Exton, 'Have I no friend?' quoth he he Had not an ear to hear my true time broke. spake it twice, And urged it twice together, did he not ? I wasted time, and now doth time waste me; For now hath time made me his numbering clock: 50 me; And who should say, 'I would thou wert the man That would divorce this terror from my heart;' SCENE V. Pomfret castle. K. Rich. I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world: And here is not a creature but myself, world, 10 In humors like the people of this world, Against the word: As thus, Come, little ones,' and then again, 'It is as hard to come as for a camel To thread the postern of a small needle's eye.' Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot Unlikely wonders; how these vain weak nails May tear a passage through the flinty ribs 20 Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls, And, for they cannot, die in their own pride. Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves That they are not the first of fortune's slaves, Ker shall not be the last; like silly beggars Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame, That many have and others must sit there; And in this thought they find a kind of ease, Bearing their own misfortunes on the back Of such as have before endured the like. This play I in one person many people, And none contented: sometimes am I king; Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, And so I am: then crushing penury Persuades me I was better when a king; Then am I king'd again: and by and by Think that I am unking'd by Belingbroke, And straight am nothing but whate'er I be, Nor I nor any man that but man is With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased With being nothing. Music do I hear? 30 41 [Music. Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is, When time is broke and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men's lives. And here have I the daintiness of ear. To check time broke in a disorder'd string; But for the concord of my state and time My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch, Whereto my finger, like a dial's point, Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears. Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is Are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart, Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans Show minutes, times, and hours: but my time Runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy, While I stand fooling here, his Jack o' the clock. 60 ground. K. Rich. So proud that Bolingbroke was on his back! That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand; This hand hath made him proud with clapping him. Would he not stumble? would he not fall down, Since pride must have a fall, and break the broke. Enter EXTON and Servants, armed. K. Rich. How now! what means death in this rude assault? Villain, thy own hand yields thy death's instrument. [Snatching an axe from a Servant and killing him Go thou, and fill another room in hell. [He kills another. Then Exton strikes him down. That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire That staggers thus my person. Exton, thy 110 Hath with the king's blood stain'd the king's own land. Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high; Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die. [Dies. Exton. As full of valor as of royal blood : Both have I spill'd; O would the deed were fierce hand good! The heads of Brocas and Sir Bennet Seely, Right noble is thy merit, well I wot. 21 Percy. The grand conspirator, Abbot of Westminster, With clog of conscience and sour melancholy Hath yielded up his body to the grave; But here is Carlisle living, to abide Thy kingly doom and sentence of his pride. Boling. Carlisle, this is your doom: Choose out some secret place, some reverend Boling. They love not poison that do poison need, Nor do I thee though I did wish him dead, labor, But neither my good word nor princely favor With Cain go wander through shades night, And never show thy head by day nor light. not. Welcome, my lord: what is the news? North. First, to thy sacred state wish I all And put on sullen black incontinent : happiness. Kent: Coms, mourn with me for that I do lament I'll make a voyage to the Holy Land, The next news is, I have to London sent To wash this blood off from my guilty hand The heads of Oxford, Salisbury, Blunt, and March sadly after; grace my mournings her In weeping after this untimely bier. (Ezeu KING JOHN. (WRITTEN ABOUT 1595.) INTRODUCTION. King John departs farther from the facts of history than any other of Shakespeare's historicai plays. He here follows for the most part not Holinshed, but an old play which appeared in 1591 enMind The Troublesome Raigne of King John of England. He follows it, however, not in the close way in which he had previously worked when writing 2 and3 Henry VI.; the main incidents are the same, but Shakespeare elevates and almost recreates the characters; for the most eloquent and puetical passages no original is to be found in the old play. The character of the king grows more Garkly treacherous in Shakespeare's, barely a hint of the earlier author suggested the scene, so powerful and so sable, in which John insinuates to Hubert his murderous desires; the boyish inWee of Arthur and the pathos of his life become real and living as they are dealt with by the magination of Shakespeare; Constance is no longer a fierce and ambitious virago, but a passionate, STPosing mother: Faulconbridge is ennobled by a manly tenderness and a purer patriotism. Shakespeare depicts, with true English spirit, the faithlessness, the ambition, the political greed, and the phistry of the court of Rome; but he wholly omits a ribald scene of the old play, in which the bitiousness of monasteries is exposed to ridicule. As to the date of King John all that can be asled with confidence is that it lies somewhere between the early histories (Henry 11. with Richard Hl and the group of later histories, the trilogy consisting of 1 and 2 Henry II. and Henry V. Thus in the historical series it is brought close to Richard II. Neither play contains prose, but the treatment of Faulconbridge's part shows more approach to the alliance of a humorous or comic element wrh history (which becomes complete in Henry II.) than does anything in the play of Richard II. Ag Joka and Richard II. have the common characteristic of containing very inferior dramatic work Side by side with work of a high and difficult kind. The chief point of difference with respect to form is that Richard 11. contains a much larger proportion of rhymed verse, and on the whole we suall perhaps not err in regarding Richard II, as the earlier of the two. KING JOHN. PRINCE HENRY, son to the king. DRAMATIS PERSONÆ. ARTHUR, Duke of Bretagne, nephew to the CARDINAL PANDULPH, the Pope's legate. LEWIS, the Dauphin. king. MELUN, a French Lord. The Earl of PEMBROKE. CHATILLON, ambassador from France to King The Earl of ESSEX. John. The Earl of SALISBURY. The Lord BIGOT. HUBERT DE BURGH. QUEEN ELINOR, mother to King John. ROBERT FAULCONBRIDGE, son to Sir Robert BLANCH of Spain, niece to King Jchn. Faulconbridge. PHILIP the BASTARD, his half-brother. Lords, Citizens of Angiers, Sheriff, Heralds, JAMES GURNEY, servant to Lady Faulcon bridge. Officers, Soldiers, Messengers, and other PETER of Pomfret, a prophet. PHILIP, King of France. SCENE: Partly in England, and partly in ACT L SCENE L. KING JOHN's palace. Enter KING JOHN, QUEEN ELINOR, PEM- K. John. Now, say, Chatillon, what would Chat. Thus, after greeting, speaks the King of France In my behavior to the majesty, The farthest limit of my embassy. K. John. Bear mine to him, and so depart Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France; Eli. What now, my son! have I not ever How that ambitious Constance would not cease Till she had kindled France and all the world, With very easy arguments of love, K. John. Our strong possession and our Eli. Your strong possession much more than your right, 40 Or else it must go wrong with you and me : So much my conscience whispers in your ear, Which none but heaven and you and I shall hear, Enter a Sheriff. Essex. My liege, here is the strangest con- Come from the country to be judged by you Our abbeys and our priories shall pay Enter ROBERT FAULCONBRIDGE and PHILIP his bastard brother. And wound her honor with this diffidence. That is my brother's plea and none of mine; Bast. Because he hath a half-face, like m father. With half that face would he have all m land: A half-faced groat five hundred pound year! Rob. My gracious liege, when that m father lived, What men are you? Your brother did employ my father much 120 That marry wives. Tell me, how if my brother, Who, as you say, took pains to get this son, Had of your father claim'd this son for his? In sooth, good friend, your father might have kept This calf bred from his cow from all the world; In sooth he might, then, if he were my brother's, My brother might not claim him; nor your father, Being none of his, refuse him: this concludes; My mother's son did get your father's heir; Your father's heir must have your father's land. My father gave me honor, yours gave land. Now blessed be the hour, by night or day, When I was got, sir Robert was away! Eli. The very spirit of Plantagenet! I am thy grandam, Richard; call me so. Bast. Madam, by chance but not by truth, what though? Something about, a little from the right, 170 In at the window, or else o'er the hatch: Who dares not stir by day must walk by night, And have is have, however men do catch: Near or far off, well won is still well shot, And I am I, howe'er I was begot. K. John. Go, Faulconbridge: now hast thou thy desire; A landless knight makes thee a landed squire. Come, madam, and come, Richard, we must speed For France, for France, for it is more than need. Bast. Brother, adieu: good fortune come to thee! For thou wast got i' the way of honesty. 180 [Exeunt all but Bastard. A foot of honor better than I was; But many a many foot of land the worse. Well, now can I make any Joan a lady. 'Good den, sir Richard!'-' God-a-mercy, fellow!' And if his name be George, I'll call him Peter; For new-made honor doth forget men's names; 'Tis too respective and too sociable For your conversion. Now your traveller, 189 |