• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The tidings comes that they are all arriv'd.

KING JOHN.

O, where hath our intelligence been drunk?

Where hath it slept? Where is my mother's care,

That such an army could be drawn in France,

And she not hear of it?

MESSENGER.

My liege, her ear

Is stopp'd with dust: the first of April died

Your noble mother; and as I hear, my lord,

The Lady Constance in a frenzy died

Three days before; but this from rumour's tongue

I idly heard-if true or false I know not.

KING JOHN.

Withhold thy speed, dreadful occasion!

O, make a league with me, till I have pleas'd

My discontented peers! What! mother dead!

How wildly then walks my estate in France!

Under whose conduct came those pow'rs of France

That thou for truth giv'st out are landed here?

MESSENGER.

Under the Dauphin.

KING JOHN.

Thou hast made me giddy

With these in tidings.

Enter the BASTARD and PETER OF POMFRET

Now! What says the world

To your proceedings? Do not seek to stuff

My head with more ill news, for it is full.

BASTARD.

But if you be afear'd to hear the worst,

Then let the worst, unheard, fall on your head.

KING JOHN.

Bear with me, cousin, for I was amaz'd

Under the tide; but now I breathe again

Aloft the flood, and can give audience

To any tongue, speak it of what it will.

BASTARD.

How I have sped among the clergymen

The sums I have collected shall express.

But as I travell'd hither through the land,

I find the people strangely fantasied;

Possess'd with rumours, full of idle dreams.

Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear;

And here's a prophet that I brought with me

From forth the streets of Pomfret, whom I found

With many hundreds treading on his heels;

To whom he sung, in rude harsh-sounding rhymes,

That, ere the next Ascension-day at noon,

Your Highness should deliver up your crown.

KING JOHN.

Thou idle dreamer, wherefore didst thou so?

PETER.

Foreknowing that the truth will fall out so.

KING JOHN.

Hubert, away with him; imprison him;

And on that day at noon whereon he says

I shall yield up my crown let him be hang'd.

Deliver him to safety; and return,

For I must use thee.

Exit HUBERT with

PETER

O my gentle cousin,

Hear'st thou the news abroad, who are arriv'd?

BASTARD.

The French, my lord; men's mouths are full of it;

Besides, I met Lord Bigot and Lord Salisbury,

With eyes as red as new-enkindled fire,

And others more, going to seek the grave

Of Arthur, whom they say is kill'd to-night

On your suggestion.

KING JOHN.

Gentle kinsman, go

And thrust thyself into their companies.

I have a way to will their loves again;

Bring them before me.

BASTARD.

I will seek them out.

KING JOHN.

Nay, but make haste; the better foot before.

O, let me have no subject enemies

When adverse foreigners affright my towns

With dreadful pomp of stout invasion!

Be Mercury, set feathers to thy heels,

And fly like thought from them to me again.

BASTARD.

The spirit of the time shall teach me speed.

KING JOHN.

Spoke like a sprightful noble gentleman.

Exit

BASTARD

Go after him; for he perhaps shall need

Some messenger betwixt me and the peers;

And be thou he.

MESSENGER.

With all my heart, my liege.

Exit

KING JOHN. My mother dead!

Re-enter HUBERT

HUBERT.

My lord, they say five moons were seen to-night;

Four fixed, and the fifth did whirl about

The other four in wondrous motion.

KING JOHN.

Five moons!

HUBERT.

Old men and beldams in the streets

Do prophesy upon it dangerously;

Young Arthur's death is common in their mouths;

And when they talk of him, they shake their heads,

And whisper one another in the ear;

And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist,

Whilst he that hears makes fearful action

With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes.

I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,

The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool,

With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news;

Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,

Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste

Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet,

Told of a many thousand