[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