Arthur.  All things that you shall use to do me wrong,
     Deny their office, only you do lack
     That mercy which fierce fire and iron extend,
     Creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses. ’

   Hubert.  Well, see to live; I will not touch thine eyes
     For all the treasure that thine uncle owns: 
     Yet I am sworn, and I did purpose, boy,
     With this same very iron to bum them out.

   Arthur.  O, now you look like Hubert.  All this while
     You were disguised.

   Hubert.  Peace! no more.  Adieu,
     Your uncle must not know but you are dead. 
     I’ll fill these dogged spies with false reports: 
     And, pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure,
     That Hubert, for the wealth of all the world,
     Will not offend thee.

     Arthur.  O heav’n!  I thank you, Hubert.

   Hubert.  Silence, no more; go closely in with me;
     Much danger do I undergo for thee. [Exeunt.]

His death afterwards, when he throws himself from his prison-walls, excites the utmost pity for his innocence and friendless situation, and well justifies the exaggerated denunciations of Falconbridge to Hubert whom he suspects wrongfully of the deed.

     There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell
     As thou shalt be, if thou did’st kill this child. 
     —­If thou did’st but consent
     To this most cruel act, do but despair: 
     And if thou want’st a cord, the smallest thread
     That ever spider twisted from her womb
     Will strangle thee; a rush will be a beam
     To hang thee on:  or would’st thou drown thyself,
     Put but a little water in a spoon,
     And it shall be as all the ocean,
     Enough to stifle such a villain up.

The excess of maternal tenderness, rendered desparate by the fickleness of friends and the injustice of fortune, and made stronger in will, in proportion to the want of all other power, was never more finely expressed than in Constance, The dignity of her answer to King Philip, when she refuses to accompany his messenger, ‘To me and to the state of my great grief, let kings assemble,’ her indignant reproach to Austria for deserting her cause, her invocation to death, ‘that love of misery’, however fine and spirited, all yield to the beauty of the passage, where, her passion subsiding into tenderness, she addresses the Cardinal in these words: 

     Oh father Cardinal, I have heard you say
     That we shall see and know our friends in heav’n: 
     If that be, I shall see my boy again,
     For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
     To him that did but yesterday suspire,
     There was not such a gracious creature born. 
     But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud,
     And chase the native beauty from his cheek,
     And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
     As dim and meagre as