Presented thee more hideous than thou art.-
Oh, answer not, but to my closet bring
The angry lords with all expedient haste.
I conjure thee but slowly, run more fast.

SCENE-BEFORE THE CASTLE.

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,
This ship-boy's semblance hath disguised 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.

O me! my uncle's spirit is in these stones:

[Leaps down.

Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones! [Dies. 210 Enter PEMBROKE, SALISBURY, BIGOT, and FAULCONBRIDGE.

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 object,
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.

Enter HUBERT.

Hub. Lords, I am hot with haste in seeking you:
Arthur doth live; the king hath sent for you.
Sal. Oh, he is bold, and blushes not at death.—
Avaunt, thou hateful villain, get thee gone!
Hub. I am no villain.

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230

Sal.
Must I rob the law? [Drawing his sword.
Faul. 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,

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! darest thou brave a nobleman ?
Hub. Not for my life: but yet I dare defend

My innocent life against an emperor.

Sal. Thou art a murderer.

Do not prove me so;

Hub.
Yet I am none whose tongue soe'er speaks false,
Not truly speaks; who speaks not truly, lies.
Pem. Cut him to pieces.
Faul.

Keep the peace, I say.
Sal. Stand by, or I shall gall you, Faulconbridge.
Faul. Thou wert better gall the devil, Salisbury:

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 devil is come from hell. Big. What wilt thou do, renownèd FaulconbridgeSecond a villain and a murderer?

Hub. Lord Bigot, I am none.

Big.

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260

Who killed this prince? Hub. "Tis not an hour since I left him well:

I honoured him, I loved him, and will weep

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.
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!

270

Pem. There, tell the king, he may inquire us out. [Exeunt Lords. Faul. 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 damned, Hubert.

Hub.

Do but hear me, sir.

Faul. Ha! I'll tell thee what;

Thou'rt danined as black-nay, nothing is so black;
Thou art more deep damned than Prince Lucifer:
There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell

As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.

Hub. Upon my soul

Faul.

If thou didst but consent

280

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,

290

And it shall be as all the ocean,

Enough to stifle such a villain up.—
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.
I left him well.
Faul.
Go, bear him in thine arms.
I am amazed, 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 unowed interest of proud-swelling state.
Now for the bare-picked 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.

[King John, with his army, goes to meet the Dauphin, who has landed on the east coast. The latter is joined by Salisbury, Pembroke, and the other disaffected English Barons. Near Bury St. Edmunds the King is seized by a fever, and is conveyed to Swinstead Abbey.]

SCENE- THE ORCHARD IN SWINSTEAD ABBEY.

Enter PRINCE HENRY, SALISBURY, and BIGOT.

P. Hen. It is too late: the life of all his blood

Is touched 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.

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?

He is more patient

Pem.
Than when you left him; even now he sung.
P. Hen. O vanity of sickness! fierce extremes,
In their continuance, will not feel themselves.
Death, having preyed 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,

330

[Exit Bigot.

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.

Enter Attendants, and BIGOT, carrying 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. Poisoned,-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

3-10

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360

Through my burned bosom; nor entreat the north
To make his bleak winds kiss my parchèd lips,

And comfort me with cold. I do not ask you much-
I beg cold comfort; and you are so strait,
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 confined to tyrannize

On unreprievable condemnèd blood.

370

Enter FAULCONBRIDGE.

Faul. Oh, I am scalded with my violent motion,
And spleen of speed to see your majesty!

K. John. O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye:
The tackle of my heart is cracked and burned,
And all the shrouds wherewith my life should sail
Are turned to one thread, one little hair:
My heart hath one poor string to stay it by,
Which holds but till thy news be uttered;
And then all this thou seest is but a clod
And module of confounded royalty.

Faul. The Dauphin is preparing hitherward,

Where Heaven He knows how we shall answer him;
For in a night the best part of my power,
As I upon advantage did remove,
Were in the Washes all unwarily
Devoured by the unexpected flood.

380

[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?

390

NOTES TO KING JOHN.

INTRODUCTION.-The earliest extant printed copy of this play is that in the folio of 1623. The precise date of its production is unknown; but it must have been written between 1591 and 1598. In the former year an anonymous play on the same subject— to which Shakespeare was indebted not only for the outline of his plot, but also for the first rough sketches of some of his most striking characters-was first printed. In the latter year Francis Meres published his "Wit's Fancy," in which this play is mentioned as one of Shakespeare's works then popularly known. In the folio it occupied the first place amongst the Histories, as it is the earliest of them in chronological order.

Though Shakespeare, following the old play referred to above, has in several instances (referred to in the Notes as they occur) departed from historic truth, the following genealogical and chronological tables will form a useful key both to the personages and to the incidents of the drama :—

HENRY II. married ELEANOR, Countess of Poitou and Aquitaine.