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 escaped.
Away before! Conduct me to the King.
I doubt he will be dead or ere I come. Exeunt
5.7 Enter Prince Henry, the Earl of Salisbury, and Lord Bigot
PRINCE HENRY
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 the Earl of 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.—
⌈Exit Lord Bigot⌉
Doth he still rage?
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 preyed upon the outward parts,
Leaves them invincible, 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.
King John is brought in, ⌈with Lord Bigot attending⌉
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
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
Through my burned bosom, nor entreat the north
To make his bleak winds kiss my parchèd lips 40
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, confined 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 cracked and burnt,
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.
BASTARD
The Dauphin is preparing hitherward,
Where God 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.
King John dies
SALISBURY
You breathe these dead news in as dead an ear.
(To King John) My liege, my lord!—But now a king,
now thus.
PRINCE HENRY
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?
BASTARD (to King John)
Art thou gone so? I do but stay behind
To do the office for thee of revenge,
And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven,
As it on earth hath been thy servant still.
(To the lords) Now, now, you stars that move in your
right spheres,
Where be your powers? Show now your mended
faiths,
And instantly return with me again,
To push destruction and perpetual shame
Out of the weak door of our fainting land.
Straight let us seek, or straight we shall be sought.
The Dauphin rages at our very heels.
SALISBURY
It seems you know not, then, so much as we.
The Cardinal Pandolf is within at rest,
Who half an hour since came from the Dauphin,
And brings from him such offers of our peace
As we with honour and respect may take,
With purpose presently to leave this war.
BASTARD
He will the rather do it when he sees
Ourselves well-sinewed to our own defence.