ARTHUR'S DEATH.

ACT IV. SCENE 3.-Before the Castle.

Arthur, disguised as a sailor boy, tries to escape. He leaps from the castle wall, and is killed.

Arth. The wallis high; and yet will I leapdown: Good ground, be pitiful, and hurt me not!— There's few, or none, do know me; if they did, This ship-boy's semblance1 hath disguised me I am afraid; and yet I'll venture it. [quite. 5 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.

2

[Leaps down. Oh me! my uncle's spirit is in these stones :Heaven take my soul, and England keep my [Dies, 10 Sal. This is the prison. What is he lies here? (seeing Arthur)

bones!

Pem. Oh death, made proud with pure and princely beauty.

The earth had not a hole to hide this deed.
Sal. Murther, as hating what himself hath
Doth lay it open, to urge on revenge. [done, 15
Big. Or, when he doom'd this beauty to a grave,
Found it too precious-princely for a grave.
Sal. 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.
Pem., Big. Our souls religiously confirm thy
words.

20

1 (1.4). Ship-boy's semblance, the 2 (l. 9). Uncle's spirit. In reference

sailor-boy's dress which Arthur Arthur

had put on.

to the hard stormy nature of King

John.

KING JOHN AND HIS CROWN.

ACT V. SCENE 1.-Northampton Palace.

Enter KING JOHN, PANDULPH and ATTENDANTS.

K. John. Thus have I yielded up

hand

The circle of my glory.1

into your

Pand. [giving JOHN the crown]. Take

again

From this my hand, as holding of the Pope,
Your sovereign greatness and authority.

K. John. Now keep your holy word; go meet the French;

And from his Holiness 2 use all your power
To stop their marches, 'fore we are inflamed.3
Our discontented counties* do revolt,
Our people quarrel with obedience,"
Swearing allegiance, and the love of soul,
To strange blood, to foreign royalty
This inundation of mistemper'd humour
Rests by you only to be qualified.

5

10

Then pause not; for the present time's so sick, 15 That present medicine must be minister'd,

Or overthrow incurable ensues.

Pand. It was my breath that blew this

tempest up,

Upon your stubborn usage of the Pope;

6

But since you are a gentle convertite,
My tongue shall hush again this storm of war,
And make fair weather in your blustering
land.

20

On this Ascension-day, remember well,
Upon your oath of service to the Pope,

Go I to make the French lay down their arms. 25

Exit.

K. John. Is this Ascension-day? Did not
the prophet

Say, that before Ascension day at noon
My crown I should give off? Even so I have.
I did suppose it should be on constraint,'

But, heaven be thank'd, it is but voluntary.

The Dauphin, aided by the disaffected nobles of England, gives battle to John at St. Edmund's-Bury. The king's troops are repulsed, and John is conveyed to Swinstead Abbey, sick of a fever. There the King dies.

SCENE-Swinstead Abbey.

Enter BIGOT and ATTENDANTS, who bring in 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

30

5

Upon a parchment, and against this fire

Do I shrink up.

P. Henry.

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
Through my burned 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 ungrateful, you deny me that.

P. Henry. O that there were some virtue in my tears,

That might relieve you

K. John.

The salt in them is hot. 20

Within me is a hell; and there the poison
Is, as a fiend, confined to tyrannise

On unreprievable condemned blood.

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,

25