No More Learning

ST. JOHN:
Madam, the love of Englishmen can make
The lightest favour of their lawful king _30
Outweigh a despot's. --We humbly take our leaves,
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. _35

ARCHY:
Yes, pray your Grace look: for, like an unsophisticated [eye] 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. _48

STRAFFORD:
A rod in pickle for the Fool's back!

ARCHY:
Ay, 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. _53

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 godly 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 entreat 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. _65

NOTE:
_64 pinched marked as doubtful by Rossetti.
1870; Forman, Dowden; penned Woodberry.

[ENTER SECRETARY LYTTELTON, WITH PAPERS. ]

KING [LOOKING OVER THE PAPERS]:
These stiff Scots
His Grace of Canterbury must take order
To force under the Church's yoke. --You, Wentworth,
Shall be myself in Ireland, and shall add
Your wisdom, gentleness, and energy, _70
To what in me were wanting. --My Lord Weston,
Look that those merchants draw not without loss
Their bullion from the Tower; and, on the payment
Of shipmoney, take fullest compensation
For violation of our royal forests, _75
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
Shall thus be made a punishment, that subjects _80
May know how majesty can wear at will
The rugged mood. --My Lord of Coventry,
Lay my command upon the Courts below
That bail be not accepted for the prisoners
Under the warrant of the Star Chamber. _85
The people shall not find the stubbornness
Of Parliament a cheap or easy method
Of dealing with their rightful sovereign:
And doubt not this, my Lord of Coventry,
We will find time and place for fit rebuke. -- _90
My Lord of Canterbury.

NOTE:
_22-90 In Paris.