ARTHUR. How hard it is to rule th’ aspiring mind, And what a kingly point it seems to those, Whose lordly hands the stately sceptre sways, Still to pursue the drift they first decreed, My wonted mind and kingdom lets me know. Think not but, if you drive this hazard on, He desperate will resolve to win or die: Whereof who knows which were the greater guilt, The sire to slay the son, or son the sire?
CADOR. If bloody Mars do so extremely sway, That either son or sire must needs be slain, Give law the choice: let him die that deserves. Each impotent affection notes a want. No worse a vice than lenity in kings: Remiss indulgence soon undoes a realm. He teacheth how to sin that winks at sins, And bids offend that suffereth an offence. The only hope of leave increaseth crimes, And he that pardoneth one, embold’neth all To break the laws. Each patience fostereth wrong. But vice severely punish’d faints at foot, And creeps no further off than where it falls. One sour example will prevent more vice Than all the best persuasions in the world. Rough rigour looks out right, and still prevails: Smooth mildness looks too many ways to thrive. Wherefore, since Mordred’s crimes have wrong’d the laws In so extreme a sort, as is too strange, Let right and justice rule with rigour’s aid, And work his wrack at length, although too late; That damning laws, so damned by the laws, He may receive his deep deserved doom. So let it fare with all that dare the like: Let sword, let fire, let torments be their end. Severity upholds both realm and rule.
ARTHUR. Ah too severe! far from a father’s mind. Compassion is as fit for kings as wrath. Laws must not low’r; rule oft admitteth ruth. So hate, as if there were yet cause to love: Take not their lives as foes which may be friends. To spoil my son were to despoil myself: Oft, whiles we seek our foes, we seek our foils. Let’s rather seek how to allure his mind With good deserts: deserts may win the worst.
HOWELL. Where Cato first had saved a thief from death, And after was himself condemn’d to die, When else not one would execute the doom, Who but the thief did undertake the task? If too much bounty work so bad effects In thankless friends, what for a ruthless foe? Let laws have still their course: the ill-dispos’d Grudge at their lives to whom they owe too much.