PEMBROKE.
Stay yet, Lord Salisbury. I’ll go with thee
And find th’ inheritance of this poor child,
His little kingdom of a forced grave.
That blood which ow’d the breadth of all this isle
Three foot of it doth hold. Bad world the while!
This must not be thus borne; this will break out
To all our sorrows, and ere long, I doubt.
[Exeunt Lords.]
KING JOHN.
They burn in indignation. I repent.
There is no sure foundation set on blood,
No certain life achiev’d by others’ death.
Enter a Messenger.
A fearful eye thou hast. Where is that blood
That I have seen inhabit in those cheeks?
So foul a sky clears not without a storm.
Pour down thy weather: how goes all in France?
MESSENGER.
From France to England. Never such a power
For any foreign preparation
Was levied in the body of a land.
The copy of your speed is learn’d by them;
For when you should be told they do prepare,
The tidings comes that they are all arriv’d.
KING JOHN.
O, where hath our intelligence been drunk?
Where hath it slept? Where is my mother’s care,
That such an army could be drawn in France,
And she not hear of it?
MESSENGER.
My liege, her ear
Is stopp’d with dust. The first of April died
Your noble mother; and as I hear, my lord,
The Lady Constance in a frenzy died
Three days before. But this from rumour’s tongue
I idly heard; if true or false I know not.
KING JOHN.
Withhold thy speed, dreadful occasion!
O, make a league with me, till I have pleas’d
My discontented peers! What! Mother dead?
How wildly then walks my estate in France!
Under whose conduct came those powers of France
That thou for truth giv’st out are landed here?
MESSENGER.
Under the Dauphin.