Drum. Enter KING, HUBERT, Soldiers.
KING. To Windsor welcome, Hubert. Soft, methinks
Bruce and our lords are at a parley now?
BRUCE. Chester and Mowbray, you are John's sworn friends;
Will you see more? speak, answer me, my lords.
I am no niggard, you shall have your fill.
BOTH. We have too much, and surfeit with the woe.
BRUCE. Are you all full? there comes a ravening kite,
That both at quick, at dead, at all will smite.
He shall, he must; ay, and by'r Lady, may
Command me to give over holiday,
And set wide open what you would not see.
KING. Why stand ye, lords, and see this traitor perch'd
Upon our castle's battlements so proud?
Come down, young Bruce, set ope the castle-gates;
Unto thy sov'reign let thy knee be bow'd,
And mercy shall be given to thee and thine.
BRUCE. O miserable thing!
Comes mercy from the mouth of John our king?
Why then, belike, hell will be pitiful.
I will not ope the gates—the gate I will;
The gate where thy shame and my sorrow sits.
See my dead mother and her famish'd son!
[Opens a casement, showing the dead bodies within.]
Open thy tyrant's eyes, for to the world
I will lay open thy fell cruelties.
KING. We heard, indeed, thy mother and her son
In prison died by wilful famishment.
BRUCE. Sin doubled upon sin! Slander'st thou the dead?
Unwilling willingness it shall appear,
By then I have produc'd, as I will do,
The just presumptions 'gainst your unjust act.
KING. Assail the castle, lords! alarum, drums!
And drown this screech-owl's cries with your deep sounds.