Re-enter, at one side, KING JOHN, with his Power, ELINOR, BLANCH, and the Bastard; at the other, KING Philip, Lewis, Austria, and Forces.

K. John. France, hast thou yet more blood to cast away? Say, shall the current of our right run on,

Whose passage, vexed with thy impediment,
Shall leave his1 native channel, and o’erswell
With course disturbed even thy confining shores,
Unless thou let his silver water keep

A peaceful progress to the ocean?

K. Phi. England, thou hast not saved one drop of blood
In this hot trial, more than we of France;
Rather lost more. And by this hand I swear,
That sways the earth this climate overlooks,
Before we will lay down our just-borne arms,
We'll put thee down 'gainst whom these arms we bear,
Or add a royal number2 to the dead,

Gracing the scroll that tells of this war's loss,
With slaughter coupled to the name of kings.

Bast. Ha, majesty! how high thy glory towers,
When the rich blood of kings is set on fire!
O, now doth death line his dead chaps with steel,
The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs;
And now he feasts, mousing3 the flesh of men,
In undetermined differences of kings.

His.] Its: the old neuter, as well as masculine, possessive of

the third person.

2 Add a royal number.] Add my royal self in number.

3 Mousing.] To mouse means here to prey upon or devour as a cat does a mouse.

* In undetermined differences.] Amidst the undetermined disputes.

ACT D

3702

Why stand these royal fronts amazed thus?
Cry havoc,' kings! back to the stained field,
You equal-potents, fiery-kindled spirits!
Then let confusion of one part confirm

2

The other's peace; till then, blows, blood, and death!
K. John. Whose party do the townsmen yet admit ?
K. Phi. Speak, citizens, for England: who's your king?
Hubert. The king of England, when we know the king.
K. Phi. Know him in us, that here hold up his right.
K. John. In us, that are our own great deputy,3
And bear possession of our person here:

Lord of our presence, Angiers, and of you.

Hubert. A greater power than we5 denies all this;
And, till it be undoubted, we do lock

Our former scruple in our strong-barred gates,―
Kings of our fears, until our fears, resolved,
Be by some certain king purged and deposed."

Bast. By heaven, these scroyles7 of Angiers flout you,
kings,

And stand securely on their battlements,

As in a theatre, whence they gape and point

At

your

industrious scenes and acts of death.

Cry havoc.] To 'cry havoc' was to proclaim that no quarter should be given.

2 Confusion.] The rout or defeat.

3 Our own great deputy.] Deputy for ourself, not for another, as Philip is for Arthur.

Lord of our presence.] Compare what the Queen-mother says to the Bastard, as referred to in p. 9, note 1.

♪ A greater power than we.]
Kings of our fears, &c.]

Viz. Providence or destiny.

Which strong barred gates signify that our uncertain fears are our kings, or must control us, until they be purged and deposed by some certain king.

"Scroyles.] Scrofulous or scurvy fellows. Fr. escrouelles, the king's evil; hence, in Scotland, vulgarly called the cruels.

Your royal presences be ruled by me:
Do like the mutines of Jerusalem,'

Be friends a while, and both conjointly bend
Your sharpest deeds of malice on this town:
By east and west let France and England mount
Their battering cannon charged to the mouths,
Till their soul-fearing 2 clamours have brawled down
The flinty ribs of this contemptuous city :——
I'd play incessantly upon these jades,
Even till unfenced desolation

Leave them as naked as the vulgar air.-
That done, dissever your united strengths,
And part your mingled colours once again,
Turn face to face, and bloody point to point:
Then in a moment fortune shall cull forth
Out of one side her happy minion,3

To whom in favour she shall give the day,
And kiss him with a glorious victory.

How like you this wild counsel, mighty states?
Smacks it not something of the policy ?4

K. John. Now, by the sky that hangs above our heads,. I like it well;-France, shall we knit our powers,

And lay this Angiers even with the ground;
Then after fight5 who shall be king of it?

Bast. An if thou hast the mettle of a king,

1 Like the mutines of Jerusalem.] An allusion to the union of the civil factions in Jerusalem, when it was besieged by Titus. Mutines is mutineers. So in Hamlet, v. 2, Methought I lay worse

than the mutines in the bilboes.'

2 Soul-fearing.] Soul-frightening. Fearing in this sense of frightening occurs several time in Shakspeare, and is still similarly

used in the north.

Being wronged, as we are, by this peevish town,
Turn thou the mouth of thy artillery,

As we will ours, against these saucy walls:

And when that we have dashed them to the ground,
Why, then defy each other; and, pell-mell,
Make work upon ouselves, for heaven or hell.

K. Phi. Let it be so.-Say where will you assault?
K. John. We from the west will send destruction
Into this city's bosom.

Aust. I from the north.

K. Phi.

Our thunder' from the south,

Shall rain their drift of bullets on this town.

Bast. O prudent discipline! From north to south, Austria and France shoot in each other's mouth:

I'll stir them to it :-Come, away, away!

[Aside.

Hubert. Hear us, great kings: vouchsafe a while to

stay,

And I shall show you peace and fair-faced league,

Win you this city without stroke or wound,
Rescue those breathing lives to die in beds
That here come sacrifices for the field:
Persèver3 not, but hear me, mighty kings.

K. John. Speak on, with favour; we are bent to hear Hubert. That daughter there of Spain, the lady Blanch, Is near to England: look upon the years

Of Lewis the Dauphin, and that lovely maid:

If lusty love should go in quest of beauty,

Thunder.] Cannon.

2 Win you.] I shall win for you.

Persever.] So the word was formerly spelt and pronounced.

• The Lady Blanch.] This accomplished and excellent princess was daughter of Alphonso VIII., king of Castile, and Eleanor, sister of King John. She was married to the Dauphin, who became Louis VIII., and after his death she held the regency of France during the minority of her son Louis IX. She died in 1254

KING JOHN.

Where should he find it fairer than in Blanch?
If zealous1 love should go in search of virtue,
Where should he find it purer than in Blanch?
If love ambitious sought a match of birth,
Whose veins bound 2 richer blood than lady Blanch?
Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth,

Is the young Dauphin every way complete;
If not complete, O say, he is not she:3
And she again wants nothing, to name want,
If want it be not that she is not he:
He is the half part of a blessed man,
Left to be finished by such a she;
And she a fair divided excellence,
Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.1

O, two such silver currents, when they join,

Do glorify the banks that bound them in;

And two such shores to two such streams made one,
Two such controlling bounds, shall you be, kings,
To these two princes, if you marry them.
This union shall do more than battery can,
To our fast-closed gates; for, at this match,
With swifter spleen than powder can enforce,
The mouth of passage shall we fling wide ope,
And give you entrance; but, without this match,
The sea enraged is not half so deaf,

Lions more confident, mountains and rocks
More free from motion, no, not death himself

In mortal fury half so peremptory,

As we to keep this city.

1 Zealous.] Religiously actuated.

2 Bound.] Contain.

3 He is not she.] He is not one with her by marriage.

ACT II.

• Whose fulness, &c.] In Shakspeare's time the female constitu

tion was supposed to be imperfect without marriage. See the Editor's Twelfth Night, p. 5, note 1.