Bast.

My lord, I rescued her;

Her highness is in safety, fear you not :
But on, my liege; for very little pains

Will bring this labour to a happy end.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.-The same.

Alarums; Excursions; Retreat. Enter KING JOHN, ELINOR, ARTHUR, the Bastard, HUBERT, and Lords.

K. John. So shall it be; your grace shall stay behind,

So strongly guarded.-Cousin, look not sad:
Thy grandame loves thee; and thy uncle will
As dear be to thee as thy father was.

[To ELINOR.

[To ARTHUR.

Arth. O, this will make my mother die with grief.

K. John. Cousin, [to the Bastard] away for England; haste before:

And, ere our coming, see thou shake the bags

Of hoarding abbots; imprisoned angels

Set thou at liberty: the fat ribs of peace

Must by the hungry now be fed upon :

Use our commission in his utmost force.

Bast. Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back,1 When gold and silver becks me to come on.

I leave your highness :-Grandame, I will pray (If ever I remember to be holy)

For your fair safety; so I kiss your hand.

Eli. Farewell, gentle cousin.

K. John.

Coz, farewell. [Exit Bastard.

[She takes ARTHUR aside.

Eli. Come hither, little kinsman; hark, a word.

K. John. Come hither, Hubert. O my gentle Hubert, We owe thee much; within this wall of flesh

There is a soul counts thee her creditor,
And with advantage means to pay thy love:
And, my good friend, thy voluntary oath
Lives in this bosom, dearly cherished.
Give me thy hand. I had a thing to say,-
a Thou is not in the original.

But I will fit it with some better tune.a
By heaven, Hubert, I am almost asham'd
To say what good respect I have of thee.

Hub. I am much bounden to your majesty.

K. John. Good friend, thou hast no cause to say so yet: But thou shalt have: and creep time ne'er so slow,

Yet it shall come for me to do thee good.

I had a thing to say,—But let it go:

The sun is in the heaven, and the proud day,
Attended with the pleasures of the world,
Is all too wanton and too full of gawds,
To give me audience :—If the midnight bell
Did, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth,
Sound on into the drowsy race of night;
If this same were a churchyard where we stand,
And thou possessed with a thousand wrongs;
Or if that surly spirit, melancholy,

Had bak'd thy blood, and made it heavy, thick,

a Better tune. The old copy reads tune. Pope corrected this to time. We are by no means sure that the change was called for. The "tune" with which John expresses his willingness "to fit" the thing he had to say is a bribe ;-he now only gives flattery and a promise." The time" for saying "the thing" is discussed in the subsequent portion of John's speech.

b Sound on. So the original. But on and one were often spelt alike; and therefore the passage must be determined by other principles than that of fidelity to the text. Which is the more poetical,

"Sound on into the drowsy race of night,"

or "sound one?" Shakspere, it appears to us, has made the idea of time precise enough by the "midnight bell;" and the addition of "one" is either a contradiction or a pleonasm, to which form of words he was not given. "The midnight bell" sounding " on, into" (or unto, for the words were used convertibly) the drowsy march, race, of night, seems to us far more poetical than precisely determining the hour, which was already determined by the word "midnight." But was the "midnight bell" the bell of a clock? Was it not rather the bell which called the monks to their "morning lauds," and which, according to the regulations of Dunstan, was ordinarily to be rung before every office? In Dunstan's 'Concord of Rules,' quoted by Fosbrooke, the hours for the first services of the day are thus stated:

"Mattins and Lauds, midnight.
Prime, 6 A.M."

It is added, "if the office of Lauds be finished by daybreak, as is fit, let them begin Prime without ringing; if not, let them wait for daylight, and, ringing the bell, assemble for Prime." It must, however, be noticed, that when Bernardo describes the appearance of the Ghost, in 'Hamlet,' he marks the time by "the bell then beating one." In this instance the word is spelt one (not on) both in the early quartos and in the folio of 1623.

(Which, else, runs tickling up and down the veins,
Making that idiot, laughter, keep men's eyes,
And strain their cheeks to idle merriment,
A passion hateful to my purposes ;)

Or if that thou couldst see me without eyes,
Hear me without thine ears, and make reply
Without a tongue, using conceit alone,
Without eyes, ears, and harmful sound of words;
Then, in despite of brooded watchful day,
I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts:
But ah, I will not:-Yet I love thee well;
And, by my troth, I think thou lov'st me well.

.

Hub. So well, that what you bid me undertake, Though that my death were adjunct to my act, By heaven, I would do it.

K. John.

Do not I know thou wouldst?

Good Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, throw thine eye
On yon young boy: I'll tell thee what, my friend,
He is a very serpent in my way;

And wheresoe'er this foot of mine doth tread

He lies before me: Dost thou understand me?

I could be merry now: Hubert, I love thee.
Well, I'll not say what I intend for thee:
Remember.Madam, fare you well:
I'll send those powers o'er to your majesty.
Eli. My blessing go with thee!

K. John.

For England, cousin, go:

Hubert shall be your man, attend on you
With all true duty,-On toward Calais, ho!

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV.-The same. The French King's Tent.

Enter KING PHILIP, LEWIS, PANDULPH, and Attendants.

K. Phi. So, by a roaring tempest on the flood,

A whole armado of convicted" sail

Is scatter'd and disjoin'd from fellowship.

Pand. Courage and comfort! all shall yet go well.

K. Phi. What can go well, when we have run so ill?
Are we not beaten? Is not Angiers lost?
Arthur ta'en prisoner? divers dear friends slain?
And bloody England into England gone,
O'erbearing interruption, spite of France?

Lew. What he hath won that hath he fortified:

So hot a speed with such advice dispos'd,
Such temperate order in so fierce a cause,

Doth want example: Who hath read, or heard,
Of any kindred action like to this?

K. Phi. Well could I bear that England had this praise, So we could find some pattern of our shame.

Enter CONSTANCE.

Look, who comes here! a grave unto a soul;
Holding the eternal spirit, against her will,
In the vile prison of afflicted breath :-

I prithee, lady, go away with me.

Const. Lo, now! now see the issue of your peace!

K. Phi. Patience, good lady! comfort, gentle Constance ! Const. No, I defy all counsel, all redress,

But that which ends all counsel, true redress.

Death, death, O amiable lovely death!
Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!
Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,
Thou hate and terror to prosperity,
And I will kiss thy detestable bones;
And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows;

And ring these fingers with thy household worms;

And stop this gap

of breath with fulsome dust,

VOL. IV.

a Convicted-overpowered.

X

And be a carrion monster like thyself:
Come, grin on me; and I will think thou smil❜st,
And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love,

O, come to me!

K. Phi.

O fair affliction, peace!

Const. No, no, I will not, having breath to cry :-
O, that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth!
Then with a passion would I shake the world;
And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy,
Which cannot hear a lady's feeble voice,
Which scorns a mother's a invocation.

a

Pand. Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow.
Const. Thou art not holy to belie me so;
I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;
My name is Constance; I was Geffrey's wife;
Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost :
I am not mad;—I would to heaven I were!
For then, 't is like I should forget myself:
O, if I could, what grief should I forget!—
Preach some philosophy to make me mad,
And thou shalt be canoniz'd, cardinal;
For, being not mad but sensible of grief,
My reasonable part produces reason
How I may be deliver'd of these woes,
And teaches me to kill or hang myself:
If I were mad, I should forget my son;
Or madly think a babe of clouts were he:
I am not mad; too well, too well I feel
The different plague of each calamity.

K. Phi. Bind up those tresses: O, what love I note

In the fair multitude of those her hairs!

Where but by chance a silver drop hath fallen,

a The reading of the original, which has been constantly followed, is modern— trite, common. Thus, in As You Like It,'—

"Full of wise saws and modern instances."

This is the only explanation we can give if we retain the word modern. But the sentence is weak, and a slight change would make it powerful. We may read " а mother's invocation" with little violence to the text: moder's (the old spelling) might have been easily mistaken for modern.

b Not is wanting in the original.