To break within the bloody house of life; And, on the winking of authority,

To understand a law; to know the meaning Of dangerous majesty, when, perchance, it frowns

More upon humour than advis'd respect.

Hub. Here is your hand and seal for what I did.

K. John. O, when the last account 'twixt
heaven and earth

Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal
Witness against us to damnation !
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds
Makes ill deeds done! Had'st thou not been by,
A fellow by the hand of nature mark’d,
Quoted, and sign'd, to do a deed of shame,
This murder had not come into my mind:
But, taking note of thy abhorr'd aspect,
Finding thee fit for bloody villainy,
Apt, liable, to be employ'd in danger,

I faintly broke with thee of Arthur's death;
And thou, to be endeared to a king,
Made it no conscience to destroy a prince.

Hub. My lord,

K. John. Hadst thou but shook thy head, or

Out of my sight, and never see me more!
My nobles leave me; and my state is brav'd,
Even at my gates, with ranks of foreign powers:
Nay, in the body of this fleshly land,

This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath,
Hostility and civil tumult reigns

Between my conscience and my cousin's death.

Hub. Arm you against your other enemies, I'll make a peace between your soul and you. Young Arthur is alive: This hand of mine Is yet a maiden and an innocent hand, Not painted with the crimson spots of blood. Within this bosom never enter'd yet The dreadful motion of a murd'rous thought;

a We have ventured upon a transposition. The original is "Makes deeds ill done;"-but this might apply to good deeds unskilfully performed.

b As bid-elliptically for as to bid.

And you
have slander'd nature in my form,
Which, howsoever rude exteriorly,

Is yet the cover of a fairer mind

Than to be butcher of an innocent child.

K. John. Doth Arthur live? O, haste thee to
the peers,

Throw this report on their incensed rage,
And make them tame to their obedience!
Forgive the comment that my passion made
Upon thy feature; for my rage was blind,
And foul imaginary eyes of blood
Presented thee more hideous than thou art.
O, answer not; but to my closet bring
The angry lords, with all expedient haste :
I conjure thee but slowly; run more fast.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.-The same. Before the Castle.

Enter ARTHUR, on the Walls.

Arth. The wall is high; and yet will I leap down:

Good ground, be pitiful, and hurt me not!—
There's few, or none, do know me; if they did,
This ship-boy's semblance hath disguis'd me
quite.

I am afraid; and yet I'll venture it.
If I get down, and do not break my limbs,
I'll find a thousand shifts to get away:
As good to die and go, as die and stay.

[Leaps down. O me! my uncle's spirit is in these stones: Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones!

[Dies.

Enter PEMBROKE, SALISBURY, and BIGOT.
Sal. Lords, I will meet him at Saint Ed-
mund's-Bury;

It is our safety, and we must embrace
This gentle offer of the perilous time.

Pem. Who brought that letter from the cardinal ?

Sal. The count Melun, a noble lord of France;

Whose private with me, of the Dauphin's love, Is much more general than these lines import. Big. To-morrow morning let us meet him

then.

Sal. The king hath dispossess'd himself of us. We will not line his thin bestained cloak With our pure honours, nor attend the foot That leaves the print of blood wheree'r it walks:

Return, and tell him so; we know the worst. Bast. Whate'er you think, good words, I think, were best.

Sal. Our griefs, and not our manners, reason

now.

Bast. But there is little reason in your grief; Therefore, 't were reason you had manners now. Pem. Sir, sir, impatience hath his privilege. Bast. 'Tis true; to hurt his master, no man else.a

Sal. This is the prison: What is he lies here? [Seeing ARTHUR.

Pem. O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty!

The earth had not a hole to hide this deed. Sal. Murther, as hating what himself hath done,

Doth lay it open, to urge on revenge.

Big. Or, when he doom'd this beauty to a

grave,

Found it too precious-princely for a grave.
Sal. Sir Richard, what think you? You have
beheld.b

Or have you read, or heard? or could you think?
Or do you almost think, although you see,
That you do see? could thought, without this
object,

Form such another? This is the very top,
The height, the crest, or crest unto the crest,
Of murther's arms: this is the bloodiest shame,
The wildest savagery, the vilest stroke,
That ever wall-ey'd wrath, or staring rage,
Presented to the tears of soft remorse.

Pem. All murthers past do stand excus'd in this:

And this so sole, and so unmatchable,
Shall give a holiness, a purity,
To the yet-unbegotten sin of times;
And prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest,
Exampled by this heinous spectacle.

Bast. It is a damned and a bloody work;
The graceless action of a heavy hand,
If that it be the work of any hand.

Sal. If that it be the work of any hand?-
We had a kind of light what would ensue :

a No man else. So the Duke of Devonshire's copy of the folio. The ordinary copies, No man's else. Mr. Collier pointed this out.

It is the shameful work of Hubert's hand;
The practice, and the purpose, of the king.-
From whose obedience I forbid my soul,
Kneeling before this ruin of sweet life
And breathing to his breathless excellence
The incense of a vow, a holy vow,
Never to taste the pleasures of the world,
Never to be infected with delight,
Nor conversant with ease and idleness,
Till I have set a glory to this hand,
By giving it the worship of revenge.
Pem. Big. Our souls religiously confirm thy
words.

b You have brheld. The third folio gives the reading which is generally adopted, of "Have you beheld." retain that of the original, which appears to mean-You see or have you only read, or heard? Your senses must be so startled that you may doubt "you have beheld."

you

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.

Hub. 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.
Bast.
Go, bear him in thine arms.-
I am amaz'd, 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 suarleth 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-fallen 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.

Ir is unquestionably to be deplored that the greatest writers of imagination have sometimes embodied events not only unsupported by the facts of history, but utterly opposed to them. We are not speaking of those deviations from the actual succession of events,-those omissions of minor particulars,-those groupings of characters who were really never brought together,-which the poet knowingly abandons himself to, that he may accomplish the great purposes of his art, the first of which, in a drama especially, is unity of action. Such a license has Shakspere taken in King John, and who can doubt that, poetically, he was right? But there is a limit even to the mastery of the poet, when he is dealing with the broad truths of history; for the poetical truth would be destroyed if the historical truth were utterly disregarded. For example, if the grand scenes in this Act,

between Arthur and Hubert, and between Hubert and John, were entirely contradicted by the truth of history, there would be an abatement even of the irresistible power of these matchless scenes. Had the proper historians led us to believe that no attempt was made to deprive Arthur of his sight -that his death was not the result of the dark suspicions and cowardly fears of his uncle- that the manner of this death was so clear that he who held him captive was absolved from all suspiciou of treachery, then the poet would indeed have left an impression on the mind which even the historical truth could with difficulty have overcome; but he would not have left that complete and overwhelming impression of the reality of his scenes-he could not have produced our implicit belief in the sad story, as he tells it, of Arthur of Britanny, he could not have rendered it

impossible for any one to recur to that story, who has read this Act of King John, and not think of the dark prison where the iron was hot and the executioner ready, but where nature, speaking in words such as none but the greatest poet of nature could have furnished, made the fire and the iron "deny their office," and the executioner leave the poor boy, for a while, to "sleep doubtless and secure." Fortunate is it that we have no records to hold up which should say that Shakspere built this immortal scene upon a rotten foundation. The story, as told by Holinshed, is deeply interesting; and we cannot read it without feeling how skilfully the poet has followed it :

"It is said that King John caused his nephew Arthur to be brought before him at Falaise, and there went about to persuade him all that he could to forsake his friendship and alliance with the French king, and to lean and stick to him his natural uncle. But Arthur, like one that wanted good counsel, and abounding too much in his own wilful opinion, made a presumptuous answer, not only denying so to do, but also commanding King John to restore unto him the realms of England, with all those other lands and possessions which King Richard had in his hand at the hour of his death. For sith the same appertaineth to him by right of inheritance, he assured him, except restitution were made the sooner, he should not long continue quiet. King John being sore moved by such words thus uttered by his nephew, appointed (as before is said) that he should be straitly kept in prison, as first in Falaise, and after at Roan, within the new castle there.

"Shortly after King John coming over into England caused himself to be crowned again at Canterbury, by the hands of Hubert, the archbishop there, on the fourteenth of April, and then went back again into Normandy, where, immediately upon his arrival, a rumour was spread through all France, of the death of his nephew Arthur. True it is that great suit was made to have Arthur set at liberty, as well by the French King, as by William de Miches, a valiant baron of Poitou, and divers other noblemen of the Britains, who, when they could not prevail in their suit, they banded themselves together, and joining in confederacy with Robert Earl of Alanson, the Viscount Beaumont, William de Fulgiers, and other, they began to levy sharp wars against King John in divers places, insomuch (as it was thought) that so long as Arthur lived, there would be no quiet in those parts: whereupon it was reported, that King John, through persuasion of his counsellors, appointed certain persons to go into Falaise, where Arthur was kept in prison, under the charge of Hubert de Burgh, and there to put out the young gentleman's eyes.

"But through such resistance as he made against one of the tormentors that came to execute the king's command (for the other rather forsook their prince and country, than they would consent to obey the king's authority therein) and such lamentable words as he uttered, Hubert de Burgh dil preserve him from that injury, not doubting but rather to have thanks than displeasure at the king's hands, for delivering him of such infamy as would have redounded unto his highness, if the young gentleman had been so cruelly dealt withal.

For he considered, that King John had resolved upon this point only in his heat and fury (which moveth men to undertake many an inconvenient enterprise, unbesceming the person of a common man, much more reproachful to a prince, all men in that mood being more foolish and furious, and prone to accomplish the perverse conceits of their ill possessed hearts; as one saith right well, pronus in iram

Stultorum est animus, facilè excandescit et audet Omne scelus, quoties concepta bile tumescit), and that afterwards, upon better advisement, he would both repent himself so to have commanded, and give them small thank that should see it put in execution. Howbeit, to satisfy his mind for the time, and to stay the rage of the Britains, he caused it to be bruted abroad through the country, that the king's commandment was fulfilled, and that Arthur also, through sorrow and grief, was departed out of this life. For the space of fifteen days this rumour incessantly ran through both the realms of England and France, and there was ringing for him through towns and villages, as it had been for his funerals. It was also bruted, that his body was buried in the monastery of Saint Andrews of the Cisteaux order.

"But when the Britains were nothing pacified, but rather kindled more vehemently to work all the mischief they could devise, in revenge of their sovereign's death, there was no remedy but to signify abroad again, that Arthur was as yet living, and in health. Now when the king heard the truth of all this matter, he was nothing displeased for that his commandment was not executed, sith there were divers of his captains which uttered in plain words, that he should not find knights to keep his castles, if he dealt so cruelly with his nephew. For if it chanced any of them to be taken by the King of France, or other their adversaries, they should be sure to taste of the like cup. But now touching the manner in very deed of the end of this Arthur, writers make sundry reports. Nevertheless certain it is, that in the year next ensuing, he was removed from Falaise unto the castle or tower of Roan, out of the which there was not any that would confess that ever he saw him go alive. Some have written, that as he essayed to have escaped out of prison, and proving to climb over the walls of the castle, he fell into the river of Seine, and so was drowned. Other write, that through very grief and languor he pined away and died of natural sickness. But some affirm that King John secretly caused him to be murdered and made away, so as it is not thoroughly agreed upon, in what sort he finished his days; but verily King John was had in great suspicion, whether worthily or not, the Lord knoweth."

Wisely has the old chronicler said, "verily King John was had in great suspicion, whether worthily or not, the Lord knoweth ;" and wisely has Shakspere taken the least offensive mode of Arthur's death, which was to be found noticed in the obscure records of those times. It is, all things considered, most probable that Arthur perished at Rouen. The darkest of the stories connected with his death is that which makes him, on the night of the 3rd April, 1203, awakened from his sleep, and led to the foot of the castle