Avaunt,thou hateful villain,get thee gone!HUBERT I am no villain.SALISBURY Must I rob the law?
Drawing his sword BASTARD Your sword is bright,sir;put it up again.SALISBURY Not till I sheathe it in a murderer's skin.HUBERT Stand back,Lord Salisbury,stand back,I say;By heaven,I think my sword's as sharp as yours:
I would not have you,lord,forget yourself,Nor tempt the danger of my true defence;Lest I,by marking of your rage,forget Your worth,your greatness and nobility.BIGOT Out,dunghill!darest thou brave a nobleman?HUBERT Not for my life:but yet I dare defend My innocent life against an emperor.SALISBURY Thou art a murderer.HUBERT Do not prove me so;Yet I am none:whose tongue soe'er speaks false,Not truly speaks;who speaks not truly,lies.PEMBROKE Cut him to pieces.BASTARD Keep the peace,I say.SALISBURY Stand by,or I shall gall you,Faulconbridge.BASTARD Thou wert better gall the devil,Salisbury:
If thou but frown on me,or stir thy foot,Or teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame,I'll strike thee dead.Put up thy sword betime;Or I'll so maul you and your toasting-iron,That you shall think the devil is come from hell.BIGOT What wilt thou do,renowned Faulconbridge?
Second a villain and a murderer?HUBERT Lord Bigot,I am none.BIGOT Who kill'd this prince?HUBERT 'Tis not an hour since I left him well:
I honour'd him,I loved him,and will weep My date of life out for his sweet life's loss.SALISBURY Trust not those cunning waters of his eyes,For villany is not without such rheum;And he,long traded in it,makes it seem Like rivers of remorse and innocency.
Away with me,all you whose souls abhor The uncleanly savours of a slaughter-house;For I am stifled with this smell of sin.BIGOT Away toward Bury,to the Dauphin there!PEMBROKE There tell the king he may inquire us out.
Exeunt Lords BASTARD Here's a good world!Knew you of this fair work?
Beyond the infinite and boundless reach Of mercy,if thou didst this deed of death,Art thou damn'd,Hubert.HUBERT Do but hear me,sir.BASTARD Ha!I'll tell thee what;Thou'rt damn'd as black--nay,nothing is so black;Thou art more deep damn'd than Prince Lucifer:
There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell As thou shalt be,if thou didst kill this child.HUBERT Upon my soul--BASTARD If thou didst but consent To this most cruel act,do but despair;And if thou want'st a cord,the smallest thread That ever spider twisted from her womb Will serve to strangle thee,a rush will be a beam To hang thee on;or wouldst thou drown thyself,Put but a little water in a spoon,And it shall be as all the ocean,Enough to stifle such a villain up.
I do suspect thee very grievously.HUBERT If I in act,consent,or sin of thought,Be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath Which was embounded in this beauteous clay,Let hell want pains enough to torture me.
I left him well.BASTARD Go,bear him in thine arms.
I am amazed,methinks,and lose my way Among the thorns and dangers of this world.
How easy dost thou take all England up!
From forth this morsel of dead royalty,The life,the right and truth of all this realm Is fled to heaven;and England now is left To tug and scamble and to part by the teeth The unowed interest of proud-swelling state.
Now for the bare-pick'd bone of majesty Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace:
Now powers from home and discontents at home Meet in one line;and vast confusion waits,As doth a raven on a sick-fall'n beast,The imminent decay of wrested pomp.
Now happy he whose cloak and cincture can Hold out this tempest.Bear away that child And follow me with speed:I'll to the king:
A thousand businesses are brief in hand,And heaven itself doth frown upon the land.Exeunt