Arth. O save me, Hubert, save me! My eyes
Even with the fierce looks of these bloody men. Hub. Give me the iron, I say, and bind him here. Arth. Alas, what need you be so boisterous- rough?
I will not struggle, I will stand stone-still. For heaven's sake, Hubert, let me not be bound! Nay, hear me, Hubert! drive these men away, And I will sit as quiet as a lamb:
I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word, Nor look upon the iron angerly.
Thrust but these men away, and I'll forgive you, Whatever torment you do put me to.
Hub. Go, stand within: let me alone with him. 1st Att. I am best pleased to be from such a deed. [Exeunt Attendants.
Arth. Alas, I then have chid away my friend! He hath a stern look, but a gentle heart. Let him come back, that his compassion may Give life to yours.
Come, boy, prepare yourself.
Arth. Is there no remedy? Hub.
None, but to lose your eyes.
Arth. O heaven! that there were but a mote
Arth. No, in good sooth: the fire is dead with grief,
Being create for comfort, to be used In undeserved extremes. See else yourself: There is no malice in this burning coal: The breath of heaven hath blown his spirit out, And strewed repentant ashes on his head.
Hub. But with my breath I can revive it, boy. Arth. And if you do, you will but make it blush And glow with shame of your proceedings, Hubert: Nay, it perchance will sparkle in your eyes; And, like a dog that is compelled to fight, Snatch at his master that doth tarre him on. All things that you should use to do me wrong Deny their office: only you do lack
That mercy which fierce fire and iron extends; Creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses.
Hub. Well, see to live: I will not touch thine
For all the treasure that thine uncle owes. Yet am I sworn, and I did purpose, boy, With this same very iron to burn them out. Arth. O now you look like Hubert! all this while You were disguised. Hub. Peace: no more. Your uncle must not know but you are dead : I'll fill these doggéd spies with false reports. And, pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure That Hubert, for the wealth of all the world, Will not offend thee.
Arth. O heaven!—I thank you, Hubert. Hub. Silence; no more. Go closely in with me: Much danger do I undergo for thee. [Exeunt.
SCENE II.-The same. A Room of State in the Palace.
Enter KING JOHN, crowned; PEMBROKE, SALISBURY, and other Lords. The King takes his
K. John. Here once again we sit, once again
And looked upon, I hope, with cheerful eyes. Pem. This once again, but that your highness
Was once superfluous: you were crowned before, And that high royalty was ne'er plucked off; The faiths of men ne'er stained with revolt; Fresh expectation troubled not the land, With any longed-for change, or better state. Sal. Therefore, to be possessed with double
To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
Pem. But that your royal pleasure must be done, This act is as an ancient tale new told; And, in the last repeating, troublesome, Being urged at a time unseasonable.
Sal. In this, the antique and well-noted face Of plain old form is much disfiguréd : And, like a shifted wind unto a sail, It makes the course of thoughts to fetch about; Startles and frights consideration; Makes sound opinion sick, and truth suspected, For putting on so new a fashioned robe.
Pem. When workmen strive to do better than well,
They do confound their skill in covetousness: And, oftentimes, excusing of a fault
Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse: As patches, set upon a little breach, Discredit more, in hiding of the fault, Than did the fault before it was so patched.
Sal. To this effect, before you were new crowned, We breathed our counsel: but it pleased your
To overbear it and we are all well pleased; Since all and every part of what we would Doth make a stand at what your highness will. K. John. Some reasons of this double corona- tion
I have possessed you with, and think them strong; And more, more strong (when lesser is my fear), I shall endue you with: meantime, but ask What you would have reformed that is not well; And well shall you perceive how willingly I will both hear and grant you your requests. Pem. Then I (as one that am the tongue of these,
To sound the purposes 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.
K. John. Let it be so: I do commit his youth
To your direction.-Hubert, what news with you? Pem. This is the man should do the bloody deed:
He shewed his warrant to a friend of mine.
The image of a wicked heinous fault Lives in his eye; that close aspéct of his Does shew the mood of a much-troubled breast; And I do fearfully believe 't is done, What we so feared he had a charge to do.
Sal. The colour of the King doth come and go, Between his purpose and his conscience,
Three days before: but this from rumour's tongue I idly heard if true or false I know not.
K. 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 giv'st out are landed here? Mess. Under the Dauphin.
Enter the Bastard and PETER of Pomfret. K. John. Thou hast made me giddy With these ill tidings.—Now, what says the world To your proceedings? Do not seek to stuff My head with more ill news, for it is full.
Bast. But if you be afeard to hear the worst, Then let the worst, unheard, fall on your head. K. 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.
Bast. How I have sped among the clergymen The sums I have collected shall express. But, as I travelled hither through the land, I find the people strangely fantasied; Possessed with rumours, full of idle dreams; Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear: And here's 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. K. John. Thou idle dreamer, wherefore didst thou so?
Peter. Foreknowing that the truth will fall
K. 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 hanged. Deliver him to safety, and return, For I must use thee.-O my gentle cousin, [Exit HUBERT with PETER. Hear'st thou the news abroad who are arrived? Bast. 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 killed to-night On your suggestion.
K. John. Gentle kinsman, go, And thrust thyself into their companies. I have a way to win their loves again : Bring them before me.
K. 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 to me again. Bast. The spirit of the time shall teach me speed. [Exit. K. John. Spoke like a spriteful noble gentle-
Go after him; for he perhaps shall need Some messenger betwixt me and the peers: And be thou he.
Mess. With all my heart, my liege. [Exit. K. John. My mother dead!
Hub. My lord, they say five moons were seen to-night:
Four fixed; and the fifth did whirl about The other four, in wond'rous motion. K. John. Five moons! Hub.
Old men and beldams in the streets Do prophesy upon it dangerously. Young Arthur's death is common in their mouths: And when they talk of him they shake their heads, And whisper one another in the ear;
And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist; Whilst he that hears makes fearful action, With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling
I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news; Who, with his shears and measure in his hand, Standing on slippers (which his nimble haste Had falsely thrust upon contráry feet), Told of a many thousand warlike French That were embattéled and ranked in Kent: Another lean unwashed artificer
Cuts off his tale, and talks of Arthur's death. K. John. Why seek'st thou to possess me with
Why urgest thou so oft young Arthur's death? Thy hand hath murdered him: I had a mighty
To wish him dead, but thou hadst none to kill him. Hub. Had none, my lord! Why, did you not
K. John. It is the curse of kings to be attended By slaves that take their humours for a warrant To break within the bloody house of life; And on the winking of authority To understand a law: to know the meaning Of dangerous majesty, when perchance it frowns
More upon humour than advised respect.
Hub. Here is your hand and seal for what I did.
K. John. O, when the last account 'twixt heaven and earth
Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal Witness against us to damnation !— How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds Makes deeds ill done!-Hadst not thou been by, A fellow by the hand of nature marked, Quoted and signed to do a deed of shame, This murder had not come into my mind: But taking note of thy abhorred aspéct, Finding thee fit for bloody villany, Apt, liable, to be employed in danger,
I faintly broke with thee of Arthur's death: And thou, to be endearéd to a king, Made it no conscience to destroy a prince. Hub. My lord,—
K. John. Hadst thou but shook thy head, or made a pause,
When I spake darkly what I purposed; Or turned an eye of doubt upon my face, As bid me tell my tale in express words,
Deep shame had struck me dumb, made me break off;
And those thy fears might have wrought fears in
But thou didst understand me by my signs, And didst in signs again parley with sin : Yea, without stop, didst let thy heart consent, And consequently thy rude hand to act
The deed which both our tongues held vile to
Out of my sight, and never see me more! My nobles leave me; and my state is braved, Even at my gates, with ranks of foreign powers. Nay, in the body of this fleshly land, This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath, Hostility and civil tumult reigns Between my conscience and my cousin's death. Hub. Arm you against your other enemies; I'll make a peace between your soul and you. Young Arthur is alive. This hand of mine Is yet a maiden and an innocent hand, Not painted with the crimson spots of blood: Within this bosom never entered yet The dreadful motion of a murderous thought: And you have slandered nature in my form; Which, howsoever rude exteriorly,
yet the cover of a fairer mind
Than to be butcher of an innocent child.
K. John. Doth Arthur live? O haste thee to
the peers; Throw this report on their incenséd rage, And make them tame to their obedience! Forgive the comment that my passion made Upon thy feature: for my rage was blind,
Enter PEMBROKE, SALISBURY, and BIGOT.
Sal. Lords, I will meet him at Saint Edmund'sbury.
It is our safety, and we must embrace This gentle offer of the perilous time.
Pem. Who brought that letter from the cardinal? Sal. The Count Melun, a noble lord of France: Whose private with me, of the Dauphin's love, Is much more general than these lines import.
Big. To-morrow morning let us meet him, then. Sal. Or rather, then set forward: for 't will be Two long days' journey, lords, or ere we meet.
Bast. Once more to-day well met, distempered lords.
The King, by me, requests your presence straight. Sal. The King hath dispossessed himself of us : We will not line his thin bestained cloak With our pure honours, nor attend the foot That leaves the print of blood where'er it walks. Return and tell him so: we know the worst.
Bast. Whate'er you think, good words I think were best.
Sal. Our griefs, and not our manners, reason
Bast. But there is little reason in your grief: Therefore 't were reason you had manners now. Pem. Sir, sir, impatience hath his privilege. Bast. "T is true: to hurt his master; no man else. Sal. This is the prison. What is he lies here! [Seeing ARTHUR.
Pem. O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty!
The earth hath not a hole to hide this deed. Sal. Murder, as hating what himself hath done,
Doth lay it open, to urge on revenge.
Big. Or, when he doomed this beauty to a grave,
Found it too precious-princely for a grave.
Sal. Sir Richard, what think you? Have you 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
Form such another?-This is the very top, The height, the crest, or crest unto the crest, Of murder's arms: this is the bloodiest shame, The wildest savagery, the vilest stroke, That ever wall-eyed wrath or staring rage Presented to the tears of soft remorse!
Pem. All murders past do stand excused 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, Exampled by this heinous spectacle!
Bast. It is a damnéd and a bloody work; The graceless action of a heavy hand,— If that it be the work of any hand.
Sal. If that it be the work of any hand?-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, 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, Till I have set a glory to this hand, By giving it the worship of revenge.
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