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To find you out.

BASTARD.

Brief, then; and what's the news?

HUBERT.

O, my sweet sir, news fitting to the night,

Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible.

BASTARD.

Show me the very wound of this ill news;

I am no woman, I'll not swoon at it.

HUBERT.

The King, I fear, is poison'd by a monk;

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 leisure known of this.

BASTARD.

How did he take it; who did taste to him?

HUBERT.

A monk, I tell you; a resolved villain,

Whose bowels suddenly burst out. The King

Yet speaks, and peradventure may recover.

BASTARD.

Who didst thou leave to tend his Majesty?

HUBERT.

Why, know you not? The lords are all come back,

And brought Prince Henry in their company;

At whose request the King hath pardon'd them,

And they are all about his Majesty.

BASTARD.

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 escap'd.

Away, before! conduct me to the King;

I doubt he will be dead or ere I come.

Exeunt

SCENE 7.

The orchard at Swinstead Abbey

Enter PRINCE HENRY, SALISBURY, and BIGOT

PRINCE HENRY.

It is too late; the life of all his blood

Is touch'd corruptibly, and his pure brain.

Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling-house,

Doth by the idle comments that it makes

Foretell the ending of mortality.

Enter PEMBROKE

PEMBROKE.

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.

PRINCE HENRY.

Let him be brought into the orchard here.

Doth he still rage? Exit

BIGOT

PEMBROKE.

He is more patient

Than when you left him; even now he sung.

PRINCE HENRY.

O vanity of sickness! Fierce extremes

In their continuance will not feel themselves.

Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts,

Leaves them invisible, 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.

SALISBURY.

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

KING 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.

PRINCE HENRY.

How fares your Majesty?

KING JOHN.

Poison'd-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 burn'd 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 ingrateful you deny me that.

PRINCE HENRY.

O that there were some virtue in my tears,

That might relieve you!

KING JOHN.

The salt in them is hot.

Within me is a hell; and there the poison

Is as a fiend confin'd to tyrannize

On unreprievable condemned blood.

Enter the BASTARD

BASTARD.

O, I am scalded with my violent motion

And spleen of speed to see your Majesty!

KING JOHN.

O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye!

The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burnt,

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