THE YOUTH. 'Tis but The anti-mask, and serves as discords do If they succeeded not to Winter's flaw; SECOND CITIZEN. I and thou... A MARSHALSMAN. Place, give place! Enter SCENE II. A Chamber in Whitehall. the KING, QUEEN, LAUD, LORD STRAFFORD, LORD COTTINGTON, and other Lords; ARCHY ; also ST. JOHN, with some Gentlemen of the Inns of Court. KING. Thanks, gentlemen. I heartily accept crown. A gentle heart enjoys what it confers, Accept my hearty thanks. Rose on me like the figures of past years, Treading their still path back to infancy, More beautiful and mild as they draw nearer The quiet cradle. I could have almost wept To think I was in Paris, where these shows Are well devised-such as I was ere yet My young heart shared a portion of the burthen, The careful weight, of this great monarchy. There, gentlemen, between the sovereign's pleasure And that which it regards, no clamour lifts 20 Its proud interposition. In Paris ribald censurers dare not move Their poisonous tongues against these sinless sports; And his smile If Warms those who bask in it, as ours would do ... Take my heart's thanks: add them, gentlemen, To those good words which, were he King of France, My royal lord would turn to golden deeds. ST. JOHN. 30 Madam, the love of Englishmen can make Enriched by smiles which France can never buy. [Exeunt ST. JOHN and the Gentlemen of the Inns of Court. KING. My Lord Archbishop, Mark you what spirit sits in St. John's eyes? Methinks it is too saucy for this presence. ARCHY. Yes, pray your Grace look: for, like an unsophisticated... sees everything upside down, you who are wise will discern the shadow of an idiot in lawn sleeves and a rochet setting springes to catch woodcocks in haymaking time. Poor Archy, whose owl-eyes are tempered to the error of his age, and because he is a fool, and by special ordinance of God forbidden ever to see himself as he is, sees now in that deep eye a blindfold devil sitting on the ball, and weighing words out between king and subjects. One scale is full of promises, and the other full of protestations: and then another devil creeps behind the first out of the dark windings [of a] pregnant lawyer's brain, and takes the bandage from the other's eyes, and throws a sword into the left-hand scale, for all the world like my Lord Essex's there. STRAFFORD. A rod in pickle for the Fool's back! ARCHY. 54 Aye, and some are now smiling whose tears will make the brine; for the Fool sees. . . STRAFFORD. Insolent! You shall have your coat turned and be whipped out of the palace for this. ARCHY. When all the fools are whipped, and all the protestant writers, while the knaves are whipping the fools ever since a thief was set to catch a thief. If all turncoats were whipped out of palaces, poor Archy would be disgraced in good company. Let the knaves.whip the fools, and all the fools laugh at it. [Let the] wise and goodly slit each other's noses and ears (having no need of any sense of discernment in their craft); and the knaves, to marshal them, join in a procession to Bedlam, to intreat the madmen to omit their sublime Platonic contemplations, and manage the state of England. Let all the honest men who lie pinched up at the prisons or the pillories, in custody of the pursuivants of the High Commission Court, marshal them. Enter Secretary LYTTELTON, with papers. KING (looking over the papers). These stiff Scots 75 His Grace of Canterbury must take order 80 Shall be myself in Ireland, and shall add Weston, Look that those merchants draw not without loss Their bullion from the Tower; and, on the payment Of ship-money, take fullest compensation Whose limits, from neglect, have been o'ergrown With cottages and cornfields. The uttermost Farthing exact from those who claim exemption From knighthood: that which once was a reward 89 Shall thus be made a punishment, that subjects Lay my command upon the Courts below ARCHY. The fool is here. LAUD. I crave permission of your Majesty To order that this insolent fellow be KING. What, my Archy? He mocks and mimics all he sees and hears, Yet with a quaint and graceful license. Prithee For this once do not as Prynne would, were 108 he Primate of England. With your Grace's leave, He lives in his own world; and, like a parrot Hung in his gilded prison from the window Of a queen's bower over the public way, Blasphemes with a bird's mind:-his words, like arrows Which know no aim beyond the archer's wit, Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy.(To ARCHY) Go, sirrah, and repent of your offence Ten minutes in the rain: be it your penance |