Stoop low within those bounds we have o'erlooked,
And calmly run on in obedience,

Even to our ocean, to our great king John.
My arm shall give thee help to bear thee hence;
For I do see the cruel pangs of death

Right' in thine eye.-Away, my friends! New flight!
And happy newness, that intends old right.

2

[Exeunt, leading off MELUN.

SCENE V. The same. The French Camp.

Enter LEWIS and his Train.

Lew. The sun of heaven, methought, was loath to set; But staid, and made the western welkin blush, When the English measured backward their own ground In faint retire. O, bravely came we off, When with a volley of our needless shot, After such bloody toil, we bid good night; And wound our tottering 3 colors clearly up, Last in the field, and almost lords of it!

Enter a Messenger.

Mess. Where is my prince, the dauphin?

Lew.

Here:-What news?

Mess. The count Melun is slain; the English lords, By his persuasion, are again fallen off;

And your supply, which you have wished so long,
Are cast away, and sunk, on Goodwin Sands.

Lew. Ah, foul, shrewd news!-Beshrew thy very heart!

I did not think to be so sad to-night,

As this hath made me.-Who was he, that said,
King John did fly, an hour or two before

The stumbling night did part our weary powers?

3 Tottering colors is the reading of the old copy, which was altered to tattered by Johnson, who is followed by the subsequent editors. To totter, in old language, was to waver, to shake with a tremulous motion, as colors would do in the wind. "To tottre (says Baret), nutare, vacillare, see shake and wagge."

Mess. Whoever spoke it, it is true, my lord.

Lew. Well; keep good quarter,' and good care to

night;

The day shall not be up so soon as I,

To try the fair adventure of to-morrow.

[Exeunt.

SCENE VI. An open Place in the Neighborhood of Swinstead Abbey.

Enter the Bastard and HUBERT, meeting.

Hub. Who's there? speak, ho! speak quickly or

I shoot.

Bast. A friend.-What art thou?

Hub.

Of the part of England.

Bast. Whither dost thou go?

Hub. What's that to thee? Why may not I demand Of thine affairs, as well as thou of mine?

Bast. Hubert, I think.

Hub.

Thou hast a perfect thought!

I will, upon all hazards, well believe,

Thou art my friend, that know'st my tongue so well.

Who art thou?

Bast.

Who thou wilt: an if thou please,

Thou mayst befriend me so much, as to think

I come one way of the Plantagenets.

Hub. Unkind remembrance! thou and eyeless night3 Have done me shame :-Brave soldier, pardon me, That any accent, breaking from thy tongue, Should 'scape the true acquaintance of mine ear.

Bast. Come, come; sans compliment, what news abroad?

Hub. Why, here walk I, in the black brow of night, To find you out.

Bast.

Brief, then; and what's the news? Hub. O, my sweet sir, news fitting to the night, Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible.

1 i. e. keep in your allotted posts or stations.

2 i. e. a well-informed one.

3 The old copy reads "endless night." The emendation was made by Theobald.

Bast. Show me the very wound of this ill news; I am no woman; I'll not swoon at it.

Hub. The king, I fear, is poisoned by a monk.1
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 leisure2 known of this

Bast. How did he take it? Who did taste to him? Hub. A monk, I tell you; a resolved villain, Whose bowels suddenly burst out. The king Yet speaks, and, peradventure, may recover.

Bast. Who didst thou leave to tend his majesty? Hub. Why, know you not? The lords are all come back,

And brought prince Henry in their company;
At whose request the king hath pardoned them,
And they are all about his majesty.

Bast. 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 escaped.
Away, before! conduct me to the king;
I doubt he will be dead, or ere I come.

[Exeunt.

SCENE VII. The Orchard of Swinstead Abbey.

Enter PRINCE HENRY,3 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)

1 Not one of the historians who wrote within sixty years of the event, mentions this improbable story. The tale is, that a monk, to revenge himself on the king for a saying at which he took offence, poisoned a cup of ale, and having brought it to his majesty, drank some of it himself, to induce the king to taste it, and soon afterwards expired. Thomas Wylkes is the first who mentions it in his Chronicle as a report. According to the best accounts, John died at Newark, of a fever.

2 i. e. less speedily, after some delay.

3 Prince Henry was only nine years old when his father died.

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?

[Exit BIGOT. Pem. He is more patient 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, 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.

Re-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 Upon a parchment; and against this fire Do I shrink up.

1 Continuance here means continuity. Bacon uses it in that sense also. 2 The old copy reads invisible. Sir T. Hanmer proposed the reading admitted into the text.

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
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,1
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, condemned blood.

Enter the Bastard.

Bast. O, I am scalded with my violent emotion, 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.

Bast. 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.3 [The King dies.

1 Narrow, avaricious.

2 Module and model were only different modes of spelling the same word. Model signified, not an archetype, after which something was to be formed, but the thing formed after an archetype, a copy. Bullokar, in his Expositor, 1616, explains "model, the platform, or form of any thing."

3 This untoward accident really happened to king John himself. As he passed from Lynn to Lincolnshire, he lost, by an inundation, all his treasure, carriages, baggage, and regalia.