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!

Their armours, that march'd hence so silver-bright,
Hither return all gilt with Frenchmen's blood2;
There stuck no plume in any English crest,
That is removed by a staff of France;

Our colours do return in those same hands

3

That did display them when we first march'd forth;
And, like a jolly troop of huntsmen 3, come
Our lusty English, all with purpled hands,
Dyed in the dying slaughter of their foes:
Open your gates, and give the victors way.

Cit. 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 *:

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 Cæsar:—

Here thy hunters stand,

Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy lethe.'

4 Estimated, judged, determined. Shakspeare should have written, whose superiority, or whose inequality cannot be censured.'

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?

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;
Rather, lost more: And by this hand I swear,
That sways the earth this climate overlooks,—
Before we will lay down our just-borne arms,
We'll put thee down, 'gainst whom these arms 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;

5 The first folio reads roam: the change was made in the second folio.

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, 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 fears; until our fears, resolv'd, Be by some certain king purg'd and depos'd.

6 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.

7 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 in the next line mention is made of these fears being deposed.

Bast. By heaven, these scroyles 9 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 10 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 canon, charged to the mouths;
Till their soul-fearing 11 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,

9 Escrouelles, Fr. scabby fellows.

10 The mutines are the mutineers, 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.

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,
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.

1

Bast. O prudent discipline! From north to south, Austria and France shoot in each other's mouth 12:

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

[Aside.

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 Blanch 13

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.