conscience,
Like heralds ’twixt two dreadful battles set:
His passion is so ripe, it needs must break.

Pembroke

And when it breaks, I fear will issue thence
The foul corruption of a sweet child’s death.

King John

We cannot hold mortality’s strong hand:
Good lords, although my will to give is living,
The suit which you demand is gone and dead:
He tells us Arthur is deceased to-night.

Salisbury Indeed we fear’d his sickness was past cure. Pembroke

Indeed we heard how near his death he was
Before the child himself felt he was sick:
This must be answer’d either here or hence.

King John

Why do you bend such solemn brows on me?
Think you I bear the shears of destiny?
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 the inheritance of this poor child,
His little kingdom of a forced grave.
That blood which owed 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 achieved 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 power
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 come that they are all arrived.

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 pleased
My discontented peers! What! mother dead!
How wildly then walks my estate in France!
Under whose conduct came those powers of France
That thou for truth givest out are landed here?

Messenger Under the Dauphin. King John

Thou hast made me giddy
With these ill 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 full.

Bastard

But if you be afeard to hear the worst,
Then let the worst unheard fall on your head.

King John

Bear with me, cousin; for I was amazed
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 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. Exeunt Hubert with Peter. O my gentle cousin,
Hear’st thou the news abroad, who are arrived?

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, who they say is kill’d to-night
On your suggestion.

King John

Gentle kinsman, go,
And thrust thyself into their companies:
I have a way to win 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