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O, now doth death line his dead chaps with steel;
The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs;
And now he feasts, mousing6 the flesh of men,
In undetermin'd differences of kings.

Why stand these royal fronts amazed thus?
Cry, havock 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?

1 Cit. 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.

1 Cit. 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:
King'd of our fears8; until our fears, resolv'd,
Be by some certain king purg'd and depos'd.
Bast. By heaven, these scroyles of Angiers flout
you, kings;

And stand securely on their battlements,

Mr. Pope changed this to mouthing, and was followed by subsequent editors. 'Mousing,' says Malone, is mammocking and devouring eagerly, as a cat devours a mouse.' "Whilst Troy was swilling sack and sugar, and mousing fat venison, the mad Greekes made bonfires of their houses.-The Wonderful Year, by Decker, 1603.-Shakspeare often uses familiar terms in his most serious speeches; and Malone has adduced other instances in this play: but in this very speech 'his dead chaps' is surely not more elevated than mousing.

1 Potentates.

8 The old copy reads 'Kings of our fear,' &c. The emendation is Mr. Tyrwhitt's King'd of our fears,' i. e our fears being our kings or rulers. It is manifest that the reading of the old copy is corrupt, and that it must have been so worded, that their fears should be styled their kings or masters, and not they kings or masters of their fears, because iu the next line mention is made of these fears being deposed.

9 Escrouelles, Fr. scabby fellows.

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 mutines10 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-fearing11 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 mission,

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 the mouth of thy artillery thou,

As we will ours, against these saucy walls:
And when that we have das'hd them to the ground,

10 The mutines are the mutincers, the seditious. Thus in Hamlet:

-and lay

Worse than the mutines in the bilboes.'

This allusion is not in the old play. Shakspeare probably received the hint from Ben Gorion's History of the Latter Times of the Jew's Commonweale, &c. translated by Peter Morwyn, 1575. 11 i. e. soul-appalling; from the verb to fear, to make afraid.

Why, then defy each other; and, 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. O prudent discipline! From north to south,
Austria and France shoot in each other's mouth12:
[Aside.

I'll stir them to't:-Come, away, away!

1 Cit. Hear us, great kings: vouchsafe a while to stay,

And I shall show you peace, and fair-fac'd league;
Win you this city without stroke or wound;
Rescue those breathing lives to die in beds,
That here come sacrifices for the field;
Perséver not, but hear me, mighty kings.

K. John. Speak on, with favour; we are bent to hear.

1 Cit. That daughter there of Spain, the lady Blanch13,

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 14 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:

12 The poet has made Faulconbridge forget that he had made a similar mistake. See the preceding page :

By east and west let France and England mount
Their battering cannon.'

13 The Lady Blanch was daughter to Alphonso, the ninth king of Castile, and was niece to King John by his sister Eleanor. 14 Zealous for pious.

If not complete,

say, he is not she;

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.
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 spleen15 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 stay16,

That shakes the rotten carcass 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:

15 Spleen is used by Shakspeare for any violent hurry or tumultuous speed. In A Midsummer Night's Dream he applies spleen to the lightning.

Baret

16 A stay here seems to mean a supporter of a cause. 'Here's an extraordinary partisan or maintainer that shakes' &c. translates columen vel firmamentum reipublicae by the stay, the chiefe mainteyner and succour of, &c. It has been proposed to read, 'Here's a say,' i. e. a speech; and it must be confessed that it would agree well with the tenor of the subsequent part of Faulconbridge's speech.

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
Of soft petitions, pity, and remorse,

Cool and congeal again to what it was.

1 Cit. Why answer not the double majesties This friendly treaty of our threaten'd town? K. Phi. Speak England first, that hath been forward first

To speak unto this city: What say you?

K. John. If that the Dauphin there, thy princely

son,

Can in this book of beauty read17, I love,
Her dowry shall weigh equal with a queen:
For Anjou, and fair Touraine, Maine, Poictiers,
And all that we upon this side the sea
(Except this city now by us besieg'd)
Find liable to our crown and dignity,
Shall gild her bridal bed; and make her rich
In titles, honours, and promotions,

As she in beauty, education, blood,
Holds hand with any princess of the world.

17 So in Pericles:

'Her face the book of praises,' &c,

Again in Macbeth ;

'Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters.'