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 your hand

The circle of my glory.

Pand.

Take again

[Giving JOHN the crown.

From this my hand, as holding of the pope,

Your sovereign greatness and authority.

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 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 humor

Rests by you only to be qualified.

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

That present medicine must be ministered,

Or overthrow incurable ensues.

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

Upon your stubborn usage of the pope ;

But, since you are a gentle convertite,

2

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

1 Counties here most probably mean, not the divisions of the kingdom, but the lords and nobility in general.

2 Convert.

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.
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 threatener, and outface the brow
Of bragging horror; so shall inferior eyes,
That borrow their behaviors 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,

1 Thus in Hamlet:

such a sight as this Becomes the field."

1

And fright him there? and make him tremble there? O, let it not be said!-Forage,' 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, and make compromise,
Insinuation, parley, and base truce,

To arms invasive? Shall a beardless boy,
A cockered, silken wanton brave our fields,
And flesh his spirit in a warlike soil,
Mocking the air with colors 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 well meet a prouder foe.

[Exeunt.

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

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

Lew. My lord Melun, let this be copied out, And keep it safe for our remembrance.

1 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.

2 i. e. I know that our party is able to cope with one yet prouder, and more confident of its strength than theirs.

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 unurged faith,
To your proceedings; yet, believe me, prince,
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 honorable 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 2 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 colors here?

What, here?—O`nation, that thou couldst remove!
That Neptune's arms, who clippeth thee about,

4

1 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."

2 Shakspeare often uses stranger as an adjective. See the last scene:"Swearing allegiance and the love of soul

3 i. e. the stain.

To stranger blood, to foreign royalty."

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

Would bear thee from the knowledge of thyself,
And grapple1 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 2 so unneighborly!

3

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!
Let me wipe off this honorable dew,
That silverly 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,
Startles mine eyes, and makes me more amazed
Than had I seen the vaulty top of heaven
Figured 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 enraged;
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,

As 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.
Look, where the holy legate comes apace,

1 The old copy reads cripple. The emendation was made by Pope. 2 Shakspeare here employs a phraseology used before in the Merry Wives of Windsor:

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

3 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.