Page 193 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

CONSTANCE

Thou art holy to belie me so! −
I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine; [45]
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! [50]
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, [55]
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. [60]

KING PHILIP
Bind up those tresses. O, what love I note
In the fair multitude of those her hairs!
Where but by chance a silver drop hath fall’n,

Even to that drop ten thousand wiry friends
Do glue themselves in sociable grief, [65]
Like true, inseparable, faithful loves,
Sticking together in calamity.

CONSTANCE
To England, if you will.

KING PHILIP

Bind up your hairs.

CONSTANCE

Yes, that I will; and wherefore will I do it?
I tore them from their bonds and cried aloud, [70]
“O that these hands could so redeem my son,