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Remember that you both have lost your hands

because your father did abuse their tongues

in perjury; go quickly away

and tell your traitorous fathers what I say.

2 PLEDGE: We go but to thy cost, proud Danish Canute,

throughout this isle thy tyranny to bruit.

1 PLEDGE: We go thy cruel butchery to ring.

Oh England, never trust a foreign king. [Exit pledges.]

EDRICUS: Ha, ha, ha.

CANUTUS: ~~~ Why laughest thou, Edricus? ...

EDRICUS: I cannot choose, to see the villains rave.

STITCH: And I must needs laugh to bear my master company.

[Enter a messenger running.]

CANUTUS: What news with thee?

MESSENGER: Renowned Canutus, thy forces in the north,

which thou did'st send 'gainst Edmund Ironside,

are clean dispersed and piecemeal overthrown

by him, as these letters signify.

[Canutus reads and then sayeth]

CANUTUS: 'Tis wonderful, what, twenty thousand slain

of common soldiers? This unwelcome news

nips like a hoary frost our springing hopes ...

and makes my fearful soldiers hang their heads.

Come hither, Edricus, void the company

that you and I may talk in secrecy. [Exit omnes.]

Ah Edricus, what had I best to do

to raze out this dishonorable blot

out of the brass-leaved book of living fame?

Shall it be said hereafter when report

shall celebrate my noble father's acts

that Canutus did lose what noble Sveynus got?

Shall it be said that Edmund Ironside, ...

unfriended, poor, forsaken, desolate,

did overthrow the power of mighty Canutus,

whose wealth was great, friends more, but forces most?

Never since Edmund was of force to bear

a massy helmet and a curtle-axe

could I return a victor from the field

unless, as I remember, thou betrayedst

the gallant stripling once into our hands.

Then had not valor hewed him through our troops,

that day had made an end of all our griefs; ...

but now, what now? Oh tell me if thou knowest

how shall I extribute my stock and name

that after-age may not report my shame?

EDRICUS: Despair not, noble king, time comes in time.

Know ye not 'tis a deed of policy

in fickle Chance to cross your mightiness,

for else in time you might dismount the queen

and throw her headlong from her rolling stone

and take her whirling wheel into your hand.

I tell your grace, Chance ever envies wise men ...

and favors fools, promoting them aloft.

But as for this flea-spot of dishonor,

the greatest monarchs have endured more,

even blinking Philip's son, and many more

whose repetition were needless to recite.

CANUTUS: I prithee flatter still, on, on, what more?

Speak we of Fortune, honest sycophant?

Chance favoreth not a fool in favoring thee;

thy flattery is gracious in her eye.

Come hither, Edricus. Oh strange miracle: ...

see you not in the heavens prodigious signs?

Look how the sun looks pale, the moon shines red,

the stars appear in the perturbed heaven

like little comets, and not twelve o'clock.

What is the cause then, that the stars are seen?

EDRICUS: I see them well, my lord, yet know no cause,

unless it shows the fall of Ironside.

CANUTUS: Surely it doth. Look now, they are all gone.

'Tis night, 'tis dark, beware ye stumble not;

lend me your hand, but first go fetch a torch [Exit Edricus.] ...

to light me to my tent -- make haste I pray.

He's gone to fetch a torch to light the day! [Enter Edricus.]

EDRICUS: My lord, the misty vapors were so thick

they almost quenched the torch.

CANUTUS: True as all the rest. I say thy wit is thick.

Gross flattery, all-soothing sycophant,

doth blind thy eyes and will not let thee see

that others see thou art a flatterer.

Amend, amend thy life; learn to speak truth.

For shame do not, in thy declining age -- ...

Children may see thy lies, they are so plain.

Oh whilst ye live, from flattery refrain.

EDRICUS: It stands not with my zeal and plighted faith

otherwise to say than as your highness saith:

your grace is able to give all their due

to make truth lie and likewise make lies true.

CANUTUS: I would it lay in me to make thee true,

but who can change