Confront your city's eyes, your winking gates; They shoot but calm words, folded up in smoke, And let us in, your king; whose labour'd spirits, Crave 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 In warlike march these greens before your town, Than the constraint of hospitable zeal, 24 Worn out. 25 Owns. Our cannons' malice vainly shall be spent With unhack'd swords, and helmets all unbruis'd, 1 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. 1 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. 1 Cit. Till you compound whose right is worthiest, We, for the worthiest, hold the right from both. 26 Roundure, from rondare, Fr.; circle. Thus in Shakspeare's twenty-first Sonnet : -all things rare, That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems. K. John. Then God forgive the sin of all those souls, That to their everlasting residence, Before the dew of evening fall, shall fleet, K. Phi. Amen, Amen!- Mount, chevaliers! to arms! Bast. St. George,-that swing'd the dragon, and e'er since, Sits on his horseback at mine hostess' door, Teach us some fence;-Sirrah, were I at home, At your den, sirrah [To Austria], with your lioness, I'd set an ox-head to your lion's hide27, And make a monster of you. Aust. Peace; no more. Bast. 0, tremble; for you hear the lion roar. K. John. Up higher to the plain; where we'll set forth, In best appointment, all our regiments. Bast. Speed then, to take advantage of the field. K. Phi. It shall be so;-[To LEWIS] and at the other hill Command the rest to stand.-God, and our right! [Exeunt. SCENE II. The same. Alarums and Excursions; then a Retreat. Enter And let young Arthur, Duke of Bretagne, in; 27 So in the old play of King John: 'But let the frolic Frenchman take no scorn If Philip fronts him with an English horn.' 1 Johnson observes, "This speech is very poetical and smooth, and, except the conceit of the widow's husband embracing the earth, is just and beautiful.' Much work for tears in many an English mother, 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, Their armours, that march'd hence so silver-bright, Cit. Heralds, from off our towers we might behold, 2 Shakspeare has used this image again in Macbeth, Act ii. Sc. 3: Here lay Duncan, His silver skin laced with his golden blood.' It occurs also in Chapman's translation of the sixteenth Iliad :"The curets from great Hector's breast all gilded with his gore.' Again in the same translator's version of the nineteenth Odyssey: 'And show'd his point gilt with the gushing gore.' 3 It was anciently one of the savage practices of the chase for all to stain their hands in the blood of the deer as a trophy. Shakspeare alludes to the practice again in Julius Caesar : Here thy hunters stand, Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy lethe.' From first to last, the onset and retire Blood hath bought blood, and blows have answer'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, BLANCH, and the Bastard; at the other, KING PHILIP, LEWIS, AUSTRIA, and Forces. K. John. France, hast thou yet more blood to cast away? y? Say, shall the current of our right run5 on? 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 sav'd one drop of blood, In this hot trial, more than we of France; 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! 4 Estimated, judged, determined. Shakspeare should have written, 'whose superiority, or whose inequality cannot be censured.' 5 The first folio reads roam: the change was made in the second folio. |