As many sands as these my hands can hold,Are but my handful of so many sands;Then,all the world,and call it but a power,Easily ta'en up,and quickly thrown away:But if I stand to count them sand by sand,The number would confound my memory,And make a thousand millions of a task,Which briefly is no more,indeed,than one.
These quarters,squadrons,and these regiments,Before,behind us,and on either hand,Are but a power.When we name a man,His hand,his foot,his head hath several strengths;And being all but one self instant strength,Why,all this many,Audley,is but one,And we can call it all but one man's strength.
He that hath far to go,tells it by miles;
If he should tell the steps,it kills his heart:
The drops are infinite,that make a flood,And yet,thou knowest,we call it but a Rain.
There is but one France,one king of France,That France hath no more kings;and that same king Hath but the puissant legion of one king,And we have one:then apprehend no odds,For one to one is fair equality.
[Enter an Herald from King John.]
PRINCE EDWARD.
What tidings,messenger?be plain and brief.
HERALD.
The king of France,my sovereign Lord and master,Greets by me his foe,the Prince of Wales:
If thou call forth a hundred men of name,Of Lords,Knights,Squires,and English gentlemen,And with thy self and those kneel at his feet,He straight will fold his bloody colours up,And ransom shall redeem lives forfeited;If not,this day shall drink more English blood,Than ere was buried in our British earth.
What is the answer to his proffered mercy?
PRINCE EDWARD.
This heaven,that covers France,contains the mercy That draws from me submissive orizons;That such base breath should vanish from my lips,To urge the plea of mercy to a man,The Lord forbid!Return,and tell the king,My tongue is made of steel,and it shall beg My mercy on his coward burgonet;Tell him,my colours are as red as his,My men as bold,our English arms as strong:
Return him my defiance in his face.
HERALD.
I go.
[Exit.]
[Enter another Herald.]
PRINCE EDWARD.
What news with thee?
HERALD.
The Duke of Normandy,my Lord &master,Pitying thy youth is so ingirt with peril,By me hath sent a nimble jointed jennet,As swift as ever yet thou didst bestride,And therewithall he counsels thee to fly;Else death himself hath sworn that thou shalt die.
PRINCE EDWARD.
Back with the beast unto the beast that sent him!
Tell him I cannot sit a coward's horse;
Bid him to day bestride the jade himself,For I will stain my horse quite o'er with blood,And double gild my spurs,but I will catch him;So tell the carping boy,and get thee gone.
[Exit Herald.]
[Enter another Herald.]
HERALD.
Edward of Wales,Phillip,the second son To the most mighty christian king of France,Seeing thy body's living date expired,All full of charity and christian love,Commends this book,full fraught with prayers,To thy fair hand and for thy hour of life Intreats thee that thou meditate therein,And arm thy soul for her long journey towards--Thus have I done his bidding,and return.
PRINCE EDWARD.
Herald of Phillip,greet thy Lord from me:
All good that he can send,I can receive;
But thinkst thou not,the unadvised boy Hath wronged himself in thus far tendering me?
Happily he cannot pray without the book--
I think him no divine extemporall--,Then render back this common place of prayer,To do himself good in adversity;Beside he knows not my sins'quality,And therefore knows no prayers for my avail;Ere night his prayer may be to pray to God,To put it in my heart to hear his prayer.
So tell the courtly wanton,and be gone.
HERALD.
I go.
[Exit.]
PRINCE EDWARD.
How confident their strength and number makes them!--Now,Audley,sound those silver wings of thine,And let those milk white messengers of time Shew thy times learning in this dangerous time.
Thy self art bruis'd and bit with many broils,And stratagems forepast with iron pens Are texted in thine honorable face;Thou art a married man in this distress,But danger woos me as a blushing maid:
Teach me an answer to this perilous time.
AUDLEY.
To die is all as common as to live:
The one ince-wise,the other holds in chase;
For,from the instant we begin to live,We do pursue and hunt the time to die:
First bud we,then we blow,and after seed,Then,presently,we fall;and,as a shade Follows the body,so we follow death.
If,then,we hunt for death,why do we fear it?
If we fear it,why do we follow it?
If we do fear,how can we shun it?
If we do fear,with fear we do but aide The thing we fear to seize on us the sooner:
If we fear not,then no resolved proffer Can overthrow the limit of our fate;For,whether ripe or rotten,drop we shall,As we do draw the lottery of our doom.
PRINCE EDWARD.
Ah,good old man,a thousand thousand armors These words of thine have buckled on my back:
Ah,what an idiot hast thou made of life,To seek the thing it fears!and how disgraced The imperial victory of murdering death,Since all the lives his conquering arrows strike Seek him,and he not them,to shame his glory!
I will not give a penny for a life,Nor half a halfpenny to shun grim death,Since for to live is but to seek to die,And dying but beginning of new life.
Let come the hour when he that rules it will!
To live or die I hold indifferent.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE V.The same.The French Camp.
[Enter King John and Charles.]
KING JOHN.
A sudden darkness hath defaced the sky,The winds are crept into their caves for fear,The leaves move not,the world is hushed and still,The birds cease singing,and the wandering brooks Murmur no wonted greeting to their shores;Silence attends some wonder and expecteth That heaven should pronounce some prophesy:
Where,or from whom,proceeds this silence,Charles?
CHARLES.
Our men,with open mouths and staring eyes,Look on each other,as they did attend Each other's words,and yet no creature speaks;A tongue-tied fear hath made a midnight hour,And speeches sleep through all the waking regions.
KING JOHN.
But now the pompous Sun,in all his pride,Looked through his golden coach upon the world,And,on a sudden,hath he hid himself,That now the under earth is as a grave,Dark,deadly,silent,and uncomfortable.
[A clamor of ravens.]
