Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

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Sc. 3 Enter at one door the Earl of Derby from France. At another door, enter Lord Audley with a drummer

EARL OF DERBY

Thrice-noble Audley, well encountered here.

How is it with our sovereign and his peers?

AUDLEY

‘Tis full a fortnight since I saw his highness,

What time he sent me forth to muster men,

Which I accordingly have done, and bring them hither,

In fair array, before his majesty.

What news, my lord of Derby, from the Emperor?

EARL OF DERBY

As good as we desire. The Emperor

Hath yielded to his highness friendly aid,

And makes our king lieutenant-general

In all his lands and large dominions.

Then via for the spacious bounds of France!

AUDLEY

What, doth his highness leap to hear these news?

EARL OF DERBY

I have not yet found time to open them.

The King is in his closet, malcontent.

For what I know not, but he gave in charge

Till after dinner none should interrupt him.

The Countess Salisbury and her father Warwick,

Artois, and all, look underneath the brows.

AUDLEY

Undoubtedly, then, something is amiss.

Sound trumpets within

EARL OF DERBY

The trumpets sound. The King is now abroad.

Enter King Edward

COMTE D’ARTOIS Here comes his highness.

EARL OF DERBY (to the King)

Befall my sovereign all my sovereign’s wish.

KING EDWARD ⌈aside⌉

Ah, that thou wert a witch to make it so.

EARL OF DERBY

The Emperor greeteth you—

KING EDWARD ⌈aside⌉ Would it were the Countess.

EARL OF DERBY

–And hath accorded to your highness’ suit.

KING EDWARD ⌈aside⌉

Thou liest. She hath not, but I would she had.

AUDLEY

All love and duty to my lord the King.

KING EDWARD ⌈aside⌉

Well, all but one is none. (To Audley) What news with you?

AUDLEY

I have, my liege, levied those horse and foot,

According as your charge, and brought them hither.

KING EDWARD

Then let those foot trudge hence upon those horse,

According to our discharge, and be gone.

Derby, I’ll look upon the Countess’ mind anon.

EARL OF DERBY The Countess’ mind, my liege?

KING EDWARD

I mean the Emperor. Leave me alone.

AUDLEY (to Derby)

What is his mind?

EARL OF DERBY Let’s leave him to his humour.

Exeunt Derby and Audley

KING EDWARD

Thus from the heart’s abundance speaks the tongue:

‘Countess’ for ‘Emperor’—and indeed why not?

She is as imperator over me, and I to her

Am as a kneeling vassal that observes

The pleasure or displeasure of her eye.

Enter Lodowick

(To Lodowick) What says the more-than-Cleopatra’s

match

To Caesar now?

LODOWICK That yet, my liege, ere night

She will resolve your majesty.

Sound drum within

KING EDWARD

What drum is this that thunders forth this march

To start the tender Cupid in my bosom?

Poor sheepskin, how it brawls with him that beateth it!

Go, break the thund’ring parchment-bottom out

And I will teach it to conduct sweet lines

Unto the bosom of a heavenly nymph;

For I will use it as my writing paper,

And so reduce him from a scolding drum

To be the herald, and dear counsel-bearer,

Betwixt a goddess and a mighty king.

Go, bid the drummer learn to touch the lute,

Or hang him in the braces of his drum;

For now we think it an uncivil thing

To trouble heaven with such harsh resounds. Away!

Exit Lodowick

The quarrel that I have requires no arms

But these of mine, and these shall meet my foe

In a deep march of penetrable groans.

My eyes shall be my arrows, and my sighs

Shall serve me as the vantage of the wind

To whirl away my sweet’st artillery.

Ah, but alas, she wins the sun of me,

For that is she herself, and thence it comes

That poets term the wanton warrior blind.

But love hath eyes as judgement to his steps,

Till too much loved glory dazzles them—

Enter Lodowick

How now?

LODOWICK

My liege, the drum that struck the lusty march

Stands with Prince Edward, your thrice-valiant son.

⌈Exit⌉

Enter Edward, Prince of Wales

KING EDWARD

I see the boy. ⌈Aside⌉ O, how his mother’s face,

Modelled in his, corrects my strayed desire,

And rates my heart, and chides my thievish eye,

Who, being rich enough in seeing her,

Yet seek elsewhere; and basest theft is that

Which cannot cloak itself in poverty.

(To the Prince) Now, boy, what news?

PRINCE OF WALES

I have assembled, my dear lord and father,

The choicest buds of all our English blood

For our affairs to France, and here we come

To take direction from your majesty.

KING EDWARD (aside)

Still do I see in him delineate

His mother’s visage. Those his eyes are hers,

Who looking wistly on me make me blush.

For faults against themselves give evidence;

Lust is a fire, and men, like lanterns, show

Light lust within themselves, even through themselves.

Away, loose silks o’er wavering vanity!

Shall the large limit of fair Brittany

By me be overthrown, and shall I not

Master this little mansion of myself?

Give me an armour of eternal steel:

I go to conquer kings; and shall I not then

Subdue myself and be my enemy’s friend?

It must not be. (To the Prince) Come, boy! Forward!

Advance!

Let’s with our colours sweet the air of France.

Enter Lodowick

LODOWICK (to the King)

My liege, the Countess, with a smiling cheer,

Desires access unto your majesty.

KING EDWARD (aside)

Why there it goes. That very smile of hers

Hath ransomed captive France and set the King,

The Dauphin and the peers at liberty.

(To the Prince) Go, leave me, Ned, and revel with thy friends.

Exit the Prince of Wales

(Aside) Thy mother is but black, and thou, like her,

Dost put it in my mind how foul she is.

(To Lodowick) Go, fetch the Countess hither in thy hand—

Exit Lodowick

And let her chase away these winter clouds,

For she gives beauty both to heaven and earth.

The sin is more to hack and hew poor men

Than to embrace in an unlawful bed

The register of all rarieties

Since leathern Adam till this youngest hour.

Enter Lodowick ⌈leading in by the hand⌉ the Countess of Salisbury

Go, Lod’wick, put thy hand into my purse—

Play, spend, give, riot, waste, do what thou wilt

So thou wilt hence awhile and leave me here.

Exit Lodowick

(To the Countess) Now, my soul’s playfellow, art thou come

To speak the more-than-heavenly word of ‘yea’

To my objection in thy beauteous love?

COUNTESS OF SALISBURY

My father on his blessing hath commanded—

KING EDWARD

That thou shalt yield to me.

COUNTESS OF SALISBURY

Ay, dear my liege, your due.

KING EDWARD

And that, my dearest love, can be no less

Than right for right, and render love for love.

COUNTESS OF SALISBURY

Than wrong for wrong, and endless hate for hate.

But sith I see your majesty so bent

That my unwillingness, my husband’s love,

Your high estate, nor no respect respected

Can be my help, but that your mightiness

Will overbear and awe these dear regards,

I bind my discontent to thy content,

And what I would not ill compel I will,

Provided that yourself remove those lets

That stand between your highness’ love and mine.

KING EDWARD

Name them, fair Countess, and by heaven I will.

COUNTESS OF SALISBURY

It is their lives that stand between our love

That I would have choked up, my sovereign.

KING EDWARD

Whose lives, my lady?

COUNTESS OF SALISBURY My thrice-loving liege,

Your Queen and Salisbury, my wedded husband,

Who, living, have that title in our love

That we cannot bestow but by their death.

KING EDWARD

Their opposition is beyond our law.

COUNTESS OF SALISBURY

So is your desire. If the law

Can hinder you to execute the one,

Let it forbid you to attempt the other.

I cannot think you love me as you say

Unless you do make good what you have sworn.

KING EDWARD

No more. Thy husband and the Queen shall die.

Fairer thou art by far than Hero was;

Beardless Leander not so strong as I.

He swam an easy current for his love,

But I will through a Hellespont of blood

To arrive at Sestos, where my Hero lies.

COUNTESS OF SALISBURY

Nay, you’ll do more. You’ll make the river too

With their heart bloods that keep our love asunder,

Of which my husband and your wife are twain.

KING EDWARD

Thy beauty makes them guilty of their death,

And gives in evidence that they shall die—

Upon which verdict I, their judge, condemn them.

COUNTESS OF SALISBURY

O, perjured beauty! More corrupted judge!

When to the great star chamber o‘er our heads

The universal sessions calls to ’count

This packing evil, we both shall tremble for it.

KING EDWARD

What says my fair love? Is she resolute?

COUNTESS OF SALISBURY

Resolved to be dissolved, and therefore this:

Keep but thy word, great King, and I am thine.

Stand where thou dost—I’ll part a little from thee—

She moves away from the King

⌈kneeling⌉ And see how I will yield me to thy hands.

Here, by my side, doth hang my wedding knives.

She reveals two knives

Take thou the one,

She offers a knife to the King

and with it kill thy Queen,

And learn by me to find her where she lies;

And with this other

She turns the other knife on herself

I’ll dispatch my love,

Which now lies fast asleep within my heart.

When they are gone, then I’ll consent to love.

Stir not, lascivious King, to hinder me.

My resolution is more nimbler far

Than thy prevention can be in my rescue.

An if thou stir, I strike. Therefore stand still,

And hear the choice that I will put thee to.

Either swear to leave thy most unholy suit

And never henceforth to solicit me,

Or else, by heaven, this sharp-pointed knife

Shall stain thy earth with that which thou wouldst stain—

My poor, chaste blood. Swear, Edward, swear,

Or I will strike and die before thee here.

KING EDWARD

Even by that power I swear, that gives me now

The power to be ashamed of myself,

I never mean to part my lips again

In any words that tends to such a suit.

Arise, true English lady, whom our isle

May better boast of than ever Roman might

Of her, whose ransacked treasury hath tasked

The vain endeavour of so many pens.

Arise, and be my fault thy honour’s fame

Which after-ages shall enrich thee with.

I am awakèd from this idle dream.

⌈The Countess stands⌉

(Calling) Warwick, my son, Derby, Artois and Audley—

Brave warriors all, where are you all this while?

Enter all the peers: the Earl of Warwick, the

Prince of Wales, the Earl of Derby, the Comte d’Artois and Lord Audley

Warwick, I make thee Warden of the North.

Thou, Prince of Wales, and Audley, straight to sea,

Scour to Newhaven—some there stay for me.

Myself, Artois and Derby will through Flanders

To greet our friends there and to crave their aid.

This night will scarce suffice me to discover

My folly’s siege against a faithful lover,

For ere the sun shall gild the eastern sky

We’ll wake him with our martial harmony.

Exeunt

Sc. 4 Enter Jean King of France, his two sons (the Dauphin and Prince Philippe) and the Duc de Lorraine

KING OF FRANCE

Here, till our navy of a thousand sail

Have made a breakfast to our foe by sea,

Let us encamp to wait their happy speed.

Lorraine, what readiness is Edward in?

How hast thou heard that he provided is

Of martial furniture for this exploit?

DUC DE LORRAINE

To lay aside unnecessary soothing,

And not to spend the time in circumstance,

’Tis bruited for a certainty, my lord,

That he’s exceeding strongly fortified.

His subjects flock as willingly to war

As if unto a triumph they were led.

DAUPHIN

England was wont to harbour malcontents,

Bloodthirsty and seditious Catilines,

Spendthrifts, and such as gape for nothing else

But change and alteration of the state.

And is it possible

That they are now so loyal in themselves?

DUC DE LORRAINE

All but the Scot, who solemnly protests,

As heretofore I have informed his grace,

Never to sheathe his sword or take a truce.

KING OF FRANCE

Ah, that’s the anch’rage of some better hope.

But on the other side, to think what friends

King Edward hath retained in Netherland,

Among those ever-bibbing epicures—

Those frothy Dutchmen, puffed with double beer,

That drink and swill in every place they come—

Doth not a little aggravate mine ire.

Besides, we hear the Emperor conjoins

And stalls him in his own authority.

But all the mightier that their number is

The greater glory reaps the victory!

Some friends have we beside domestic power—

The stern Polonian and the warlike Dane,

The King of Bohême, and of Sicily,

Are all become confederates with us

And, as I think, are marching hither apace—

Sound drums within

But soft, I hear the music of their drums,

By which I guess that their approach is near.

Enter ⌈at one door⌉ the King of Bohemia with Danish soldiers ⌈and a drummer⌉. Enter ⌈at another door⌉ a Polish captain with Muscovite and Polish soldiers ⌈and a drummer⌉

KING OF BOHEMIA

King Jean of France, as league and neighbourhood

Requires when friends are any way distressed,

I come to aid thee with my country’s force.

POLISH CAPTAIN (to the King of France)

And from great Moscow, fearful to the Turk,

And lofty Poland, nurse of hardy men,

I bring these servitors to fight for thee,

Who willingly will venture in thy cause.

KING OF FRANCE

Welcome, Bohemian king, and welcome all.

This your great kindness I will not forget.

Besides your plentiful rewards in crowns

That from our treasury ye shall receive,

There comes a harebrained nation, decked in pride,

The spoil of whom will be a treble gain.

And now my hope is full, my joy complete.

At sea we are as puissant as the force

Of Agamemnon in the haven of Troy.

By land, with Xerxes we compare of strength,

Whose soldiers drank up rivers in their thirst.

Then, Bayard-like, blind overweening Ned,

To reach at our imperial diadem

Is either to be swallowed of the waves,

Or hacked a-pieces when thou com’st ashore.

Enter a French Mariner

MARINER

Near to the coast I have descried, my lord,

As I was busy in my watchful charge,

The proud armada of King Edward’s ships,

Which, at the first far off when I did ken,

Seemed as it were a grove of withered pines,

But drawing near, their glorious bright aspect,

Their streaming ensigns wrought of coloured silk,

Like to a meadow full of sundry flowers,

Adorns the naked bosom of the earth.

Majestical the order of their course,

Figuring the hornèd circle of the moon,

And on the top gallant of the admiral,

And likewise all the handmaids of his train,

The arms of England and of France unite

Are quartered equally by herald’s art.

Thus titely carried with a merry gale

They plough the ocean hitherward amain.

KING OF FRANCE

Dare he already crop the fleur-de-lis?

I hope, the honey being gathered thence,

He, with the spider, afterward approached,

Shall suck forth deadly venom from the leaves.

But where’s our navy? How are they prepared

To wing themselves against this flight of ravens?

MARINER

They, having knowledge brought them by the scouts,

Did break from anchor straight and, puffed with rage,

No otherwise than were their sails with wind,

Made forth as when the empty eagle flies

To satisfy his hungry, griping maw.

KING OF FRANCE (giving money)

There’s for thy news. Return unto thy barque,

And if thou scape the bloody stroke of war

And do survive the conflict, come again,

And let us hear the manner of the fight. Exit Mariner

Mean space, my lords, ’tis best we be dispersed

To several places, lest they chance to land.

(To the King of Bohemia) First you, my lord, with your Bohemian troops,

Shall pitch your battles on the lower hand.

(To the Dauphin ⌈and the Polish captain⌉)

My eldest son, the Duke of Normandy,

Together with this aid of Muscovites,

Shall climb the higher ground another way.

Here in the middle coast, betwixt you both,

Philippe, my youngest boy, and I will lodge.

So, lords, be gone, and look unto your charge,

You stand for France, an empire fair and large.

Exeunt all but the King of France and Prince Philippe

Now tell me, Philippe, what is thy conceit

Touching the challenge that the English make?

PRINCE PHILIPPE

I say, my lord, claim Edward what he can,

And bring he ne‘er so plain a pedigree,

’Tis you are in possession of the crown,

And that’s the surest point of all the law.

But were it not, yet ere he should prevail

I’ll make a conduit of my dearest blood,

Or chase those straggling upstarts home again.

KING OF FRANCE

Well said, young Philippe! ⌈To an attendant⌉ Call for bread and wine

That we may cheer our stomachs with repast

To look our foes more sternly in the face.

Bread and wine are brought forth. The battle is heard afar off. The King and Prince Philippe sup

Now is begun the heavy day at sea.

Fight, Frenchmen, fight! Be like the field of bears

When they defend their younglings in their caves.

Steer, angry Nemesis, the happy helm

That with the sulphur battles of your rage

The English fleet may be dispersed and sunk.

A cannon shot within

PRINCE PHILIPPE

O, father, how this echoing cannon shot,

Like sweet harmony, digests my cates!

KING OF FRANCE

Now, boy, thou hear‘st what thund’ring terror ’tis

To buckle for a kingdom’s sovereignty.

The earth, with giddy trembling when it shakes,

Or when the exhalations of the air

Breaks in extremity of lightning flash,

Affrights not more than kings when they dispose

To show the rancour of their high-swoll’n hearts.

Retreat sounds within

Retreat is sounded—one side hath the worse.

O, if it be the French, sweet fortune turn,

And in thy turning, change the froward winds

That, with advantage of a favouring sky,

Our men may vanquish, and the other fly.

Enter the French Mariner

My heart misgives. (To the Mariner) Say, mirror of

pale death,

To whom belongs the honour of this day?

Relate, I pray thee, if thy breath will serve

The sad discourse of this discomfiture.

MARINER I will, my lord.

My gracious sovereign, France hath ta‘en the foil,

And boasting Edward triumphs with success.

These iron-hearted navies,

When last I was reporter to your grace,

Both full of angry spleen, of hope and fear,

Hasting to meet each other in the face,

At last conjoined, and by their admiral

Our admiral encountered many shot.

By this, the other, that beheld these twain

Give earnest-penny of a further wreck,

Like fiery dragons took their haughty flight;

And likewise meeting, from their smoky wombs

Sent many grim ambassadors of death.

Then ’gan the day to turn to gloomy night,

And darkness did as well enclose the quick

As those that were but newly reft of life.

No leisure served for friends to bid farewell,

And if it had, the hideous noise was such

As each to other seemed deaf and dumb.

Purple the sea whose channel filled as fast

With streaming gore that from the maimed fell,

As did her gushing moisture break into

The cranny cleftures of the through-shot planks.

Here flew a head dissevered from the trunk;

There mangled arms and legs were tossed aloft,

As when a whirlwind takes the summer dust

And scatters it in middle of the air.

Then might ye see the reeling vessels split

And, tottering, sink into the ruthless flood

Until their lofty tops were seen no more.

All shifts were tried, both for defence and hurt.

And now the effect of valour and of fear,

Of resolution and of cowardice,

We lively pictured—how the one for fame,

The other by compulsion, laid about.

Much did the Nonpareil, that brave ship;

So did the Black Snake of Boulogne, than which

A bonnier vessel never yet spread sail.

But all in vain: both sun, the wind and tide

Revolted all unto our foemen’s side,

That we, perforce, were fain to give them way,

And they are landed. Thus my tale is done.

We have untimely lost, and they have won.

KING OF FRANCE

Then rests there nothing but, with present speed,

To join our several forces all in one,

And bid them battle ere they range too far.

Come, gentle Philippe, let us hence depart;

This soldier’s words have pierced thy father’s heart.

Exeunt

Sc. 5 Enter at one door two Frenchmen without baggage. Enter at another door, meeting them, other Frenchmen and a Frenchwoman with two little children, ⌈all⌉ with baggage

FRENCHMAN WITHOUT BAGGAGE

Well met, my masters. How now? What’s the news,

And wherefore are ye laden thus with stuff?

What, is it quarter-day, that you remove,

And carry bag and baggage too?

FIRST FRENCHMAN WITH BAGGAGE

Quarter-day, ay, and quartering day I fear.

Have ye not heard the news that flies abroad?

FRENCHMAN WITHOUT BAGGAGE What news?

SECOND FRENCHMAN WITH BAGGAGE

How the French navy is destroyed at sea,

And that the English army is arrived.

FRENCHMAN WITHOUT BAGGAGE What then?

FIRST FRENCHMAN WITH BAGGAGE

‘What then,’ quoth you? Why, is’t not time to fly,

When envy and destruction is so nigh?

FRENCHMAN WITHOUT BAGGAGE

Content thee, man, they are far enough from hence,

And will be met, I warrant ye, to their cost,

Before they break so far into the realm.

FIRST FRENCHMAN WITH BAGGAGE

Ay, so the grasshopper doth spend the time

In mirthful jollity, till winter come,

And then, too late, he would redeem his time,

When frozen cold hath nipped his careless head.

He that no sooner will provide a cloak

Than when he sees it doth begin to rain

May, peradventure, for his negligence,

Be throughly washed when he suspects it not.

We that have charge, and such a train as this,

Must look in time to look for them and us,

Lest, when we would, we cannot be relieved.

FRENCHMAN WITHOUT BAGGAGE

Belike you then despair of ill success,

And think your country will be subjugate.

SECOND FRENCHMAN WITH BAGGAGE

We cannot tell. ’Tis good to fear the worst.

FRENCHMAN WITHOUT BAGGAGE

Yet rather fight, than like unnatural sons

Forsake your loving parents in distress.

FIRST FRENCHMAN WITH BAGGAGE

Tush, they that have already taken arms

Are many fearful millions in respect

Of that small handful of our enemies.

But ’tis a rightful quarrel must prevail:

Edward is son unto our late king’s sister,

Where Jean Valois is three degrees removed.

FRENCHWOMAN

Besides, there goes a prophecy abroad,

Published by one that was a friar once,

Whose oracles have many times proved true,

And now he says the time will shortly come

Whenas a lion roused in the west

Shall carry hence the fleur-de-lis of France.

These, I can tell ye, and such like surmises,

Strike many Frenchmen cold unto the heart.

Enter a Frenchman in haste

FLEEING FRENCHMAN

Fly, countrymen and citizens of France!

Sweet-flow’ring peace, the root of happy life,

Is quite abandoned and expulsed the land.

Instead of whom, ransack-constraining war

Sits like to ravens upon your houses’ tops.

Slaughter and mischief walk within your streets

And, unrestrained, make havoc as they pass,

The form whereof, even now, myself beheld

Upon this fair mountain, whence I came.

For so far off as I directed mine eyes

I might perceive five cities all on fire,

Cornfields and vineyards burning like an oven,

And, as the reeking vapour in the wind

Y-turnèd but aside, I likewise might discern

The poor inhabitants, escaped the flame,

Fall numberless upon the soldiers’ pikes.

Three ways these dreadful ministers of wrath

Do tread the measures of their tragic march:

Upon the right hand comes the conquering King,

Upon the left his hot, unbridled son,

And in the midst their nation’s glittering host.

All which, though distant, yet conspire in one

To leave a desolation where they come.

Fly, therefore, citizens, if you be wise.

Seek out some habitation further off.

Here, if you stay, your wives will be abused,

Your treasure shared before your weeping eyes.

Shelter you yourselves, for now the storm doth rise.

Away, away! Methinks I hear their drums!

Ah, wretched France, I greatly fear thy fall;

Thy glory shaketh like a tottering wall.

Exeunt