Act 3, Scene 4

The same. The FRENCH KING's tent.

[Enter KING PHILIP, LOUIS, PANDULPH, and Attendants.]
King Philip of France
1340 So, by a roaring tempest on the flood
1341 A whole armado of convicted sail
1342 Is scattered and disjoin'd from fellowship.
Cardinal Pandulph
1343 Courage and comfort! all shall yet go well.
King Philip of France
1344 What can go well, when we have run so ill.
1345 Are we not beaten? Is not Angiers lost?
1346 Arthur ta'en prisoner? divers dear friends slain?
1347 And bloody England into England gone,
1348 O'erbearing interruption, spite of France?
Louis the Dauphin
1349 What he hath won, that hath he fortified:
1350 So hot a speed with such advice dispos'd,
1351 Such temperate order in so fierce a cause,
1352 Doth want example: who hath read or heard
1353 Of any kindred action like to this?
King Philip of France
1354 Well could I bear that England had this praise,
1355 So we could find some pattern of our shame.—
1356 Look who comes here! a grave unto a soul;
1357 Holding the eternal spirit, against her will,
1358 In the vile prison of afflicted breath.
[Enter CONSTANCE.]
King Philip of France
1359 I pr'ythee, lady, go away with me.
Constance
1360 Lo, now! now see the issue of your peace!
King Philip of France
1361 Patience, good lady! comfort, gentle Constance!
Constance
1362 No, I defy all counsel, all redress,
1363 But that which ends all counsel, true redress,
1364 Death, death:—O amiable lovely death!
1365 Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!
1366 Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,
1367 Thou hate and terror to prosperity,
1368 And I will kiss thy detestable bones;
1369 And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows;
1370 And ring these fingers with thy household worms;
1371 And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,
1372 And be a carrion monster like thyself:
1373 Come, grin on me; and I will think thou smil'st,
1374 And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love,
1375 O, come to me!
King Philip of France
1376 O fair affliction, peace!
Constance
1377 No, no, I will not, having breath to cry:—
1378 O, that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth!
1379 Then with a passion would I shake the world;
1380 And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy
1381 Which cannot hear a lady's feeble voice,
1382 Which scorns a modern invocation.
Cardinal Pandulph
1383 Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow.
Constance
1384 Thou art not holy to belie me so;
1385 I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;
1386 My name is Constance; I was Geffrey's wife;
1387 Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost:
1388 I am not mad:—I would to heaven I were!
1389 For then, 'tis like I should forget myself:
1390 O, if I could, what grief should I forget!—
1391 Preach some philosophy to make me mad,
1392 And thou shalt be canoniz'd, cardinal;
1393 For, being not mad, but sensible of grief,
1394 My reasonable part produces reason
1395 How I may be deliver'd of these woes,
1396 And teaches me to kill or hang myself:
1397 If I were mad I should forget my son,
1398 Or madly think a babe of clouts were he:
1399 I am not mad; too well, too well I feel
1400 The different plague of each calamity.
King Philip of France
1401 Bind up those tresses.—O, what love I note
1402 In the fair multitude of those her hairs!
1403 Where but by a chance a silver drop hath fallen,
1404 Even to that drop ten thousand wiry friends
1405 Do glue themselves in sociable grief;
1406 Like true, inseparable, faithful loves,
1407 Sticking together in calamity.
Constance
1408 To England, if you will.
King Philip of France
1409 Bind up your hairs.
Constance
1410 Yes, that I will; and wherefore will I do it?
1411 I tore them from their bonds, and cried aloud,
1412 'O that these hands could so redeem my son,
1413 As they have given these hairs their liberty!'
1414 But now I envy at their liberty,
1415 And will again commit them to their bonds,
1416 Because my poor child is a prisoner.—
1417 And, father cardinal, I have heard you say
1418 That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:
1419 If that be true, I shall see my boy again;
1420 For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
1421 To him that did but yesterday suspire,
1422 There was not such a gracious creature born.
1423 But now will canker sorrow eat my bud,
1424 And chase the native beauty from his cheek,
1425 And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
1426 As dim and meagre as an ague's fit;
1427 And so he'll die; and, rising so again,
1428 When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
1429 I shall not know him: therefore never, never
1430 Must I behold my pretty Arthur more!
Cardinal Pandulph
1431 You hold too heinous a respect of grief.
Constance
1432 He talks to me that never had a son.
King Philip of France
1433 You are as fond of grief as of your child.
Constance
1434 Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
1435 Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
1436 Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
1437 Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
1438 Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
1439 Then have I reason to be fond of grief.
1440 Fare you well: had you such a loss as I,
1441 I could give better comfort than you do.—
1442 I will not keep this form upon my head,
[Tearing off her head-dress.]
Constance
1443 When there is such disorder in my wit.
1444 O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
1445 My life, my joy, my food, my ail the world!
1446 My widow-comfort, and my sorrows' cure!
[Exit.]
King Philip of France
1447 I fear some outrage, and I'll follow her.
[Exit.]
Louis the Dauphin
1448 There's nothing in this world can make me joy:
1449 Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale
1450 Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man;
1451 And bitter shame hath spoil'd the sweet world's taste,
1452 That it yields nought but shame and bitterness.
Cardinal Pandulph
1453 Before the curing of a strong disease,
1454 Even in the instant of repair and health,
1455 The fit is strongest; evils that take leave
1456 On their departure most of all show evil;
1457 What have you lost by losing of this day?
Louis the Dauphin
1458 All days of glory, joy, and happiness.
Cardinal Pandulph
1459 If you had won it, certainly you had.
1460 No, no; when Fortune means to men most good,
1461 She looks upon them with a threatening eye.
1462 'Tis strange to think how much King John hath lost
1463 In this which he accounts so clearly won.
1464 Are not you griev'd that Arthur is his prisoner?
Louis the Dauphin
1465 As heartily as he is glad he hath him.
Cardinal Pandulph
1466 Your mind is all as youthful as your blood.
1467 Now hear me speak with a prophetic spirit;
1468 For even the breath of what I mean to speak
1469 Shall blow each dust, each straw, each little rub,
1470 Out of the path which shall directly lead
1471 Thy foot to England's throne; and therefore mark.
1472 John hath seiz'd Arthur; and it cannot be
1473 That, whiles warm life plays in that infant's veins,
1474 The misplac'd John should entertain an hour,
1475 One minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest:
1476 A sceptre snatch'd with an unruly hand
1477 Must be boisterously maintain'd as gain'd:
1478 And he that stands upon a slippery place
1479 Makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up:
1480 That John may stand then, Arthur needs must fall:
1481 So be it, for it cannot be but so.
Louis the Dauphin
1482 But what shall I gain by young Arthur's fall?
Cardinal Pandulph
1483 You, in the right of Lady Blanch your wife,
1484 May then make all the claim that Arthur did.
Louis the Dauphin
1485 And lose it, life and all, as Arthur did.
Cardinal Pandulph
1486 How green you are, and fresh in this old world!
1487 John lays you plots; the times conspire with you;
1488 For he that steeps his safety in true blood
1489 Shall find but bloody safety and untrue.
1490 This act, so evilly borne, shall cool the hearts
1491 Of all his people, and freeze up their zeal,
1492 That none so small advantage shall step forth
1493 To check his reign, but they will cherish it;
1494 No natural exhalation in the sky,
1495 No scope of nature, no distemper'd day,
1496 No common wind, no customed event,
1497 But they will pluck away his natural cause
1498 And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs,
1499 Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven,
1500 Plainly denouncing vengeance upon John.
Louis the Dauphin
1501 May be he will not touch young Arthur's life,
1502 But hold himself safe in his prisonment.
Cardinal Pandulph
1503 O, sir, when he shall hear of your approach,
1504 If that young Arthur be not gone already,
1505 Even at that news he dies; and then the hearts
1506 Of all his people shall revolt from him,
1507 And kiss the lips of unacquainted change;
1508 And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath
1509 Out of the bloody fingers' ends of john.
1510 Methinks I see this hurly all on foot:
1511 And, O, what better matter breeds for you
1512 Than I have nam'd!—The bastard Falconbridge
1513 Is now in England, ransacking the church,
1514 Offending charity: if but a dozen French
1515 Were there in arms, they would be as a call
1516 To train ten thousand English to their side:
1517 Or as a little snow, tumbled about
1518 Anon becomes a mountain. O noble Dauphin,
1519 Go with me to the king:—'tis wonderful
1520 What may be wrought out of their discontent,
1521 Now that their souls are topful of offence:
1522 For England go:—I will whet on the king.
Louis the Dauphin
1523 Strong reasons makes strong actions: let us go:
1524 If you say ay, the king will not say no.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 1341archaic vocab
“a whole armado of convicted sail”
An 'armado' is a fleet of warships (from Spanish armada); 'convicted' here means 'defeated' or 'overcome.' Philip is saying the whole French fleet has been scattered and broken by an English storm — the naval engagement that opens the scene's crisis.
TLN 1356rhetorical device
“a grave unto a soul; Holding the eternal spirit, against her will, In the vile prison of afflicted breath”
Philip describes Constance's living body as a grave — a container imprisoning her immortal soul against its will. The paradox treats the body not as life but as a tomb; grief has made Constance's continued breathing a form of captivity rather than existence.
TLN 1362rhetorical device
“I defy all counsel, all redress, But that which ends all counsel, true redress, Death, death”
This is a figure called 'correctio' or self-correction: Constance names 'counsel' and 'redress' as though accepting them, then immediately recants and redefines both words so that only death qualifies. The repetition ('all counsel... true redress... Death, death') hammers the logic home.
TLN 1364rhetorical device
“O amiable lovely death! Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness”
Constance addresses Death as though it were a lover — 'amiable,' 'lovely' — and piles up deliberate contradictions ('odoriferous stench,' 'sound rottenness') to show that grief has inverted her sense of what is desirable. The figure is called 'oxymoron': the beauty of death is made real by putting the ugliest images next to the most tender.
TLN 1369archaic vocab
“put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows; And ring these fingers with thy household worms”
'Vaulty brows' means the hollow eye-sockets of a skull — vaulted like the arch of a cave. 'Household worms' are the worms of the grave that inhabit a corpse; Constance imagines wearing them as rings on her fingers, completing her macabre marriage-vow to Death.
TLN 1380archaic vocab
“rouse from sleep that fell anatomy Which cannot hear a lady's feeble voice”
'Fell' means fierce, cruel, terrible. 'Anatomy' here means a skeleton — the bare bones that remain when flesh is gone; by extension it was a common word for Death himself as a skeletal figure. Constance wishes her tongue had the force of thunder to wake a Death so deaf it ignores a grieving mother.
TLN 1383cultural context
“you utter madness, and not sorrow”
Pandulph dismisses Constance's extreme grief as madness — a standard move in Renaissance medical thought, which held that excess of any passion (love, grief, fear) could tip into frenzy or melancholy. Constance's reply that she is 'not mad' but 'sensible of grief' is her claim that her reason is intact: it is precisely because she can think clearly that she knows how terrible Arthur's capture is.
TLN 1418biblical allusion
“we shall see and know our friends in heaven: If that be true, I shall see my boy again; For since the birth of Cain, the first male child”
Constance cites a Christian doctrine — that the redeemed will recognize each other in heaven — which Pandulph, as a cardinal, would have preached. She turns it into a desperate argument: if she will see Arthur there, she must not waste him by imagining he will be deformed by suffering before death, and she must see him now, perfectly. 'Since the birth of Cain, the first male child' measures the whole of human history as the span over which no boy as beautiful as Arthur has been born.
biblical Cain and Abel: the first murder
TLN 1423archaic vocab
“canker sorrow eat my bud, And chase the native beauty from his cheek, And he will look as hollow as a ghost, As dim and meagre as an ague's fit”
A 'canker' is a caterpillar or grub that eats the bud of a flower before it opens — a standard image for something beautiful destroyed from within. An 'ague' was a fever marked by shivering and pallor; to look 'as dim and meagre as an ague's fit' means to look gaunt, pale, and wasting. Constance fears that imprisonment will hollow Arthur's bloom before he dies.
TLN 1427biblical allusion
“rising so again, When I shall meet him in the court of heaven I shall not know him”
Constance fears that if suffering wastes Arthur's face before he dies, she will not recognize him at the Last Judgment. 'Rising so' refers to the bodily resurrection of the dead — the Christian belief that the dead will rise in their bodies at the Last Day. 'The court of heaven' imagines the heavenly tribunal of the Judgment. She has just cited the doctrine that friends will know each other in heaven, and now undermines it: she will know him only if he dies before grief strips his face.
TLN 1434rhetorical device
“Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form”
Constance personifies her grief as a substitute child that literally occupies Arthur's physical space — his room, his bed, his clothes. The figure is called 'prosopopoeia' (giving an abstraction human actions). The effect is precise and heartbreaking: grief does not merely fill a void, it mimics the lost person in every domestic detail.
TLN 1449rhetorical device
“Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man”
Louis compares life to a story told twice — already known, no longer interesting, only irritating. The simile is a self-aware theatrical joke from a playwright: a story you have already heard bores you; by the same token Louis's life, after this defeat, offers nothing new worth living. The speaker is a prince, not an old man — which makes the despair more pointed.
TLN 1460classical allusion
“when Fortune means to men most good, She looks upon them with a threatening eye”
Pandulph invokes the standard figure of Fortune as a woman who looks threatening just before she turns lucky — a provocation to teach patience. Fortune was a classical goddess depicted with a wheel, turning the great up and down by chance. Pandulph's point is coldly tactical: the French defeat is the darkest point before Fortune turns in Louis's favor.
classical Fortune and her wheel
TLN 1474historical topical
“The misplac'd John should entertain an hour, One minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest: A sceptre snatch'd with an unruly hand Must be boisterously maintain'd as gain'd”
'Misplac'd' is Pandulph's single word verdict on John's kingship: the crown is in the wrong place — on John's head instead of Arthur's, the rightful heir. The proverb that follows ('a sceptre snatch'd... must be boisterously maintain'd') was a recognized political maxim: a usurper can never rest because the claim he seized by force must be defended by force forever. Pandulph is predicting that John will kill Arthur to remove the threat.
historical The Angevin succession and Arthur's claim
TLN 1483historical topical
“in the right of Lady Blanch your wife, May then make all the claim that Arthur did”
Pandulph points out that Louis married John's niece Blanch of Castile, which gives him a blood-claim to the English throne through the Angevin line — the same claim Arthur held, which would pass to Louis if Arthur dies. This is how the play's political logic works: Pandulph has manufactured a French invasion of England from John's own murder of his nephew.
historical The Angevin succession and Arthur's claimhistorical King John, the Pope, and the Interdict
TLN 1494cultural context
“No natural exhalation in the sky, No scope of nature, no distemper'd day, No common wind, no customed event, But they will pluck away his natural cause And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs”
Pandulph predicts that once John murders Arthur, his subjects will read every ordinary natural event — a storm, an unusual wind, a meteor — as a divine omen against him. 'Natural exhalation' was the Elizabethan scientific term for vapors rising from the earth that turned into meteors, comets, or unusual weather; 'prodigies' are monstrous omens; 'signs' are portents of disaster. The point is that a guilty king loses the protection of rationality: his people will reinterpret the ordinary as supernatural condemnation.
TLN 1512historical topical
“The bastard Falconbridge Is now in England, ransacking the church, Offending charity: if but a dozen French Were there in arms, they would be as a call To train ten thousand English to their side”
Pandulph mentions the Bastard — Philip Faulconbridge, John's military enforcer — as the man currently plundering abbeys and monasteries in England to fund the king. 'Ransacking the church' refers to the seizure of Church property, which John carried out during his quarrel with Rome; the Bastard is his instrument. Pandulph argues that this act of 'offending charity' (robbing the Church's duty of care for the poor) is so unpopular that a small French landing could trigger mass English defection.
historical King John, the Pope, and the Interdict