Look who comes here! A grave unto a soul;
Holding th’ eternal spirit, against her will,
In the vile prison of afflicted breath.
I prithee, lady, go away with me.
CONSTANCE.
Lo, now, now see the issue of your peace!
KING PHILIP.
Patience, good lady! Comfort, gentle Constance!
CONSTANCE.
No, I defy all counsel, all redress,
But that which ends all counsel, true redress,
Death, death, O amiable, lovely death!
Thou odoriferous stench, sound rottenness!
Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,
Thou hate and terror to prosperity,
And I will kiss thy detestable bones
And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows,
And ring these fingers with thy household worms,
And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,
And be a carrion monster like thyself.
Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil’st,
And buss thee as thy wife. Misery’s love,
O, come to me!
KING PHILIP.
O fair affliction, peace!
CONSTANCE.
No, no, I will not, having breath to cry.
O, that my tongue were in the thunder’s mouth!
Then with a passion would I shake the world;
And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy
Which cannot hear a lady’s feeble voice,
Which scorns a modern invocation.
PANDULPH.
Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow.
CONSTANCE.
Thou art not holy to belie me so.
I am not mad. This hair I tear is mine;
My name is Constance; I was Geoffrey’s wife;
Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost.
I am not mad; I would to heaven I were!
For then ’tis like I should forget myself.
O, if I could, what grief should I forget!
Preach some philosophy to make me mad,
And thou shalt be canoniz’d, cardinal;
For, being not mad but sensible of grief,
My reasonable part produces reason
How I may be deliver’d of these woes,
And teaches me to kill or hang myself.
If I were mad, I should forget my son,
Or madly think a babe of clouts were he.
I am not mad; too well, too well I feel
The different plague of each calamity.
KING PHILIP.
Bind up those tresses. O, what love I note
In the fair multitude of those her hairs!
Where but by a chance a silver drop hath fall’n,
Even to that drop ten thousand wiry friends
Do glue themselves in sociable grief,
Like true, inseparable, faithful loves,
Sticking together in calamity.
CONSTANCE.
To England, if you will.