Page 209 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

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. [115]

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 [120]
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! [125]
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? [130]

MESSENGER
Under the Dolphin.

Enter the Bastard and Peter of Pomfret.

KING JOHN
Thou hast made me giddy

With these ill tidings. − Now, what says the world
To your proceedings? do not seek to stuff
My head with more ill news, for it is full.