No More Learning

NOTE:
_363 Gonzalo's 1870; Gonzaga Boscombe manuscript.

KING:
What's that, sirrah?

ARCHY:
New devil's politics. _365
Hell is the pattern of all commonwealths:
Lucifer was the first republican.
Will you hear Merlin's prophecy, how three [posts? ]
'In one brainless skull, when the whitethorn is full,
Shall sail round the world, and come back again: _370
Shall sail round the world in a brainless skull,
And come back again when the moon is at full:'--
When, in spite of the Church,
They will hear homilies of whatever length
Or form they please. _375

[COTTINGTON? ]:
So please your Majesty to sign this order
For their detention.

ARCHY:
If your Majesty were tormented night and day by fever, gout,
rheumatism, and stone, and asthma, etc. , and you found these diseases
had secretly entered into a conspiracy to abandon you, should you
think it necessary to lay an embargo on the port by which they meant
to dispeople your unquiet kingdom of man? _383

KING:
If fear were made for kings, the Fool mocks wisely;
But in this case--[WRITING]. Here, my lord, take the warrant,
And see it duly executed forthwith. --
That imp of malice and mockery shall be punished. _387

[EXEUNT ALL BUT KING, QUEEN, AND ARCHY. ]

ARCHY:
Ay, I am the physician of whom Plato prophesied, who was to be accused
by the confectioner before a jury of children, who found him guilty
without waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without benefit of
clergy.
Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth-night Queen of Hearts, and
the overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud--who
would reduce a verdict of 'guilty, death,' by famine, if it were
impregnable by composition--all impannelled against poor Archy for
presenting them bitter physic the last day of the holidays. _397

QUEEN:
Is the rain over, sirrah?

KING:
When it rains
And the sun shines, 'twill rain again to-morrow:
And therefore never smile till you've done crying. _400

ARCHY:
But 'tis all over now: like the April anger of woman, the gentle sky
has wept itself serene.

QUEEN:
What news abroad? how looks the world this morning?

ARCHY:
Gloriously as a grave covered with virgin flowers. There's a rainbow
in the sky. Let your Majesty look at it, for

'A rainbow in the morning _407
Is the shepherd's warning;'

and the flocks of which you are the pastor are scattered among the
mountain-tops, where every drop of water is a flake of snow, and the
breath of May pierces like a January blast. _411

KING:
The sheep have mistaken the wolf for their shepherd, my poor boy; and
the shepherd, the wolves for their watchdogs.

QUEEN:
But the rainbow was a good sign, Archy: it says that the waters of the
deluge are gone, and can return no more.

ARCHY:
Ay, the salt-water one: but that of tears and blood must yet come
down, and that of fire follow, if there be any truth in lies. --The
rainbow hung over the city with all its shops,. . . and churches, from
north to south, like a bridge of congregated lightning pieced by the
masonry of heaven--like a balance in which the angel that distributes
the coming hour was weighing that heavy one whose poise is now felt in
the lightest hearts, before it bows the proudest heads under the
meanest feet.