Act 4, Scene 3

The same. Before the castle.

[Enter ARTHUR, on the Walls.]
Arthur, Duke of Bretagne
1948 The wall is high, and yet will I leap down:—
1949 Good ground, be pitiful and hurt me not!—
1950 There's few or none do know me: if they did,
1951 This ship-boy's semblance hath disguis'd me quite.
1952 I am afraid; and yet I'll venture it.
1953 If I get down, and do not break my limbs,
1954 I'll find a thousand shifts to get away:
1955 As good to die and go, as die and stay.
[Leaps down.]
Arthur, Duke of Bretagne
1956 O me! my uncle's spirit is in these stones:—
1957 Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones!
[Dies.]
[Enter PEMBROKE, SALISBURY, and BIGOT.]
Earl of Salisbury
1958 Lords, I will meet him at Saint Edmunds-Bury;
1959 It is our safety, and we must embrace
1960 This gentle offer of the perilous time.
Earl of Pembroke
1961 Who brought that letter from the cardinal?
Earl of Salisbury
1962 The Count Melun, a noble lord of France,
1963 Whose private with me of the Dauphin's love
1964 Is much more general than these lines import.
Lord Bigot
1965 To-morrow morning let us meet him then.
Earl of Salisbury
1966 Or rather then set forward; for 'twill be
1967 Two long days' journey, lords, or e'er we meet.
[Enter the BASTARD.]
Philip the Bastard (Faulconbridge)
1968 Once more to-day well met, distemper'd lords!
1969 The king by me requests your presence straight.
Earl of Salisbury
1970 The King hath dispossess'd himself of us.
1971 We will not line his thin bestained cloak
1972 With our pure honours, nor attend the foot
1973 That leaves the print of blood where'er it walks.
1974 Return and tell him so: we know the worst.
Philip the Bastard (Faulconbridge)
1975 Whate'er you think, good words, I think, were best.
Earl of Salisbury
1976 Our griefs, and not our manners, reason now.
Philip the Bastard (Faulconbridge)
1977 But there is little reason in your grief;
1978 Therefore 'twere reason you had manners now.
Earl of Pembroke
1979 Sir, sir, impatience hath his privilege.
Philip the Bastard (Faulconbridge)
1980 'Tis true,—to hurt his master, no man else.
Earl of Salisbury
1981 This is the prison:—what is he lies here?
[Seeing Arthur.]
Earl of Pembroke
1982 O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty!
1983 The earth had not a hole to hide this deed.
Earl of Salisbury
1984 Murder, as hating what himself hath done,
1985 Doth lay it open to urge on revenge.
Lord Bigot
1986 Or, when he doom'd this beauty to a grave,
1987 Found it too precious-princely for a grave.
Earl of Salisbury
1988 Sir Richard, what think you? Have you beheld,
1989 Or have you read or heard, or could you think?
1990 Or do you almost think, although you see,
1991 That you do see? could thought, without this object,
1992 Form such another? This is the very top,
1993 The height, the crest, or crest unto the crest,
1994 Of murder's arms: this is the bloodiest shame,
1995 The wildest savagery, the vilest stroke,
1996 That ever wall-ey'd wrath or staring rage
1997 Presented to the tears of soft remorse.
Earl of Pembroke
1998 All murders past do stand excus'd in this;
1999 And this, so sole and so unmatchable,
2000 Shall give a holiness, a purity,
2001 To the yet unbegotten sin of times;
2002 And prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest,
2003 Exampled by this heinous spectacle.
Philip the Bastard (Faulconbridge)
2004 It is a damned and a bloody work;
2005 The graceless action of a heavy hand,—
2006 If that it be the work of any hand.
Earl of Salisbury
2007 If that it be the work of any hand?—
2008 We had a kind of light what would ensue.
2009 It is the shameful work of Hubert's hand;
2010 The practice and the purpose of the king:—
2011 From whose obedience I forbid my soul,
2012 Kneeling before this ruin of sweet life,
2013 And breathing to his breathless excellence
2014 The incense of a vow, a holy vow,
2015 Never to taste the pleasures of the world,
2016 Never to be infected with delight,
2017 Nor conversant with ease and idleness,
2018 Till I have set a glory to this hand,
2019 By giving it the worship of revenge.
Earl of Pembroke and Lord Bigot
2020 Our souls religiously confirm thy words.
[Enter HUBERT.]
Hubert de Burgh
2021 Lords, I am hot with haste in seeking you:
2022 Arthur doth live; the king hath sent for you.
Earl of Salisbury
2023 O, he is bold, and blushes not at death:—
2024 Avaunt, thou hateful villain, get thee gone!
Hubert de Burgh
2025 I am no villain.
Earl of Salisbury
2026 Must I rob the law?
[Drawing his sword.]
Philip the Bastard (Faulconbridge)
2027 Your sword is bright, sir; put it up again.
Earl of Salisbury
2028 Not till I sheathe it in a murderer's skin.
Hubert de Burgh
2029 Stand back, Lord Salisbury,—stand back, I say;
2030 By heaven, I think my sword's as sharp as yours:
2031 I would not have you, lord, forget yourself,
2032 Nor tempt the danger of my true defence;
2033 Lest I, by marking of your rage, forget
2034 Your worth, your greatness, and nobility.
Lord Bigot
2035 Out, dunghill! dar'st thou brave a nobleman?
Hubert de Burgh
2036 Not for my life: but yet I dare defend
2037 My innocent life against an emperor.
Earl of Salisbury
2038 Thou art a murderer.
Hubert de Burgh
2039 Do not prove me so;
2040 Yet I am none: whose tongue soe'er speaks false,
2041 Not truly speaks; who speaks not truly, lies.
Earl of Pembroke
2042 Cut him to pieces.
Philip the Bastard (Faulconbridge)
2043 Keep the peace, I say.
Earl of Salisbury
2044 Stand by, or I shall gall you, Falconbridge.
Philip the Bastard (Faulconbridge)
2045 Thou wert better gall the devil, Salisbury:
2046 If thou but frown on me, or stir thy foot,
2047 Or teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame,
2048 I'll strike thee dead. Put up thy sword betime:
2049 Or I'll so maul you and your toasting-iron
2050 That you shall think the devil is come from hell.
Lord Bigot
2051 What wilt thou do, renowned Falconbridge?
2052 Second a villain and a murderer?
Hubert de Burgh
2053 Lord Bigot, I am none.
Lord Bigot
2054 Who kill'd this prince?
Hubert de Burgh
2055 'Tis not an hour since I left him well:
2056 I honour'd him, I lov'd him, and will weep
2057 My date of life out for his sweet life's loss.
Earl of Salisbury
2058 Trust not those cunning waters of his eyes,
2059 For villainy is not without such rheum;
2060 And he, long traded in it, makes it seem
2061 Like rivers of remorse and innocency.
2062 Away with me, all you whose souls abhor
2063 Th' uncleanly savours of a slaughter-house;
2064 For I am stifled with this smell of sin.
Lord Bigot
2065 Away toward Bury, to the Dauphin there!
Earl of Pembroke
2066 There tell the king he may inquire us out.
[Exeunt LORDS.]
Philip the Bastard (Faulconbridge)
2067 Here's a good world!—Knew you of this fair work?
2068 Beyond the infinite and boundless reach
2069 Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death,
2070 Art thou damn'd, Hubert.
Hubert de Burgh
2071 Do but hear me, sir.
Philip the Bastard (Faulconbridge)
2072 Ha! I'll tell thee what;
2073 Thou'rt damn'd as black—nay, nothing is so black;
2074 Thou art more deep damn'd than Prince Lucifer:
2075 There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell
2076 As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.
Hubert de Burgh
2077 Upon my soul,—
Philip the Bastard (Faulconbridge)
2078 If thou didst but consent
2079 To this most cruel act, do but despair;
2080 And if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread
2081 That ever spider twisted from her womb
2082 Will serve to strangle thee; a rush will be a beam
2083 To hang thee on; or wouldst thou drown thyself,
2084 Put but a little water in a spoon
2085 And it shall be as all the ocean,
2086 Enough to stifle such a villain up.
2087 I do suspect thee very grievously.
Hubert de Burgh
2088 If I in act, consent, or sin of thought,
2089 Be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath
2090 Which was embounded in this beauteous clay,
2091 Let hell want pains enough to torture me!
2092 I left him well.
Philip the Bastard (Faulconbridge)
2093 Go, bear him in thine arms.—
2094 I am amaz'd, methinks, and lose my way
2095 Among the thorns and dangers of this world.—
2096 How easy dost thou take all England up!
2097 From forth this morsel of dead royalty,
2098 The life, the right, and truth of all this realm
2099 Is fled to heaven; and England now is left
2100 To tug and scamble, and to part by the teeth
2101 The unow'd interest of proud-swelling state.
2102 Now for the bare-pick'd bone of majesty
2103 Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest,
2104 And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace:
2105 Now powers from home and discontents at home
2106 Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits,
2107 As doth a raven on a sick-fallen beast,
2108 The imminent decay of wrested pomp.
2109 Now happy he whose cloak and cincture can
2110 Hold out this tempest.—Bear away that child,
2111 And follow me with speed: I'll to the king;
2112 A thousand businesses are brief in hand,
2113 And heaven itself doth frown upon the land.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 1948historical topical
“The wall is high, and yet will I leap down”
Arthur is attempting to escape from the castle where John has imprisoned him. He has disguised himself as a ship-boy (a low-ranking sailor's helper) to avoid being recognized. His plan is to jump from the castle wall and then slip away. The leap is his only way out — and it kills him.
historical The Angevin succession and Arthur's claim
TLN 1951archaic vocab
“This ship-boy's semblance hath disguis'd me quite”
'Semblance' means outward appearance or disguise. A ship-boy was one of the lowest-ranked workers on a vessel — a child or youth who did menial tasks aboard ship. Arthur is saying that dressing like this nobody has made him completely unrecognizable.
TLN 1956historical topical
“my uncle's spirit is in these stones”
Arthur's dying words blame the stones — and by extension John himself — for his fall. 'My uncle's spirit' means the murderous will of King John has somehow entered the very castle walls and done what Hubert could not: killed the boy. Arthur's last line — 'Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones' — divides him between the sacred and the political, his soul belonging to God and his body remaining as evidence against John.
historical The fall of princes (de casibus tragedy)
TLN 1958historical topical
“meet him at Saint Edmunds-Bury”
Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk, is where Salisbury means to meet the Dauphin Louis of France. The historically important meeting of the rebel English barons at Bury St Edmunds (November 1214) was where they swore to force John's hand — but Shakespeare omits Magna Carta entirely. Here the town serves as the rendezvous where the disaffected lords plan to join the French invasion.
TLN 1971rhetorical device
“line his thin bestained cloak / With our pure honours”
Salisbury builds an extended metaphor: John's authority is a thin, bloodstained cloak, and the lords' honorable service would be the lining that gives it body and warmth. To 'line' a cloak is to reinforce it with an inner layer of finer cloth. Salisbury refuses to do this — to prop up a murderer's rule with their reputations. 'Bestained' means stained with blood. The image makes John's kingship something already ragged and filthy.
TLN 1992rhetorical device
“This is the very top, / The height, the crest, or crest unto the crest, / Of murder's arms”
Salisbury piles up synonyms — 'top,' 'height,' 'crest,' 'crest unto the crest' — to convey that this murder surpasses every previous one. 'Arms' is a heraldic pun: the 'crest' is the topmost part of a coat of arms (the figure above the helmet), so 'murder's arms' treats Murder as a noble house whose coat of arms has just been topped by this ultimate crime. The effect is a crescendo of outrage through repetition, a figure called anaphora or gradatio.
TLN 1998rhetorical device
“All murders past do stand excus'd in this”
Pembroke argues by hyperbolic comparison: Arthur's murder is so monstrous that every previous killing looks innocent beside it. Future murderers will be able to point to Arthur's death and call their own crimes 'but a jest' by comparison. This is the rhetorical figure of paradox pushed to its limit — the new crime retroactively launders all older ones. The speech captures the Elizabethan sense that murdering a royal innocent, especially a child, was the worst possible act.
TLN 2013rhetorical device
“breathing to his breathless excellence / The incense of a vow, a holy vow”
Salisbury kneels over Arthur's body and swears a formal revenge oath — 'breathing' the vow to the 'breathless' (dead) prince. The reversal of 'breathing' and 'breathless' is a sharp verbal antithesis that measures life against death in a single word. 'Incense' is the fragrant smoke burned in church worship, casting the oath as a sacred rite. Salisbury is conducting a quasi-religious ceremony over the corpse — rebellion framed as a pious duty.
TLN 2024archaic vocab
“Avaunt, thou hateful villain, get thee gone”
'Avaunt' is an archaic exclamation meaning 'get away' or 'be gone,' used to drive away someone considered offensive or dangerous — the same dismissal used to banish a ghost or devil. Salisbury treats Hubert as literally untouchable, like a malevolent spirit.
TLN 2026syntax grammar
“Must I rob the law?”
Salisbury means: 'Must I take justice into my own hands — rob the law of its rightful execution of this man — by killing him myself before a trial?' He is drawing his sword to kill Hubert on the spot, and the phrase captures his frustration that law cannot be fast enough. The conceit is that killing someone outside a legal process 'steals' the punishment that rightly belongs to the courts.
TLN 2035archaic vocab
“Out, dunghill! dar'st thou brave a nobleman?”
'Dunghill' is a contemptuous term for a man of low social standing — literally a manure heap, extended as an insult to anyone base-born or filthy in character. 'Brave' here is a verb meaning to defy or challenge. Bigot is telling Hubert that a commoner has no right to stand his ground against a lord — rank entitles the nobleman to unchecked anger.
TLN 2074biblical allusion
“Thou art more deep damn'd than Prince Lucifer: / There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell”
The Bastard says that if Hubert killed Arthur, Hubert is damned worse than Lucifer himself — not merely fallen from heaven (the standard fate of Satan), but sunk to a depth of evil that hell has not yet seen. Lucifer was the name given to Satan before his fall from heaven: Isaiah 14:12 ('How art thou fallen from heauen, O Lucifer, sonne of the morning!') was universally read as Satan's pride and expulsion. Calling Arthur's murder worse than what Lucifer did gives the Bastard's anger its theological maximum.
biblical The fall of the angels (Lucifer's pride)
TLN 2080rhetorical device
“if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread / That ever spider twisted from her womb / Will serve to strangle thee”
The Bastard imagines Hubert's guilt as so crushing that the flimsiest physical means would be enough to execute him: a spider's thread would serve as a hangman's rope, a hollow reed as a gallows-beam, a spoonful of water as a drowning ocean. The figure is a paradox of scale — the guilty man's moral weight makes even the tiniest instrument lethal. It is one of Shakespeare's most vivid expressions of how guilt unmans its bearer.
TLN 2094rhetorical device
“I am amaz'd, methinks, and lose my way / Among the thorns and dangers of this world”
'Amaz'd' in Elizabethan English meant stunned into confusion, not simply impressed — from the root 'maze,' a labyrinth. The Bastard feels genuinely lost, unable to find the right path in a world where a prince can die like this. He then delivers the scene's choric meditation: Arthur's body is 'this morsel of dead royalty,' and with him the 'life, the right, and truth' of England have fled to heaven, leaving the realm to 'tug and scamble' — to scrabble and fight — over the scraps of power.
TLN 2109archaic vocab
“Now happy he whose cloak and cincture can / Hold out this tempest”
A 'cincture' is a belt or girdle — the cord that cinches a cloak closed. The Bastard closes his survey of England's crisis with an image of simple physical shelter: the lucky man now is the one whose cloak and belt can keep out the coming storm of civil war and foreign invasion. The contrast with the lords and kings he has just described is pointed: greatness offers no protection; ordinary weather-proof clothing does.