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Your noble mother; And, as I hear, my lord,
The Lady Constance in a frenzy died
Three days before: but this from rumour's tongue
I idly heard; if true, or false, I know not.

K. John. Withhold thy speed, dreadful occasion!
O, make a league with me, till I have pleas'd
My discontented peers!-What! mother dead?
How wildly then walks my estate in France!!--
Under whose conduct came those powers of France,
That thou for truth giv'st out, are landed here?
Mess. Under the Dauphin.

Enter the Bastard and PETER of POMFRET. K. John. Thou hast made me giddy With these ill tidings.-Now, what says the world To your proceedings? do not seek to stuff My head with more ill news, for it is full.

Bast. But if you be afeard to hear the worst,
Then let the worst, unheard, fall on your head.
K. John. Bear with me, cousin; for I was
amaz'd2

Under the tide; but now I breathe again
Aloft the flood; and can give audience
To any tongue, speak it of what it will.

Bast. How I have sped among the clergymen,
The sums I have collected shall express.
But, as I travelled hither through the land,
I find the people strangely fantasied;
Possess'd with rumours, full of idle dreams;
Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear:
And here's a prophet, that I brought with me
From forth the streets of Pomfret, whom I found
With many hundreds treading on his heels;
To whom he sung, in rude harsh sounding rhymes,
That, ere the next Ascension-day at noon,
Your highness should deliver up your crown.

3

K. John. Thou idle dreamer, wherefore didst

thou so?

4

Peter. Foreknowing that the truth will fall out so. K. John. Hubert, away with him; imprison him; And on that day at noon, whereon, he says, I shall yield up my crown, let him be hang'd: Deliver him to safety, and return, For I must use thee.-O my gentle cousin, [Exit HUBERT, with PETER. Hear'st thou the news abroad, who are arriv'd? Bast. The French, my lord; men's mouths are

full of it:

Besides, I met Lord Bigot, and Lord Salisbury
(With eyes as red as new-enkindled fire),
And others more, going to seek the grave
Of Arthur, who, they say, is kill'd to-night
On your suggestion.

K. John.

Gentle kinsman, go,

And thrust thyself into their companies: I have a way to win their loves again; Bring them before me.

Bast.

I will seek them out.

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Four fixed; and the fifth did whirl about
The other four, in wondrous motion.

K. John. Five moons?
Hub.

Old men, and beldams, in the streets
Do prophesy upon it dangerously:
Young Arthur's death is common in their mouths;
And when they talk of him, they shake their heads,
And whisper one another in the ear;

And he, that speaks, doth gripe the hearer's wrist;
Whilst he, that hears, makes fearful action,
With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes,
I saw a smith stand with his hammer thus,
The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool,
With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news;
Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,
Standing on slippers (which his nimble haste
Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet),
Told of a thousand warlike French,

That were embattailed and rank'd in Kent:
Another lean unwash'd artificer

Cuts off his tale, and talks of Arthur's death.

K. John. Why seek'st thou to possess me with

these fears?

Why urgest thou so oft young Arthur's death? Thy hand hath murder'd him; I had a mighty cause To wish him dead, but thou hadst none to kill him. Hub. Had none, my lord! why, did you not pro

voke me?

K. John. It is the curse of kings to be attended
By slaves, that take their humours for a warrant
To break within the bloody house of life:
And, on the winking of authority,

To understand a law; to know the meaning
Of dangerous majesty, when, perchance, it frowns
More upon humour than advis'd respect."

Hub. Here is your hand and seal for what I did.
K. John. O, when the last account 'twixt heaven

and earth

Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal
Witness against us to damnation!

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds,
Make deeds ill done! Hadest not thou been by,
A fellow by the hand of nature mark'd,
Quoted, and sign'd, to do a deed of shame,
This murder had not come into my mind:
But, taking note of thy abhorr'd aspect,

K. John. Nay, but make haste; the better foot Finding thee fit for bloody villany,

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2 Astonied, stunned, confounded, are the ancient synonymes of amazed, obstupesco.

3 This man was a hermit in great repute with the common people. Notwithstanding the event is said to have fallen out as he prophesied, the poor fellow was inhu manly dragged at horses' tails through the streets of Warham, and, together with his son, who appears to have been even more innocent than his father, hanged afterwards upon a gibbet. Holinshed, in anno 1213.Speed says that Peter the hermit was suborned by the pope's legate, the French king, and the barons for this

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Apt, liable, to be employ'd in danger,

I faintly broke with thee of Arthur's death;
And thou, to be endeared to a king,

Made it no conscience to destroy a prince.
Hub. My lord,-

K. John. Hadst thou but shook thy head, or made

a pause,

Each other's words, and yet no creature speaks; A tongue-tied fear hath made a midnight hour, And speeches sleep through all the waking region' 6 This passage, which called forth the antiquarian knowledge of so many learned commentators, is no, from the return of the fashion of right and left shoes, become intelligible without a note, 7 Deliberate consideration.

8 To quote is to note or mark.

9 There are many touches of nature in this conference of John with Hubert. A man engaged in wickednes would keep the profit to himself, and tranfer the gui to his accomplice. These reproaches vented aga Hubert are not words of art or policy, but the erupcios of a mind swelling with consciousness of a crime, and desirous of discharging its misery on another. Th account of the timidity of guilt is drawn, ab ipsis recer sibus mentis, from the intimate knowledge of mankind: particularly that line in which he says, that to have bus

When I spake darkly what I purposed;
Or turn'd an eye of doubt upon my face,
And bid me tell my tale in express words;
Deep shame had struck me dumb, made me break off,
And those thy fears might have wrought fears in me:
But thou didst understand me by my signs,
And didst in signs again parley with sin;
Yea, without stop, didst let thy heart consent,
And, consequently, thy rude hand to act

The deed, which both our tongues held vile to

name.

Out of my sight, and never see me more!
My nobles leave me; and my state is brav'd,
Even at my gates, with ranks of foreign powers;
Nay, in the body of this fleshly land,

This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath,
Hostility and civil tumult reigns

Between my conscience, and my cousin's death.
Hub. Arm you against your other enemies,
I'll make a peace between your soul and you.
Young Arthur is alive: This hand of mine
Is yet a maiden and an innocent hand,
Not painted with the crimson spots of blood.
Within this bosom never enter'd yet
The dreadful motion of a murd'rous thought,
And you have slander'd nature in my form;
Which, howsoever rude exteriorly,

Is yet the cover of a fairer mind
Than to be butcher of an innocent child.

K. John. Doth Arthur live? O, haste thee to the

peers,

Throw this report on their incensed rage,
And make them tame to their obedience!
Forgive the comment that my passion made
Upon thy feature; for my rage was blind,
And foul imaginary eyes of blood

Presented thee more hideous than thou art.
O, answer not; but to my closet bring
The angry lords, with all expedient2 haste:
I conjure thee but slowly; run more fast.3

SCENE III. The same. Before the Castle.

ARTHUR, on the Walls.

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Bast. But there is little reason in your grief;
Therefore, 'twere reason, you had manners now.
Pem. Sir, sir, impatience hath its privilege.
Bast. 'Tis true: to hurt his master, no man else.
Sal. This is the prison: What is he lies here?
[Seeing ARTHUR,
Pem. O death, made proud with pure and prince-
ly beauty!

The earth had not a hole to hide this deed.
Sal. Murder, as hating what himself hath done,
Doth lay it open, to urge on revenge.

Big. Or, when he doom'd this beauty to a grave, Found it too precious-princely for a grave.

Sal. Sir Richard, what think you? Have you beheld,

you

think?

Or have you read, or heard? or could
Or do you almost think, although you see,
That you do see? could thought, without this ob-

ject,

Form such another? This is the very top,
The height, the crest, or crest unto the crest,
Enter Of murder's arms: this is the bloodiest shame,
The wildest savag'ry, the vilest stroke,

Arth. The wall is high; and yet will I leap That ever wall-ey'd wrath, or staring rage,

down:4

Good ground, be pitiful, and hurt me not!--
There's few, or none, do know me; if they did,
This ship-boy's semblance hath disguis'd me quite.
I am afraid; and yet I'll venture it.
If I get down, and do not break my limbs,
I'll find a thousand shifts to get away:
As good to die, and go, as die, and stay.

[Leaps down. O me! my uncle's spirit is in these stonesHeaven take my soul, and England keep my bones! [Dies.

Enter PEMBROKE, SALISBURY, and BIGOT.
Sal. Lords, I will meet him at Saint Edmund's
Bury;

It is our safety, and we must embrace
This gentle offer of the perilous time.
Pem. Who brought that letter from the cardinal?

him tell his tale in erpress words would have struck him dumb: nothing is more certain than that bad men use all the arts of fallacy upon themselves, palliate their actions to their own minds by gentle terms, and hide themselves from their own detection in ambiguities and subterfuges.-Johnson.

1 The old copy reads As bid me,' &c. Malone made the correction, in which I concur; though as frequentIv is used for that, which. See Julius Cæsar, Act. i. Sc. 2.

2 Expeditious.

2 The old play of The Troublesome Raigne of King John is divided into two parts; the first of which concludes with the king's despatch of Hubert on this mes. sage; the second begins with Enter Arthur, &c. as in the following scene.

4 Shakspeare has followed the old play. In what manner Arthur was deprived of his life is not ascertained. Matthew Paris relating the event, uses the word evanuit; and it appears to have been conducted with impenetrable secrecy. The French historians say that

Presented to the tears of soft remorse.9

Pem. All murders past do stand excus'd in this:
And this, so sole, and so unmatchable,
Shall give a holiness, a purity,

To the yet unbegotten sins of time,10
And prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest,
Exampled by this heinous spectacle.

Bast. It is a damned and a bloody work;
The graceless action of a heavy hand,
If that it be the work of any hand.

Sal. If that it be the work of any hand?-
We had a kind of light, what would ensue :
It is the shameful work of Hubert's hand;
The practice, and the purpose, of the king:-
From whose obedience I forbid my soul,
Kneeling before this ruin of sweet life,
And breathing to his breathless excellence
The incense of a vow, a holy vow;
Never to taste the pleasures of the world,
Never to be infected with delight,
Nor conversant with ease and idleness,

John, coming in a boat during the night to the castle of Rouen, where the young prince was confined, stabbed him while supplicating for mercy, fastened a stone to the body, and threw it into the Seine, in order to give some colour to a report, which he caused to be spread, that the prince, attempting to escape out of a window, fell into the river, and was drowned.

5 Private account.

6 The use of or for ere, before, is at least as old as Chaucer's time. Ere ever, or ever, or ere, is, in modern English, sooner than at any time; before ever: and this is the sense in which Shakspeare and our elder writers constantly use the phrase.

7 i. e. ruffled, out of humour.

8 To reason, in Shakspeare, is not so often to argue as to talk.

9 Pitv.

10 The old copy reads sin of times. The emendation is Pope's.

"Till I have set a glory to this head,' By giving it the worship of revenge.

Thou art damn'd as black-nay, nothing is so black;
Thou art more deep damn'd than prince Lucifer:

Pem. Big. Our souls religiously confirm thy words. There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell

Enter HUBERT.

Hub. Lords, I am hot with haste in seeking you:
Arthur doth live; the king hath sent for you.
Sal. O, he is bold, and blushes not at death:-
Avaunt, thou hateful villain, get thee gone!
Hub. I am no villain.

Sal.

Must I rob the law?
[Drawing his sword.
Bast. Your sword is bright, sir; put it up again.2
Sal. Not till I sheath it in a murderer's skin.
Hub. Stand back, Lord Salisbury, stand back, I
say;

By heaven, I think my sword's as sharp as yours:
I would not have you, lord, forget yourself,
Nor tempt the danger of my true defence;
Lest I, by marking of your rage, forget
Your worth, your greatness, and nobility.

Big. Out, dunghill! dar'st thou brave a noble-
man?

Hub. Not for my life: but yet I dare defend
My innocent life against an emperor.
Sal. Thou art a murderer.
Hub.
Do not prove me so;4
Yet I am none: Whose tongue soe'er speaks false,
Not truly speaks; who speaks not truly, lies.
Pem. Cut him to pieces.
Bast.

Keep the peace, I say. Sal. Stand by, or I shall gall you, Faulconbridge.

Bast. Thou wert better gall the devil, Salisbury:
If thou but frown on me, or stir thy foot,
Or teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame,
I'll strike thee dead. Put up thy sword betime;
Or I'll so maul you and your toasting-iron,
That you shall think the devil is come from hell.
Big. What wilt thou do, renowned Faulcon-
bridge?

Second a villain, and a murderer?
Hub. Lord Bigot, I am none.
Big.

Who kill'd this prince?
Hub. "Tis not an hour since I left him well:
I honour'd him, I lov'd him; and will weep
My date of life out, for his sweet life's loss.

Sal. Trust not those cunning waters of his eyes,
For villany is not without such rheum;
And he, long traded in it, makes it seem
Like rivers of remorse and innocency.
Away, with me, all you, whose souls abhor
The uncleanly savours of a slaughter-house,
For I am stiffed with this smell of sin.

Big. Away, toward Bury, to the Dauphin there!
Pem. There, teil the king, he may inquire us out.
[Exeunt Lords.
you of this

Bast. Here's a fair work? Beyond the infinite and boundless reach

world!-Knew
good

Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death,
Art thou damn'd, Hubert.

Hub.

Do but hear me, sir. Bast. Ha! I'll tell thee what;

Bast.

As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.
Hub. Upon my soul,-
If thou didst 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 serve to 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.-
I do suspect thee very grievously.

Hub. If I in act, consent, or sin of thought
Be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath
Which was embounded in this beauteous clay,
Let hell want pains enough to torture me!
I left him well.

Bast.
Go, bear him in thine arms.-
I am amaz'd, methinks; and lose my way
Among the thorns and dangers of this world.-
How easy dost thou take all England up!
From forth this morsel of dead royalty,
The life, the right, and truth of all this realm
Is fled to heaven: and England now is left
To tug and scamble, and to part by the teeth
The unowed interest of proud-swelling state.
Now, for the bare-pick'd bone of majesty,
Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest,
And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace:
Now powers from home, and discontents at home,
Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits
(As doth a raven on a sick-fall'n beast,)
The imminent decay of wrested pomp.
Now happy he, whose cloak and cincture can
Hold out this tempest. Bear away that child,
And follow me with speed; I'll to the king:
A thousand businesses are brief in hand,
And heaven itself doth frown upon the land.

ACT V.

[Exeunt.

SCENE I. The same. A Room in the Palace.
Enter KING JOHN, PANDULPH, with the Crown,
and Attendants.

K. John. Thus have I yielded up into your hand
The circle of my glory.
Pand.

Take again
[Giving JOHN the Crocs.
Your sovereign greatness and authority.
From this my hand, as holding of the pope,
K. John. Now keep your holy word: go meet
the French;

And from his holiness use all your power
To stop their marches, 'fore we are inflam'd.
Our discontented counties1o do revolt;
Our people quarrel with obedience;
Swearing allegiance, and the love of soul,
To stranger blood, to foreign royalty.

murderer, by compelling me to kill you; I am hithert
this passage, which he explains- Do not make me a
not a murderer. By Do not prove me so,' Hubert
means do not proroke me, or try my patience so."
This was a common acceptation of the word. To
assay, to prove, to try, to tempt one to do evil. Barel,
v. Prove.

1 The old copy reads, Till I have set a glory to this hand. This is a copy of the vows made in the ages of superstition and chivalry. Pope thought that we should read a glory to this head, pointing to the head of the dead prince, and using worship in its common acceptation. A glory is a circle of rays, such as is represent-in ed surrounding the heads of saints and other holy persons. The solemn confirmation of the other lords seems to require this sense. Gray, the poet (says Dr. Farmer,) was much pleased with this correction. The old reading has been explained, till I have famed and renowned my own hand by giving it the honour of revenge for so foul a deed.'

5 Pity.

6 So in the old play :

Hell, Hubert, trust me, all the plagues of hell Hangs on performance of this damned deed; This seal, the warrant of the body's bliss, Ensureth Satan chieftain of thy soul."

7 i. c. confounded.

8 i. e. the interest which is not at this moment legally right to the crown devolved to his sister Eleanor. On the death of Arthur, the 9 Girdle.

2 So in Othello: Keep up your bright swords; for the dew will rust them. Both Faulconbridge and Othel-possessed by any one. lo speak contemptuously. You have shown that your sword is bright, and now you may put it up again; you shall not use it.'

3 Honest defence, defence in a good cause.

10 Counties here most probably mean, not the di visions of the kingdom, but the lords and nobility in

4 Dr. Johnson has, I think, mistaken the sense of general.

This inundation of mistemper'd humour
Rests by you only to be qualified.

Then pause not; for the present time's so sick,
That present medicine must be minister'd,

Or overthrow incurable ensues.

Bast. O inglorious league!

Shall we, upon the footing of our land,

Send fair-play orders, and make compromise,
Insinuation, parley, and base truce,

To arms invasive? shall a beardless boy,

Pand. It was my breath that blew this tempest up, A cocker'd silken wanton brave our fields,

Upon your stubborn usage of the pope :
But, since you are a gentle convertite,'

My tongue shall hush again this storm of war,
And make fair weather in your blustering land.
On this Ascension-day, remember well,
Upon your oath of service to the pope,

Go I to make the French lay down their arms.

[Exit.

K. John. Is this Ascension-day? Did not the
prophet

Say, that, before Ascension-day at noon,
My crown I should give off? Even so I have:
I did suppose, it should be on constraint;
But, heaven be thank'd, it is but voluntary.
Enter the Bastard.

Bast. All Kent hath yielded; nothing there holds
out,

But Dover castle: London hath receiv'd,
Like a kind host, the Dauphin and his powers:
Your nobles will not hear you, but are gone
To offer service to your enemy;

And wild amazement hurries up and down
The little number of your doubtful friends.

K. John. Would not my lords return to me again,
After they heard young Arthur was alive?
Bast. They found him dead, and cast into the
streets;

An empty casket, where the jewel of life,2
By some damn'd hand was robb'd and ta'en away.
K. John. That villain Hubert told me, he did live.
Bast. So, on my soul, he did, for aught he knew.
But wherefore do you droop? why look you sad?
Be great in act, as you have been in thought;
Let not the world see fear, and sad distrust,
Govern the motion of a kingly eye:
Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire;
Threaten the threat'ner, and outface the brow
Of bragging horror: so shall inferior eyes,
That borrow their behaviours from the great,
Grow great by your example, and put on
The dauntless spirit of resolution.3"
Away; and glister like the god of war,
When he intendeth to become the field:4
Show boldness, and aspiring confidence.
What, shall they seek the lion in his den,

And fright him there? and make him tremble there?
O, let it not be said!-Forage, and run
To meet displeasure further from the doors;
And grapple with him, ere he come so nigh.

And flesh his spirit in a warlike soil,
Mocking the air with colours idly spread,
And find no check? Let us, my liege, to arms:
Perchance, the cardinal cannot make your peace;
Or if he do, let it at least be said,

They saw we had a purpose of defence.

K. John. Have thou the ordering of this present time.

Bast. Away then, with good courage; yet, I
know,
Our party may
SCENE II. A Plain, near St. Edmund's-)
-Bury.
Enter, in arms, LEWIS, SALISBURY, MELUN,
PEMBROKE, BIGOT, and Soldiers.

well meet a prouder foe." [Exeunt.

Lew. My Lord Melun, let this be copied out,
And keep it safe for our remembrance:
Return the precedent to these lords again;
That having our fair order written down,
Both they, and we, perusing o'er these notes,
May know wherefore we took the sacrament,
And keep our faiths firm and inviolable.

Sal. Upon our sides it never shall be broken.
And, noble Dauphin, albeit we swear
A voluntary zeal, and unurg'd faith,
To your proceedings; yet, believe me, prince,
I am not glad that such a sore of time
Should seek a plaster by contemn'd revolt,
And heal the inveterate canker of one wound,
By making many: O, it grieves my soul,
That I must draw this metal from my side
To be a widow-maker; O, and there,
Where honourable rescue and defence,
Cries out upon the name of Salisbury:
But such is the infection of the time,
That, for the health and physic of our right,
We cannot deal but with the very hand
Of stern injustice and confused wrong.-
And is't not pity, O my grieved friends!
That we, the sons and children of this isle,
Were born to see so sad an hour as this;
Wherein we step after a stranger" march
Upon her gentle bosom, and fill up
Her enemies' ranks (I must withdraw and weep
Upon the spot of this enforced cause,)
To grace the gentry of a land remote,
And follow unacquainted colours here?
What, here?-O'nation, that thou could'st remove!
That Neptune's arms, who clippeth thee about,

K. John. The legate of the pope hath been with Would bear thee from the knowledge of thyself,

me,

And I have made a happy peace with him;
And he hath promised to dismiss the powers
Led by the Dauphin.

1 Convert.

And grapple thee unto a Pagan shore;
Where these two Christian armies might combine
The blood of malice in a vein of league,
And not to-spend it so unneighbourly!

yet prouder, and more confident of its strength than

2 Dryden has transferred this image to a speech of theirs. Antony, in All for Love:

An empty circle, since the jewel's gone.'

So in King Richard II:

A jewel in a ten times barr'd up chest,
Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.'

3 So in Macbeth :

'Let's briefly put on manly readiness,
And meet i' the hall together.'

4 Thus in Hamlet :

such a sight as this Becomes the field.

5 Forage here seems to mean to range abroad; which Dr. Johnson says is its original sense: but fourrage, the French source of it, is formed from the low Latin foderagium, food: the sense of ranging therefore appears to be secondary.

6 We have the same image in Macbeth:-
"Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky,
And fan our people cold.'

From these two passages Gray formed the first lines of
his 'Bard.'

7 i. e. I know that our party is able to cope with one

8 i. e. the rough draught of the original treaty. In King Richard II, the scrivener employed to engross the indictment of Lord Hastings says, 'It took him eleven hours to write it, and that the precedent was full as long a doing.'

9 Shakspeare often uses stranger as an adjective. See the last scene :

Swearing allegiance and the love of soul
To stranger blood, to foreign royalty.'

10 i. e. the stain.

11 To clip is to embrace; not yet obsolete in the northern counties.

12 The old copy reads cripple. The emendation was made by Pope. The poet alludes to the wars carried on by the Christian princes in the Holy Land against the Saracens, where the united armies of France and England might have laid their animosities aside and fought in the cause of Christ, instead of fighting against bre thren and countrymen.

13 Shakspeare here employs a phraseology used be fore in the Merry Wives of Windsor :

And, fairy-like, to-pinch the unclean knight.”

Lew. A noble temper dost thou show in this;
And great affections, wrestling in thy bosom,
Do make an earthquake of nobility.

O, what a noble combat hast thou fought,
Between compulsion and a brave respect !1
Let me wipe off this honourable dew,
That silvery doth progress on thy cheeks:
My heart hath melted at a lady's tears,
Being an ordinary inundation;

But this effusion of such manly drops,

This shower, blown up by tempest of the soul,2
Startles mine eyes, and makes me more amaz'd
Than had I seen the vaulty top of heaven
Figur'd quite o'er with burning meteors.
Lift up thy brow, renowned Salisbury,
And with a great heart heave away this storm:
Commend these waters to those baby eyes,
That never saw the giant world enrag'd;
Nor met with fortune other than at feasts,
Full warm of blood, of mirth, of gossiping.
Come, come; for thou shalt thrust thy hand as deep
Into the purse of rich prosperity,

A Lewis himself:-so, nobles, shall you all,
That knit your sinews to the strength of mine.
Enter PANDULPH, attended.

And even there, methinks, an angel spake :3
Look, where the holy legate comes apace,
To give us warrant from the hand of heaven;
And on our actions set the name of right,
With holy breath.

Pand.

Hail, noble prince of France!
The next is this,-King John hath reconcil'd
Himself to Rome; his spirit is come in,
That so stood out against the holy church,
The great metropolis and see of Rome :
Therefore thy threat'ning colours now wind up,
And tame the savage spirit of wild war;
That, like a lion foster'd up at hand,

It may lie gently at the foot of peace,
And be no further harmful than in show.

Have I not heard these islanders shout out,
Vive le roy! as I have bank'd their towns?
Have I not here the best cards for the game,
To win this easy match play'd for a crown?
And shall I now give o'er the yielded set?
No, no, on my soul, it never shall be said.
Pand. You look but on the outside of this work.
Lew. Outside or inside, I will not return
Till my attempt so much be glorified
As to my ample hope was promised
Before I drew this gallant head of war,*
And cull'd these fiery spirits from the world,
To outlook conquest, and to win renown
Even in the jaws of danger and of death.-

[Trumpet sounds.

What lusty trumpet thus doth summon us?

Enter the Bastard, attended.

Bast. According to the fair play of the world,
Let me have audience; I am sent to speak ;·
My holy lord of Milan, from the king

I come to learn how you have dealt for him;
And, as you answer, I do know the scope
And warrant limited unto my tongue.

Pand. The Dauphin is too wilful-opposite,
And will not temporize with my entreaties;
He flatly says, he'll not lay down his arms.

Bast. By all the blood that ever fury breath'd,
The youth says well :-Now hear our English king.
For thus his royalty doth speak in me..
He is prepar'd; and reason too, he should:
This apish and unmannerly approach,
This harness'd masque, and unadvised revel,
This unhair'd' sauciness, and boyish troops,
The king doth smile at; and is well prepar'd
To whip this dwarfish war, these pigmy arms,
From out the circle of his territories.
That hand, which had the strength, even at your door,
To cudgel you, and make you take the hatch;10
To dive, like buckets, in concealed wells;

Lew. Your grace shall pardon me, I will not back; To crouch in litter of your stable planks;

I am too high-born to be propertied,*

To be a secondary at control,

Or useful serving-man, and instrument,
To any sovereign state throughout the world.
Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars,
Between this chastis'd kingdom and myself,
And brought in matter that should feed this fire;
And now 'tis far too huge to be blown out
With that same weak wind which enkindled it.
You taught me how to know the face of right,
Acquainted me with interest to this land,"
Yea, thrust this enterprise into my heart;
And come you now to tell me, John hath made
His peace with Rome? What is that peace to me?
I, by the honour of my marriage-bed,
After young Arthur, claim this land for mine;
And, now it is half-conquer'd, must I back,
Because that John hath made his peace with Rome?
Am I Rome's slave? What penny hath Rome borne,
What men provided, what munition sent,
To underprop this action? is't not I,
That undergo this charge? who else but I,
And such as to my claim are liable,
Sweat in this business, and maintain this war?

1 This compulsion was the necessity of a reformation in the state; which according to Salisbury's opinion (who in his preceding speech calls it an enforced cause) could only be procured by foreign arms; and the brave respect was the love of country.

2

This windy tempest till it bloir up rain Held back his sorrow's tide.'-Rape of Lucrece. 3 In what I have now said an angel spake: for see, the holy legate approaches to give a warrant from heaven, and the name of right, to our cause.

4 Appropriated.

5 This was the phraseology of the time :-
'He hath more worthy interest to the state,
Than thou the shadow of succession."
King Henry IV. Part ii.

6 i. e. passed along the banks of the river. Thus

the old play :

from the hollow holes of Thamesis Echo apace replied, Vive le roi!

To lie, like pawns, lock'd up in chests and trunks;
To hug with swine; to seek sweet safety out
In vaults and prisons; and to thrill, and shake,
Even at the crying of your nation's crow,"
Thinking his voice an armed Englishman,-
Shall that victorions hand be feebled here,
That in your chambers gave you chastisement?
No: Know, the gallant monarch is in arms;
And like an eagle o'er his aiery12 towers,
To souse annoyance that comes near his nest.-
And you degenerate, you ingrate revolts,
You bloody Neroes, ripping up the wound
Of your dear mother England, blush for shame *
For your own ladies, and pale-visag'd maids,
Like Amazons, come tripping after drums;
Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change,
Their neelds13 to lances, and their gentle hearts
To fierce and bloody inclination.

Lew. There end thy brave,' and turn thy face in

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9 The old copies read unheard: the emendation is Theobald's. It should be remarked that hair was often spelt hear.

10 To take, for to leap. Hunters still say to take a hedge or gate, meaning to leap over them. Baret has into take horse, to leap on horseback.'

11 i. e. the crowing of a cock; Gallus being both a cock and a Frenchman.

12 Nest

13 Needles,

14 Boast

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