Thou mayst befriend me so much as to think
I come one way of the Plantagenets.
HUBERT.
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.
BASTARD.
Come, come; sans compliment, what news abroad?
HUBERT.
Why, here walk I, in the black brow of night,
To find you out.
BASTARD.
Brief, then; and what’s the news?
HUBERT.
O, my sweet sir, news fitting to the night,
Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible.
BASTARD.
Show me the very wound of this ill news;
I am no woman, I’ll not swoon at it.
HUBERT.
The king, I fear, is poison’d by a monk:
I left him almost speechless and broke out
To acquaint you with this evil, that you might
The better arm you to the sudden time,
Than if you had at leisure known of this.
BASTARD.
How did he take it; who did taste to him?
HUBERT.
A monk, I tell you; a resolved villain,
Whose bowels suddenly burst out: the king
Yet speaks, and peradventure may recover.
BASTARD.
Who didst thou leave to tend his majesty?
HUBERT.
Why, know you not? The lords are all come back,
And brought Prince Henry in their company;
At whose request the king hath pardon’d them,
And they are all about his majesty.
BASTARD.
Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven,
And tempt us not to bear above our power!—
I’ll tell thee, Hubert, half my power this night,
Passing these flats, are taken by the tide,—
These Lincoln washes have devoured them;
Myself, well-mounted, hardly have escap’d.
Away, before! conduct me to the king;
I doubt he will be dead or ere I come.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE 7. The orchard of Swinstead Abbey.
[Enter PRINCE HENRY, SALISBURY, and BIGOT.]
PRINCE HENRY.
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.
[Enter PEMBROKE.]
PEMBROKE.
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.
PRINCE HENRY.
Let him be brought into the orchard here.—
Doth he still rage?
[Exit BIGOT.]
PEMBROKE.
He is more patient
Than when you left him; even now he sung.
PRINCE HENRY.
O vanity of sickness! fierce extremes
In their continuance will not feel themselves.
Death, having prey’d upon the outward parts,
Leaves them invisible; 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.
SALISBURY.
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.]
KING 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.
PRINCE HENRY.
How fares your majesty?
KING 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
Through my burn’d bosom; nor entreat the north
To make his bleak winds kiss my parched 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.
PRINCE HENRY.
O, that there were some virtue in my tears,
That might relieve you!
KING 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.]
BASTARD.
O, I am scalded with my violent motion
And spleen of speed to see your majesty!
KING JOHN.
O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye:
The tackle of my heart is crack’d and burn’d;
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,