ACT V.

SCENE I.-A Room in the Palace.

Enter KING JOHN, PANDULPH with the Crown, and

Attendants.

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

Pand.

Take again

From this my hand, as holding of the pope,
Your sovereign greatness and authority.

[Giving JOHN the crown.

K. John. Now keep your holy word:

French;

And from his holiness use all your power
To stop their marches, 'fore we are inflamed.
Our discontented counties1 do revolt;
Our people quarrel with obedience,
Swearing allegiance and the love of soul
To stranger blood, to foreign royalty.
This inundation of mistempered humour
Rests by you only to be qualified.?

go meet the

Then pause not; for the present time's so sick,
That

present medicine must be ministered,

Or overthrow incurable ensues.

1 Counties.] Earls; lords.

2 Rests by you only, &c.] Remains to be moderated or restrained by you alone.

Pand. It was my breath that blew this tempest up, 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.

R. 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 thanked, it is but voluntary.

Enter the Bastard.

Bast. All Kent hath yielded; nothing there holds out But Dover Castle. London hath received,

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

By some damned hand was robbed and ta'en away.
K. John. That villain Hubert told me he did live.
Bust. So, on my soul, he did, for aught he knew.

1 But Dover Castle.] 'This key to the kingdom was defended by Hubert de Burgh, with only 140 soldiers, for four months, against all the efforts of the French to take it.'-Trench's Shakspeareana Genealogica.

But wherefore do
you droop? why look you
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.

sad?

Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire;
Threaten the threatener, and outface the brow
Of bragging horror: so shail inferior eyes,
That borrow their behaviours from the great,
Grow great by your example, and put on
The dauntless spirit of resolution.
Away, and glister like the god of war,
When he intendeth to become the field:
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,1 and run

To meet displeasure farther from the doors;
And grapple with him, ere he come so nigh.

K. John. The legate of the pope hath been with me,
And I have made a happy peace with him;

And he hath promised to dismiss the powers
Led by the Dauphin.

Bast.

O inglorious league!

Shall we upon the footing of our land

Send fair-play orders,2 and make compromise,
Insinuation,3 parley, and base truce,

In the North the

1 Forage.] Bestir yourself to seek means. word is still understood in this sense. 2 Send fair-play orders.] Send and receive ambassadors under guarantee of their being fairly treated, according to the laws of

war.

So in the next scene, the Bastard says to the Dauphin—

'According to the fair-play of the world,

Let me have audience; I am sent to speak.'

Insinuation.] Ingratiating proposals.

To arms invasive? shall a beardless boy,
A cockered silken wanton, brave our fields,
And flesh1 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 2 may well meet a prouder foe.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.—A Plain, near St. Edmund's Bury.

Enter in arms, LEWIS, SALISBURY, MELUN, PEMBROKE, BIGOT, and Soldiers.

Lew. My lord Melun, let this3 be copied out,
And keep it safe for our remembrance :
Return the precedent1 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 an unurged faith
To your proceedings, yet, believe me, prince,

1 Flesh.] Elate.

2 Yet, &c.] I know that even yet our party, reduced though it be, &c.

This.] The written covenant between the Dauphin and the revolted English barons.

The precedent.] The original.

I am not glad that such a sore of time
Should seek a plaster by contemned 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 spot1 of this enforced cause,)

To grace the gentry of a land remote,
And follow unacquainted colours here?

What, here?—O nation, that thou couldst remove!
That Neptune's arms, who clippeth thee about,2
Would bear thee from the knowledge of thyself,
And grapple3 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!

Upon the spot.] At the stain, shame, or discredit.

2 Who clippeth thee about.] Who encircles or embraces thee. Grapple.] The old text has cripple.

3

To-spend.] So in The Merry Wives, iv. 4.

'Then let them all encircle him about,

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