Eli. Out, insolent! thy bastard shall be king; That thou may'st be a queen, and check the

world!

Const. My bed was ever to thy son as true, As thine was to thy husband: and this boy Liker in feature to his father Geffrey, Than thou and John, in manners being as like As rain to water, or devil to his dam. My boy a bastard! By my soul, I think, His father never was so true begot;

It cannot be, an if thou wert his mother.

Eli. There's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.

Const. There's a good grandame, boy, that would. blot thee.

An 'a may catch your hide and you alone.
You are the hare of whom the proverb goes,
Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard.
I'll smoke your skin-coat, an I catch you right;
Sirrah, look to 't; i' faith, I will, i' faith.
Blanch. O, well did he become that lion's robe,
That did disrobe the lion of that robe!

Bast. It lies as sightly on the back of him,
As great Alcides' shoes2 upon an ass :—
But, ass, I'll take that burden from your back,
Or lay on that shall make your shoulders crack.
Aust. What cracker is this same, that deafs

our ears

With this abundance of superfluous breath? King,-Lewis, determine what we shall do

straight.

Lew. Women and fools, break off your conference.

King John, this is the very sum of all,—-
England and Ireland, Anjou, Touraine, Maine,
In right of Arthur do I claim of thee:
Wilt thou resign them, and lay down thy arms?
K. John. My life as soon-I do defy thee,
France.

Arthur of Bretagne, yield thee to my hand;
And, out of my dear love, I'll give thee more
Than e'er the coward hand of France can win:
Submit thee, boy.

Eli.

Come to thy grandame, child. Const. Do, child, go to it' grandame, child; Give grandame kingdom, and it' grandame will

eyes,

Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee; Ay, with these crystal beads heaven shall be brib'd

To do him justice, and revenge on you.

Eli. Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!

Const. Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth!

Call not me slanderer; thou, and thine, usurp The dominations, royalties, and rights

Of this oppressed boy: This is thy eldest son's son,
Infortunate in nothing but in thee;

Thy sins are visited in this poor child;
The canon of the law is laid on him,
Being but the second generation
Removed from thy sin-conceiving womb.
K. John. Bedlam, have done.
Const.
I have but this to say,-
That he's not only plagued for her sin,
But God hath made her sin and her the plague
On this removed issue, plagued for her
And with her plague; her sin his injury,
Her injury the beadle to her sin;"
All punish'd in the person of this child,
And all for her; A plague upon her!

Eli. Thou unadvised scold, I can produce
A will, that bars the title of thy son.
Const. Ay, who doubts that? a will! a wicked
will;

A woman's will; a canker'd grandame's will!
K. Phi. Peace, lady; pause, or be more tem-

K. Phi. T is France for England.
K. John.

England, for itself:
You men of Angiers, and my loving subjects.
K. Phi. You loving men of Angiers, Arthur's
subjects,

Our trumpet call'd you to this gentle parle.
K. John. For our advantage; -Therefore,
hear us first.

These flags of France, that are advanced here
Before the eye and prospect of your town,
Have hither march'd to your endamagement :
The cannons have their bowels full of wrath;
And ready mounted are they, to spit forth
Their iron indignation 'gainst your walls;
All preparation for a bloody siege

And merciless proceeding, by these French,
Confronts your city's eyes, your winking gates;
And but for our approach, those sleeping
stones,

That as a waist do girdle you about,
By the compulsion of their ordnance
By this time from their fixed beds of lime
Had been dishabited, and wide havoc made
For bloody power to rush upon your peace.
But, on the sight of us, your lawful king,
Who painfully, with much expedient march,
Have brought a countercheck before your gates,
To save unscratch'd your city's threaten'd
cheeks,-

Behold, the French, amaz'd, vouchsafe a parle :
And now, instead of bullets-wrapp'd in fire,
To make a shaking fever in your walls,
They shoot but calm words, folded up in smoke,
To make a faithless error in your ears:
Which trust accordingly, kind citizens,
And let us in. Your king," whose labour'd spirits,
Forwearied in this action of swift speed,
Craves harbourage within your city walls.

K. Phi. When I have said, make answer to
us both.

Lo, in this right hand, whose protection
Is most divinely vow'd upon the right
Of him it holds, stands young Plantagenet,
Son to the elder brother of this man,
And king o'er him, and all that he enjoys:

a Confronts your city's eyes. The original edition has comfort your city's eyes, which is, in part, a misprint, a though comfort might be used by John in irony. The later editions read, confront, after Rowe. Preparation is here the nominative, and therefore we use confronts.

b Your king, &c. In the old reading "your king" is the nominative to "craves." In some modern editions we read And let us in, your king; whose laboured spirits, Forwearied in this action of swift speed, Crave harbourage," &c.

c Forwearied. It is to be observed that forweary and weary are the same, and that for wearied may be used, not as a participle requiring an auxiliary verb, but as a verb ncuter. "Our spirits wearied in this action "would be correct, even in n.odern construction.

26.

town:

For this down-trodden equity, we tread
In warlike march these greens before your
Being no further enemy to you,
Than the constraint of hospitable zeal,
In the relief of this oppressed child,
Religiously provokes. Be pleased then
To pay that duty, which you truly owe,
To him that owes it-namely, this young prince:
And then our arms, like to a muzzled bear,
Save in aspect, have all offence seal'd up;
Our cannons' malice vainly shall be spent
Against th' invulnerable clouds of heaven;
And, with a blessed and unvex'd retire,
With unhack'd swords, and helmets all ur.
bruis'd,

We will bear home that lusty blood again,
Which here we came to spout against your town,
And leave your children, wives, and you, in
peace.

But if you fondly pass our proffer'd offer,
'Tis not the rounderb of your old-fac'd walls
Can hide you from our messengers of war,
Though all these English, and their discipline,
Were harbour'd in their rude circumference.
Then, tell us, shall your city call us lord,
In that behalf which we have challeng'd it?
Or shall we give the signal to our rage,
And stalk in blood to our possession?

Cit. In brief, we are the king of England's subjects;

For him, and in his right, we hold this town. K. John. Acknowledge then the king, and let me in.

Cit. That can we not; but he that proves the king,

To him will we prove loyal; till that time,
Have we ramm'd up our gates against the world.
K. John. Doth not the crown of England
prove the king?

And if not that, I bring you witnesses,
Twice fifteen thousand hearts of England's
breed,-

Bast. Bastards, and else.

K. John. To verify our title with their lives.

K. Phi. As many, and as well-born bloods as

those,

Bast. Some bastards too.

K. Phi. Stand in his face, to contradict his claim.

Cit. Till you compound whose right is worthiest,

We, for the worthiest, hold the right from both.

8 Owes-owns.

b Rounder. This is the English of the original. The modern editions have turned the word into the French ronndure. Mr. White says rounder is only the phonetic spelling.

Alarums and Excursions; then a Retreat. Enter a French Herald, with Trumpets, to the Gates. F. Her. You men of Angiers, open wide your gates,

And let young Arthur, duke of Bretagne, in;
Who, by the hand of France, this day hath made
Much work for tears in many an English mother,
Whose sons lie scatter'd on the bleeding ground;
Many a widow's husband groveling lies,
Coldly embracing the discolour'd earth;
And victory, with little loss, doth play
Upon the dancing banners of the French;
Who are at hand, triumphantly display'd,
To enter conquerors, and to proclaim
Arthur of Bretagne, England's king, and yours!
Enter an English Herald, with Trumpets.
E. Her. Rejoice, you men of Angiers, ring
your bells;

King John, your king and England's, doth approach,

Commander of this hot malicious day!

a Sits on his horseback. Shakspere might have found an example for the expression in North's Plutarch,-one of his favourite books; "he commanded his captains to set out their bands to the field, and he himself took his horaeback."

Their armours, that march'd hence so silverbright,

Hither return all gilt with Frenchmen's blood;
There stuck no plume in any English crest,
That is removed by a staff of France;
Our colours do return in those same hands
That did display them when we first march'd
forth;

And, like a jolly troop of huntsmen, come
Our lusty English, all with purpled hands,
Dyed in the dying slaughter of their foes:
Open your gates, and give the victors way.
Hubert. Heralds, from off our towers we
might behold,

From first to last, the onset and retire
Of both your armies; whose equality
By our best eyes cannot be censured:
Blood hath bought blood, and blows have an-
swer'd blows;

Strength match'd with strength, and power confronted power:

Both are alike; and both alike we like.
One must prove greatest: while they weigh so

even,

We hold our town for neither; yet for both. Enter, at one side, KING JOHN, with his Power ; ELINOR, BLANCHI, 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 roam on,b Whose passage, vex'd with thy impediment, Shall leave his native channel, and o'erswell With course disturb'd 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,

▲ Hubert. Without any satisfactory reason the name of this speaker has been altered by most modern editors to Citizen. The folio distinctly gives this, and all the subsequent speeches of the same person, to the end of the Act, to Hubert. The proposition to the kings to reconcile their differences by the marriage of Lewis and Blanch would appear necessarily to come from some person in authority; and it would seem to have been Shakspere's intention to make that person Hubert de Burgh, who occupies so conspicuous a place in the remainder of the play. In the third Act John says to Hubert,

"thy voluntary oath

Lives in this bosom."

It might be his "voluntary oath " I as a Citizen of Angiers to John, which called for this expression. We, therefore, retain the name as in the original.

b Roam on. The editor of the second folio substituted run, which reading has been continued. Neither the poetry nor the sense appear to have gained by the fancied improve

ment.

That sways the earth this climate overlooks,
Before we will lay down our just-borne arms,
We'll put thee down, 'gainst whom these arins
we bear,

Or add a royal number 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, mousing the flesh of men,
In undetermin'd differences of kings.
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

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, And bear possession of our person here; Lord of our presence, Angiers, and of you.

Hubert. A greater power than we denies all this;

And, till it be undoubted, we do lock

Our former scruple in our strong-barr'd gates,
Kings, of our fear; until our fears, resolv'd,
Be by some certain king purg'd and depos'd.

a Mousing. This figurative and characteristic expression in the original was rendered by Pope into the prosaic mouthing, which, up to our Pictorial edition, usurped its place. We restored the reading, which is now generally adopted.

b Kings, of our fear. The change of this passage is amongst the most remarkable of the examples which this play furnishes of the unsatisfactory nature of conjectural emendation. Warburton and Johnson, disregarding the original, say, "Kings are our fears." Malone adopts Tyrwhitt's conjecture-"King'd of our fears; "--and so the passage runs in most modern editions. If the safe rule of endeavouring to understand the existing text, in preference to guessing what the author ought to have written, had been adopted in this and hundreds of other cases, we should have been spared volumes of commentary. The two kings peremptorily demand the citizens of Angiers to acknowjedge the respective rights of each,-England for himself, France for Arthur. The citizens, by the mouth of Hubert,

Bast. By heaven, these scroyles" 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.
Your royal presences be rul'd by me;
Do like the mutines of Jerusalem,5

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 clamours have brawl'd
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;

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?

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, fight who shall be king of it?

Bast. An if thou hast the mettle of a king, Being wrong'd, 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 dash'd them to the ground,

Through and by had the same meaning, for examples of which see Toke's Diversions of Purley (vol i. p. 379): and so had by and of- as "he was tempted of the devil," in our translation of the Bible; and as in Gower,

"But that arte couth thei not fynde
Of which Ulisses was deceived."

Scroyles: from Les Escrouelles, the king's evil.

b Soul-fearing. To fear is often used by the old writers in the sense of to make afraid. Thus, in Sir Thomas Elyot's Governor, "the good husband" setteth up "shailes to fear away birds." In North's Plutarch. Pyrrhus" thinking to fear Fabricius, suddenly produces an elephant. Shakspere has several examples: Antony says,

་་

Thou canst not fear us. Pompey, with thy sails." Angelo, in Measure for Measure, would

"Make a scare-crow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey." But this active sense of the verb fear is not its exclusive meaning in Shakspere; and in the Taming of the Shrew, he exhibits its common use as well in the neuter as in the active acceptation: —

"Pet. Now, for my life, Hortensio fears his widow. Wid. Then never trust me if I be afeard.

Pet. You are very sensible, and yet you riss my sense I meant Hortensio is afeard of you."

Why, then defy each other: aud, pell-mell,
Make work upon ourselves, 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. prudent discipline! From north to south;

Austria and France shoot in each other's mouth:

[Aside. I'll stir them to it :-Come, away, away! Hubert. Hear us, great kings: vouchsafe a while to stay,

And I shall shew 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:
Persever 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,
Where should he find it fairer than in Blanch?
If zealous 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 richer blood than lady
Blanch?

Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth,
Is the young Dauphin every way complete;
If not complete of," say, he is not she;

And she again wants nothing, to name waut,
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;b
And she a fair divided excellence,
Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.

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,

Complete of. So the original. Hanmer changed this reading to,

"If not complete, O say, he is not she," which is to substitute the language of the eighteenth century for that of the sixteenth.

The original reads as she evidently a misprint.

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.
Bast.

Here's a stay,a

That shakes the rotten carcase of old death
Out of his rags! Here's a large mouth, indeed,
That spits forth death, and mountains, rocks,

and seas;

Talks as familiarly of roaring lions,
As maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs!
What cannoneer begot this lusty blood?

He speaks plain cannon, fire, and smoke, and bounce;

He gives the bastinado with his tongue;
Our ears are cudgel'd; not a word of his,
But buffets better than a fist of France:
Zounds! I was never so bethump'd with words,
•Since I first call'd my brother's father, dad.

Eli. Son, list to this conjunction, make this
match;

Give with our niece a dowry large enough :
For by this knot thou shalt so surely tie
Thy now unsur'd assurance to the crown,
That yon green boy shall have no sun to ripe
The bloom that promiseth a mighty fruit.
I see a yielding in the looks of France;
Mark, how they whisper: urge them, while
their souls

Are capable of this ambition;

Lest zeal, now melted, by the windy breath

a Here's a stay. This little word has produced large criticism. Johnson would read flaw; another emendator, Becket, would give us say. Malone and Steevens have two pages to prove, what requires no proof, that stay means interruption.

b Zeal, now melted. There is great confusion in what the commentators say on this image. Johnson thinks Shakspere means to represent zeal, in its highest degree, as congealed by a frost; Steevens thinks "the poet means to compare zeal to metal in a state of fusion, and not to dissolving ice;" Malone affirms that "Shakspere does not say that zeal, when congealed, exerts its utmost power; but, on the contrary, that when it is congealed or frozen it ceases to exert itself at all." All this discordance appears to us to be produced by not limiting the image by the poet's own words. The "zeal" of the King of France and of Lewis is "now melted"-whether that melting represent metal in a state of fusion or dissolving ice: it has lost its compactness, its cohesion, but

"the windy breath

Of soft petitions,"

the pleading of Constance and Arthur,-the pity and remorse of Philip for their lot,-may "cool and congeal" it "again to what it was"-may make it again solid and entire 29