Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/236

Rh “Comst. O, lawful let it be, That I have room with Rome to curse a while !

Good father cardinal, cry thou, amen,

To my keen curses: for, without my wrong, There is no tongue hath power to curse him right.” Afterwards she only contributes short sentences to the dialogue, so pregnant with mighty interest; but they are artfully conceived to incline the wavering mind of King Philip and Lewis to the warlike decision she so ardently desires, and they are expressed with fierce unity of purpose. As

she has imprecated from heaven the bloody arbitrament of battle, she invokes hell itself, to alarm the timid soul of

Philip: “Look to that devil lest that France repent, And by disjoining hands, hell lose a soul.” Lewis she taunts with his unfledged bride, and the coyness of his honour. Her passion stimulates her lofty intellect, and enables her to suggest in the strongest possible manner to each person, the motive likely to weigh most. She gains her purpose, and the issue of war is to decide her rights. Blanch, with true woman's heart, laments for the sake of those she loves simply and for themselves. To her,

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“The sun's o'ercast with blood.”

But Constance, to whom peace is war, war is of all things most welcome, as the means to the end of her ambition, her

fiendish ambition. May those who seek for war ever bear its heaviest penalties. May the general murderer feel the truth of Pandulph's assertion of the particular one : “For he that steeps his safety in true blood, Shall find but bloody safety and untrue.” So it is with Constance.

She loses her cause and her son,

and the passion of ambitious love now appears in the form of grief, perhaps of remorse.