ARCHY.

Where they think to found

A commonwealth like Gonzalo's in the play,

Gynaecocoenic and pantisocratic.

KING.

What's that, sirrah?

ARCHY.

New devil's politics.

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:

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.

 

[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?

 

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.

 

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.

 

QUEEN.

Is the yrain over, sirrah?

KING.

When it rains

And the sun shines, 'twill rain again to-morrow:

And therefore never smile till you've done crying.

 

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

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.

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.

QUEEN. Who taught you this trash, sirrah?

ARCHY. A torn leaf out of an old book trampled in the dirt. – But for the rainbow. It moved as the sun moved, and ... until the top of the Tower ... of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and Lambeth Palace look as dark as a rock before the other. Methought I saw a crown figured upon one tip, and a mitre on the other. So, as I had heard treasures were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set off, and at the Tower – But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found close to the closet- window on which the rainbow had glimmered.

KING. Speak: I will make my Fool my conscience.

ARCHY. Then conscience is a fool. – I saw there a cat caught in a rat-trap. I heard the rats squeak behind the wainscots: it seemed to me that the very mice were consulting on the manner of her death.

QUEEN.

Archy is shrewd and bitter.

ARCHY.

Like the season,

So blow the winds. – But at the other end of the rainbow, where the gray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tender inter-fusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, what think you that I found instead of a mitre?

KING.

Vane's wits perhaps.

ARCHY. Something as vain.