There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell As thou shalt be, if thou did'st kill this child. --If thou did'st but consent To this most cruel act, do but despair: And if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread That ever spider twisted from her womb Will strangle thee; a rush will be a beam To hang thee on: or would'st thou drown thyself, Put but a little water in a spoon, And it shall be as all the ocean, Enough to stifle such a villain up. The excess of maternal tenderness, rendered desparate by the fickleness of friends and the injustice of fortune, and made stronger in will, in proportion to the want of all other power, was never more finely expressed than in Constance, The dignity of her answer to King Philip, when she refuses to accompany his messenger, 'To me and to the state of my great grief, let kings assemble,' her indignant reproach to Austria for deserting her cause, her invocation to death, 'that love of misery', however fine and spirited, all yield to the beauty of the passage, where, her passion subsiding into tenderness, she addresses the Cardinal in these words: Oh father Cardinal, I have heard you say That we shall see and know our friends in heav'n: If that be, I shall see my boy again, For since the birth of Cain, the first male child, To him that did but yesterday suspire, There was not such a gracious creature born. But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud, And chase the native beauty from his cheek, And he will look as hollow as a ghost, As dim and meagre as an ague's fit, And so he'll die; and rising so again, When I shall meet him in the court of heav'n, I shall not know him; therefore never, never Must I behold my pretty Arthur more. K. Philip. You are as fond of grief as of your child. Constance. Grief fills the room up of my absent child: Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me; Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form. Then have I reason to be fond of grief. The contrast between the mild resignation of Queen Katherine to her own wrongs, and the wild, uncontrollable affliction of Constance for the wrongs which she sustains as a mother, is no less naturally conceived than it is ably sustained throughout these two wonderful characters.