No More Learning

Guilty though it may be! I would still spare
The stubborn country of my birth, and ward _355
From countenances which I loved in youth
The wrathful Church's lacerating hand.
[TO LAUD. ]
Have you o'erlooked the other articles?

[ENTER ARCHY. ]

LAUD:
Hazlerig, Hampden, Pym, young Harry Vane,
Cromwell, and other rebels of less note, _360
Intend to sail with the next favouring wind
For the Plantations.

ARCHY:
Where they think to found
A commonwealth like Gonzalo's in the play,
Gynaecocoenic and pantisocratic.

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.