Hubert shall be your man, attend on you
With all true duty. On toward Calais, ho! Exeunt.
3.3 Enter KING PHILIP, LEWIS, PANDULPH and attendants.
KING PHILIP So, by a roaring tempest on the flood,
A whole armado of convicted sail
Is scatter’d and disjoin’d from fellowship.
PANDULPH Courage and comfort! all shall yet go well.
KING PHILIP
What can go well, when we have run so ill?
5
Are we not beaten? Is not Angiers lost?
Arthur ta’en prisoner? divers dear friends slain?
And bloody England into England gone,
O’erbearing interruption, spite of France?
LEWIS What he hath won, that hath he fortified:
10
So hot a speed with such advice dispos’d,
Such temperate order in so fierce a cause,
Doth want example: who hath read or heard
Of any kindred action like to this?
KING PHILIP
Well could I bear that England had this praise
15
So we could find some pattern of our shame.
Enter CONSTANCE.
Look, who comes here! a grave unto a soul;
Holding th’eternal spirit, against her will,
In the vild prison of afflicted breath.
I prithee, lady, go away with me.
20
CONSTANCE
Lo! now – now see the issue of your peace!
KING PHILIP
Patience, good lady! comfort, gentle Constance!
CONSTANCE No! – I defy all counsel, all redress,
But that which ends all counsel, true redress:
Death! death, O amiable, lovely death!
25
Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!
Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,
Thou hate and terror to prosperity,
And I will kiss thy detestable bones
And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows,
30
And ring these fingers with thy household worms,
And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,
And be a carrion monster like thyself:
Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil’st,
And buss thee as thy wife. Misery’s love,
35
O, come to me!
KING PHILIP O fair affliction, peace!
CONSTANCE No, no, I will not, having breath to cry:
O, that my tongue were in the thunder’s mouth!
Then with a passion would I shake the world;
And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy
40
Which cannot hear a lady’s feeble voice,
Which scorns a modern invocation.
PANDULPH Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow.
CONSTANCE Thou art holy to belie me so! –
I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;
45
My name is Constance; I was Geoffrey’s wife;
Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost!
I am not mad: I would to heaven I were!
For then ’tis like I should forget myself:
O, if I could, what grief should I forget!
50
Preach some philosophy to make me mad,
And thou shalt be canoniz’d, cardinal;
For, being not mad but sensible of grief,
My reasonable part produces reason
How I may be deliver’d of these woes,
55
And teaches me to kill or hang myself:
If I were mad, I should forget my son,
Or madly think a babe of clouts were he.
I am not mad; too well, too well I feel
The different plague of each calamity.
60
KING PHILIP Bind up those tresses. O, what love I note
In the fair multitude of those her hairs!
Where but by chance a silver drop hath fall’n,
Even to that drop ten thousand wiry friends
Do glue themselves in sociable grief,
65
Like true, inseparable, faithful loves,
Sticking together in calamity.
CONSTANCE To England, if you will.
KING PHILIP Bind up your hairs.
CONSTANCE Yes, that I will; and wherefore will I do it?
I tore them from their bonds and cried aloud,
70
‘O that these hands could so redeem my son,
As they have given these hairs their liberty!’
But now I envy at their liberty,
And will again commit them to their bonds,
Because my poor child is a prisoner.
75
And, father cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:
If that be true, I shall see my boy again;
For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday suspire,
80
There was not such a gracious creature born.
But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud
And chase the native beauty from his cheek
And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague’s fit,
85
And so he’ll die; and, rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him: therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.
PANDULPH You hold too heinous a respect of grief.
90
CONSTANCE He talks to me that never had a son.
KING PHILIP You are as fond of grief as of your child.
CONSTANCE
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
95
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then have I reason to be fond of grief?
Fare you well: had you such a loss as I
I could give better comfort than you do.
100
I will not keep this form upon my head,
When there is such disorder in my wit.
O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrows’ cure! Exit.
105
KING PHILIP I fear some outrage, and I’ll follow her.
Exit.
LEWIS There’s nothing in this world can make me joy:
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man;
And bitter shame hath spoil’d the sweet word’s taste,
110
That it yields nought but shame and bitterness.
PANDULPH Before the curing of a strong disease,
Even in the instant of repair and health,
The fit is strongest; evils that take leave,
On their departure most of all show evil.
115
What have you lost by losing of this day?
LEWIS All days of glory, joy and happiness.
PANDULPH If you had won it, certainly you had.
No, no; when fortune means to men most good
She looks upon them with a threat’ning eye.
120
’Tis strange to think how much King John hath lost
In this which he accounts so clearly won:
Are not you griev’d that Arthur is his prisoner?
LEWIS As heartily as he is glad he hath him.
PANDULPH Your mind is all as youthful as your blood.
125
Now hear me speak with a prophetic spirit;
For even the breath of what I
mean to speak
Shall blow each dust, each straw, each little rub,
Out of the path which shall directly lead
Thy foot to England’s throne; and therefore mark.
130
John hath seiz’d Arthur; and it cannot be
That, whiles warm life plays in that infant’s veins,
The misplac’d John should entertain an hour,
One minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest.
A sceptre snatch’d with an unruly hand
135
Must be as boisterously maintain’d as gain’d;
And he that stands upon a slipp’ry place
Makes nice of no vild hold to stay him up:
That John may stand, then, Arthur needs must fall;
So be it, for it cannot but be so.
140
LEWIS But what shall I gain by young Arthur’s fall?
PANDULPH
You, in the right of Lady Blanche your wife,
May then make all the claim that Arthur did.
LEWIS And lose it, life and all, as Arthur did.
PANDULPH
How green you are and fresh in this old world!
145
John lays you plots; the times conspire with you;
For he that steeps his safety in true blood
Shall find but bloody safety and untrue.
This act so evilly borne shall cool the hearts
Of all his people, and freeze up their zeal,
150
That none so small advantage shall step forth
To check his reign, but they will cherish it;
No natural exhalation in the sky,
No scope of nature, no distemper’d day,
No common wind, no customed event,
155
But they will pluck away his natural cause
And call them meteors, prodigies and signs,
Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven,
Plainly denouncing vengeance upon John.
LEWIS Maybe he will not touch young Arthur’s life,
160
But hold himself safe in his prisonment.
PANDULPH O, sir, when he shall hear of your approach,
If that young Arthur be not gone already,
Even at that news he dies; and then the hearts
Of all his people shall revolt from him,
165
And kiss the lips of unacquainted change,
And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath
Out of the bloody fingers’ ends of John.
Methinks I see this hurly all on foot:
And, O, what better matter breeds for you
170
Than I have nam’d! The bastard Faulconbridge
Is now in England ransacking the church,
Offending charity: if but a dozen French
Were there in arms, they would be as a call
To train ten thousand English to their side,
175
Or as a little snow, tumbled about,
Anon becomes a mountain. O noble Dolphin,
Go with me to the king: ’tis wonderful
What may be wrought out of their discontent,
Now that their souls are topful of offence.
180
For England go; I will whet on the king.
LEWIS
Strong reasons makes strange actions. Let us go:
If you say ay, the king will not say no. Exeunt.
4.1 Enter HUBERT and Executioners.
HUBERT Heat me these irons hot; and look thou stand
Within the arras: when I strike my foot
Upon the bosom of the ground, rush forth
And bind the boy which you shall find with me
Fast to the chair. Be heedful: hence, and watch.
1 EXECUTIONER
5
I hope your warrant will bear out the deed.
HUBERT Uncleanly scruples! fear not you; look to’t.
[The Executioners withdraw.]
Young lad, come forth; I have to say with you.
Enter ARTHUR.
ARTHUR Good morrow, Hubert.
HUBERT Good morrow, little prince.
ARTHUR As little prince having so great a title
To be more prince, as may be. – You are sad.
10
HUBERT Indeed, I have been merrier.
ARTHUR Mercy on me!
Methinks nobody should be sad but I:
Yet, I remember, when I was in France,
Young gentlemen would be as sad as night,
Only for wantonness. By my christendom,
15
So I were out of prison and kept sheep,
I should be as merry as the day is long;
And so I would be here, but that I doubt
My uncle practises more harm to me.
He is afraid of me and I of him:
20
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 268
