On Power (Penguin) by William Shakespeare

Author:William Shakespeare [Shakespeare, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141956602
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

PRINCE HARRY:

O pardon me, my liege! But for my tears,

The moist impediments unto my speech,

I had forestalled this dear and deep rebuke

Ere you with grief had spoke and I had heard

The course of it so far. There is your crown.

(He returns the crown and kneels.)

And He that wears the crown immortally

Long guard it yours! If I affect it more

Than as your honour and as your renown,

Let me no more from this obedience rise,

Which is my most true and inward duteous spirit

Teacheth this prostrate and exterior bending.

God witness with me, when I here came in

And found no course of breath within your majesty,

How cold it struck my heart. If I do feign,

O, let me in my present wildness die,

And never live to show th’incredulous world

The noble change that I have purposed.

Coming to look on you, thinking you dead,

And dead almost, my liege, to think you were,

I spake unto this crown as having sense

And thus upbraided it: ‘The care on thee depending

Hath fed upon the body of my father,

Therefore thou best of gold art worst of gold.

Other, less fine in carat, is more precious,

Preserving life in medicine potable,

But thou, most fine, most honoured, most renowned,

Hast eat thy bearer up.’ Thus, my royal liege,

Accusing it, I put it on my head,

To try with it, as with an enemy

That had before my face murdered my father,

The quarrel of a true inheritor.

But if it did infect my blood with joy

Or swell my thoughts to any strain of pride,

If any rebel or vain spirit of mine

Did with the least affection of a welcome

Give entertainment to the might of it,

Let God for ever keep it from my head,

And make me as the poorest vassal is,

That doth with awe and terror kneel to it.

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