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The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works

Page 271

by William Shakespeare


  Two long days’ journey, lords, or ere we meet.

  20

  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

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  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;

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  Therefore ’twere reason you had manners now.

  PEMBROKE Sir, sir, impatience hath his privilege.

  BASTARD

  ’Tis true, to hurt his master, no manners else.

  SALISBURY

  This is the prison.

  [seeing Arthur] What is he lies here?

  PEMBROKE

  O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty!

  35

  The earth had not a hole to hide this deed.

  SALISBURY Murther, 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.

  40

  SALISBURY

  Sir Richard, what think you? You have 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,

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  The heighth, the crest, or crest unto the crest,

  Of murther’s arms: this is the bloodiest shame,

  The wildest savagery, the vildest stroke,

  That ever wall-ey’d wrath or staring rage

  Presented to the tears of soft remorse.

  50

  PEMBROKE All murthers 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,

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  Exampled by this heinous spectacle.

  BASTARD It is a damned and a bloody work;

  The graceless action of a heavy hand,

  If that it be the work of any hand.

  SALISBURY If that it be the work of any hand!

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  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,

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  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,

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  Till I have set a glory to this hand,

  By giving it the worship of revenge.

  PEMBROKE, 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.

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  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 murtherer’s skin.

  80

  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

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  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 murtherer.

  HUBERT Do not prove me so:

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  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 divel, Salisbury:

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  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 divel is come from hell.

  100

  BIGOT What wilt thou do, renowned Faulconbridge?

  Second a villain and a murtherer?

  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

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  My date of life out for his sweet live’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.

  110

  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 Dolphin there!

  PEMBROKE There tell the king he may inquire us out.

  115

  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;

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  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

  125

  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,

  130

  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,

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  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

  140

  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

  145

  To tug and scamble, and to part by th’ teeth

  The unow’d 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:

  150

  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 ceinture can

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  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.

  5.1 Enter KING JOHN, PANDULPH and attendants.

  KING JOHN Thus have I yielded up into your hand

  The circle of my glory. [giving the crown]

  PANDULPH Take again

  [giving back the crown]

  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,

  5

  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

  10

  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

  15

  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,

  20

  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

  25

  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

  30

  But Dover Castle; London hath receiv’d,

  Like a kind host, the Dolphin 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

  35

  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

  40

  By some damn’d hand was robb’d 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;

  45

  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,

  50

  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:

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  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,

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