And your supply, which you have wish'd so long, Lew. Ah, foul shrewd news!-Beshrew thy very heart! I did not think to be so sad to-night, As this hath made me.-Who was he, that said, The stumbling night did part our weary powers? Mess. Who ever spoke it, it is true, my lord. Lew. Well; keep good quarter, and good care to night; The day shall not be up so soon as I, To try the fair adventure of to-morrow. SCENE VI. [Exeunt. An open place in the neighbourhood of Swinstead-Abbey. Enter the Bastard and HUBERT, meeting. Hub. Who's there? speak, ho! speak quickly, or I shoot. Bast. A friend :-What art thou? Hub. Of the part of England. Bast. Whither dost thou go ? Hub. What's that to thee? Why may not I demand Of thine affairs, as well as thou of mine? Bast. Hubert, I think. Hub. Thou hast a perfect thought: I will, upon all hazards, well believe Thou art my friend, that know'st my tongue so well : Bast. Who thou wilt: an if thou please, Thou mayst befriend me so much, as to think I come one way of the Plantagenets. Hub. Unkind remembrance thou, and eyeless night," Have done me shame :-Brave soldier, pardon me, That any accent, breaking from thy tongue, Should 'scape the true acquaintance of mine ear. Bast. Come, come; sans compliment, what news abroad? Hub. Why, here walk I, in the black brow of night, To find you out. Bast. Brief, then; and what's the news? [8] So, Pindar calls the moon, the eye of night. WARBURTON. Hub. O, my sweet sir, news fitting to the night, Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible. Bast. Show me the very wound of this ill news; Hub. The king, I fear, is poison'd by a monk :9 Bast. How did he take it? who did taste to him? And brought prince Henry in their company; Bast. Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven, SCENE VII. [Exeunt. The Orchard of Swinstead-Abbey. Enter Prince Henry, SALISBURY, and BIGOT. P. Hen. It is too late; the life of all his blood Is touch'd corruptibly; and his pure brain (Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling-house,) Doth, by the idle comments that it makes, Foretell the ending of mortality. [9] Not one of the historians who wrote within sixty years after the death of King John, mentions this very improbable story. The tale is, that a monk, to revenge himself on the king for a saying at which he took offence, poisoned a cup of ale, and having brought it to his majesty, drank some of it himself, to induce the king to taste it, and soon afterwards expired. According to the best accounts, John died at Newark of a fever. MALONE. Enter PEMBroke. Pem. His highness yet doth speak; and holds belief, That, being brought into the open air, It would allay the burning quality Of that fell poison which assaileth him. P. Hen. Let him be brought into the orchard here.Doth he still rage? [Exit BIGOT. Than when you left him; even now he sung. Pem. He is more patient P. Hen. O vanity of sickness! fierce extremes, In their continuance, will not feel themselves. Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts, Leaves them insensible; and his siege is now Against the mind, the which he pricks and wounds With many legions of strange fantasies; Which, in their throng and press to that last hold,' Confound themselves. 'Tis strange, that death should sing. I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan, Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death; And, from the organ pipe of frailty, sings His soul and body to their lasting rest. Sal. Be of good comfort, prince; for you are born To set a form upon that indigest Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude. Re-enter BIGOT and Attendants, who bring in King JOHN in a chair. K. John. Ay, marry, now my soul hath elbow-room; It would not out at windows, nor at doors. There is so hot a summer in my bosom, That all my bowels crumble up to dust: I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen Upon a parchment; and against this fire Do I shrink up. P. Hen. How fares your majesty ? K. John. Poison'd,-ill-fare,-dead, forsook, cast off ;* And none of you will bid the winter come, To thrust his icy fingers in my maw; Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course In their tumult and hurry of resorting to the last tenable part. JOHNSON. (2) This scene has been imitated by Beaumont and Fletcher, in The Wife for a Month, Act IV. STEEVENS. 6 VOL. V. D 2 Through my burn'd bosom ; nor entreat the north And so ingrateful, you deny me that. P. Hen. O, that there were some virtue in my tears, That might relieve you! K. John. The salt in them is hot. Within me is a hell; and there the poison Is, as a fiend, confin'd to tyrannize On unreprievable condemned blood. Enter the Bastard. Bast. O, I am scalded with my violent motion, K. John. O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye : My heart hath one poor string to stay it by, Bast. The Dauphin is preparing hitherward; Where, heaven he knows, how we shall answer him: [The King dies. Sal. You breathe these dead news in as dead an ear. -My liege my lord!-But now a king,-now thus. P. Hen. Even so must I run on, and even so stop. What surety of the world, what hope, what stay, When this was now a king, and now is clay! Bast. Art thou gone so? I do but stay behind, And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven, [3] Module and model, were in our author's time, only different modes of spelling the same word. Model signified not an archetype after which something was to be formed, but the thing formed after an archetype; and hence it is used by Shakespeare and his contemporaries for a representation. MALONE. And instantly return with me again, To push destruction, and perpetual shame, Straight let us seek, or straight we shall be sought; Sal. It seems, you know not then so much as we; Bast. He will the rather do it, when he sees Sal. Nay, it is in a manner done already; With whom yourself, myself, and other lords, Bast. Let it be so :-And you, my noble prince, P. Hen. At Worcester must his body be interr'd ;' Bast. Thither shall it then. And happily may your sweet self put on To whom, with all submission, on my knee, I do bequeath my faithful services And true subjection everlastingly. Sal. And the like tender of our love we make, To rest without a spot forevermore. P. Hen. I have a kind soul, that would give you thanks, And knows not how to do it, but with tears. Bast. O, let us pay the time but needful woe,* Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.This England never did, (nor never shall,) [1] A stone coffin containing the body of King John, was discovered in the cathedral church at Worcester, July 17, 1797. STEEVENS. [2] Let us now indulge in sorrow, since there is abundant cause for it. England has been long in a scene of confusion, and its calamities have anticipated our tears. By those which we now shed, we only pay her what is her due. MALONE. |