The Complete Historical Plays of William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare
BIGOT.
What wilt thou do, renowned Falconbridge?
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 slaughterhouse;
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 the 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:
Now powers from home and discontents at home
Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits,
As doth a raven on a sick-fallen 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.]
ACT V.
SCENE 1. Northampton. A Room in the Palace.
[Enter KING JOHN, PANDULPH with the crown, and Attendants.]
KING JOHN.
Thus have I yielded up into your hand
The circle of my glory.
PANDULPH.
[Give KING JOHN 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 mistemper’d humour
Rests by you only to be qualified.
Then pause not; for the present time’s so sick
That present medicine must be ministr’d
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 blustering 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