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The Same. Before the Castle. | |
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Enter ARTHUR, on the Walls. | |
| Arth The wall is high; and yet will I leap down. | |
| Good ground, be pitiful and hurt me not! | |
| There’s few or none do know me; if they did, | 5 |
| This ship-boy’s semblance hath disguis’d me quite. | |
| I am afraid; and yet I’ll venture it. | |
| If I get down, and do not break my limbs, | |
| I’ll find a thousand shifts to get away: | |
| As good to die and go, as die and stay. [Leaps down. | 10 |
| O me! my uncle’s spirit is in these stones: | |
| Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones! [Dies. | |
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Enter PEMBROKE, SALISBURY, and BIGOT. | |
| Sal. Lords, I will meet him at Saint Edmundsbury. | |
| It is our safety, and we must embrace | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
| Big. To-morrow morning let us meet him then. | |
| Sal. Or rather then set forward; for ’twill be | |
| Two long days’ journey, lords, or e’er we meet. | |
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Enter the BASTARD. | |
| Bast. Once more to-day well met, distemper’d lords! | 25 |
| The king by me requests your presence straight. | |
| Sal. The king hath dispossess’d 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. | 30 |
| 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 now. | |
| Bast. But there is little reason in your grief; | |
| Therefore ’twere reason you had manners now. | 35 |
| Pem. Sir, sir, impatience hath his privilege. | |
| Bast. ’Tis true; to hurt his master, no man else. | |
| Sal. This is the prison. [Seeing ARTHUR. | |
| What is he lies here? | |
| Pem. O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty! | 40 |
| The earth had 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 doom’d this beauty to a grave, | |
| Found it too precious-princely for a grave. | 45 |
| 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 object, | |
| Form such another? This is the very top, | 50 |
| 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. | 55 |
| Pem. All murders 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, | 60 |
| Exampled by this heinous spectacle. | |
| Bast. It is a damned 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! | 65 |
| 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, | 70 |
| 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, | 75 |
| Till I have set a glory to this hand, | |
| By giving it the worship of revenge. | |
| Pem. & Big. Our souls religiously confirm thy words. | |
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Enter HUBERT. | |
| Hub. Lords, I am hot with haste in seeking you: | 80 |
| Arthur doth live: the king hath sent for you. | |
| Sal. O! he is bold and blushes not at death. | |
| Avaunt, thou hateful villain! get thee gone. | |
| Hub. I am no villain. | |
| Sal. [Drawing his sword.] Must I rob the law? | 85 |
| Bast. Your sword is bright, sir; put it up again. | |
| Sal. Not till I sheathe it in a murderer’s skin. | |
| Hub. 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, | 90 |
| Nor tempt the danger of my true defence; | |
| Lest I, by marking of your rage, forget | |
| Your worth, your greatness, and nobility. | |
| Big. Out, dunghill! dar’st thou brave a nobleman? | |
| Hub. Not for my life; but yet I dare defend | 95 |
| My innocent life against an emperor. | |
| Sal. Thou art a murderer. | |
| Hub. Do not prove me so; | |
| Yet I am none. Whose tongue soe’er speaks false, | |
| Not truly speaks; who speaks not truly, lies. | 100 |
| Pem. Cut him to pieces. | |
| Bast. Keep the peace, I say. | |
| Sal. Stand by, or I shall gall you, Faulconbridge. | |
| Bast. Thou wert better gall the devil, Salisbury: | |
| If thou but frown on me, or stir thy foot, | 105 |
| 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 devil is come from hell. | |
| Big. What wilt thou do, renowned Faulconbridge? | 110 |
| Second a villain and a murderer? | |
| Hub. Lord Bigot, I am none. | |
| Big. Who kill’d this prince? | |
| Hub. ’Tis not an hour since I left him well: | |
| I honour’d him, I lov’d him; and will weep | 115 |
| My date of life out for his sweet life’s loss. | |
| Sal. Trust not those cunning waters of his eyes, | |
| For villany is not without such rheum; | |
| And he, long traded in it, makes it seem | |
| Like rivers of remorse and innocency. | 120 |
| Away with me, all you whose souls abhor | |
| The uncleanly savours of a slaughter-house; | |
| For I am stifled with this smell of sin. | |
| Big. Away toward Bury; to the Dauphin there! | |
| Pem. There tell the king he may inquire us out. [Exeunt Lords. | 125 |
| Bast. 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. | |
| Hub. Do but hear me, sir. | 130 |
| Bast. Ha! I’ll tell thee what; | |
| Thou art 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. | 135 |
| Hub. Upon my soul,— | |
| Bast. 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 | 140 |
| 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. | 145 |
| I do suspect thee very grievously. | |
| Hub. 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. | 150 |
| I left him well. | |
| Bast. 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! | 155 |
| 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. | 160 |
| 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,— | 165 |
| As doth a raven on a sick-fallen beast,— | |
| The imminent decay of wrested pomp. | |
| Now happy he whose cloak and ceinture can | |
| Hold out this tempest. Bear away that child | |
| And follow me with speed: I’ll to the king: | 170 |
| A thousand businesses are brief in hand, | |
| And heaven itself doth frown upon the land. [Exeunt. | |
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