Edward III by William Shakespeare (new ebook reader TXT) 📕

nimble-jointed jennet,
As swift as ever yet thou didst bestride,
And therewithal he counsels thee to fly;
Else, death himself hath sworn that thou shalt die. Prince Edward

Back with the beast unto the beast that sent him;
Tell him I cannot sit a coward’s horse.
Bid him to-day bestride the jade himself;
For I will stain my horse quite o’er with blood
And double-gild my spurs, but I will catch him.
So tell the carping boy, and get thee gone. Exit Herald.

Enter another Herald. Herald

Edward of Wales, Philip, the second son
To the most mighty christian king of France,
Seeing thy body’s living date expi’d,
All full of charity and christian love,
Commends this book, full fraught with holy8 prayers,
To thy fair hand, and, for thy hour of life,
Entreats thee that thou meditate therein
And arm thy soul for her long journey towards.
Thus have I done his bidding, and return.

Prince Edward

Herald of Philip, greet thy lord from me;
All good, that he can send, I can receive:
But think’st thou not, the unadvised boy
Hath wrong’d himself in thus far tend’ring me?
Haply, he cannot pray without the book;
I think him no divine extemporal:
Then render back this commonplace of prayer,
To do himself good in adversity.
Besides, he knows not my sin’s quality
And therefore knows no prayers for my avail;
Ere night his prayer may be to pray to God,
To put it in my heart to hear his prayer.
So tell the courtly wanton, and be gone.

Herald I go. Exit. Prince Edward

How confident their strength and number makes them!⁠—
Now, Audley, sound those silver wings of thine,
And let those milk-white messengers of time
Show thy time’s learning in this dangerous time;
Thyself art bruis’d and bit with many broils,
And stratagems forepast with iron pens
Are texted in thine honourable face;
Thou art a married man in this distress,
But danger woos me as a blushing maid:
Teach me an answer to this perilous time.

Audley

To die is all as common as to live;
The one in choice, the other holds in chase:
For from the instant we begin to live
We do pursue and hunt the time to die:
First bud we, then we blow, and after seed;
Then, presently, we fall; and, as a shade
Follows the body, so we follow death.
If then we hunt for death, why do we fear it?
If we fear it, why do we follow it?
If we do fear, how can we shun it?
If we do fear, with fear we do but aid
The thing we fear to seize on us the sooner:
If we fear not, then no resolved proffer
Can overthrow the limit of our fate:
For, whether ripe or rotten, drop we shall,
As we do draw the lottery of our doom.

Prince Edward

Ah, good old man, a thousand thousand armours
These words of thine have buckled on my back.
Ah, what an idiot hast thou made of life,
To seek the thing it fears! and how disgrac’d
The imperial victory of murd’ring death!
Since all the lives, his conquering arrows strike,
Seek him, and he not them, to shame his glory.
I will not give a penny for a life,
Nor half a halfpenny to shun grim death,
Since for to live is but to seek to die,
And dying but beginning of new life.
Let come the hour when he that rules it will!
To live, or die, I hold indifferent. Exeunt.

Scene V

The same. The French camp.

Enter King John and Charles. King John

A sudden darkness hath defac’d the sky,
The winds are crept into their caves for fear,
The leaves move not, the world is hush’d and still,
The birds cease singing, and the wand’ring brooks
Murmur no wonted greeting to their shores;
Silence attends some wonder and expecteth
That heaven should pronounce some prophecy:
Where or from whom proceeds this silence, Charles?

Charles

Our men with open mouths and staring eyes
Look on each other, as they did attend
Each other’s words, and yet no creature speaks;
A tongue-tied fear hath made a midnight hour
And speeches sleep through all the waking regions.

King John

But now the pompous sun, in all his pride,
Look’d through his golden coach upon the world,
And on a sudden, hath he hid himself;
That now the under earth is as a grave,
Dark, deadly, silent, and uncomfortable. A clamour of ravens heard.
Hark! what a deadly outery do I hear!

Charles Here comes my brother Philip. King John All dismayed:⁠— Enter Philip. What fearful words are those thy looks presage? Philip A flight, a flight! King John Coward, what flight? thou liest, there needs no flight. Philip A flight! King John

Awake thy craven powers, and tell on
The substance of that very fear indeed,
Which is so ghastly printed in thy face:
What is the matter?

Philip

A flight of ugly ravens
Do croak and hover o’er our soldiers’ heads,
And keep in triangles and corner’d squares
Right as our forces are embattled;
With their approach there came this sudden fog
Which now hath hid the airy floor of heaven
And made at noon a night unnatural
Upon the quaking and dismayed world:
In brief, our soldiers have let fall their arms
And stand like metamorphos’d images,
Bloodless and pale, one gazing on another.

King John

Ay, now I call to mind the prophesy;
But I must give no entrance to a fear.⁠—
Return, and hearten up these yielding souls;
Tell them, the ravens, seeing them in arms⁠—
So many fair against a famished few⁠—
Come but to dine upon their handiwork
And prey upon the carrion that they kill:
For when we see a horse laid down to die,
Although he be9 not dead, the ravenous birds
Sit watching the departure of his life;
Even so these ravens, for the carcases
Of those poor English that are mark’d to die,
Hover about, and, if they cry to us,
’Tis but for meat that we must kill for them.
Away, and comfort up my soldiers,
And sound the trumpets; and at once dispatch
This little business of a silly fraud. Exit Philip.

Noise within. Enter a French Captain, with Salisbury, prisoner. Captain

Behold, my liege, this knight and forty mo⁠—
Of whom the better part are slain and fled⁠—
With all endeavour sought to break our ranks,
And make their way to the encompass’d prince;
Dispose of him as please your majesty.

King