Will serve to strangle thee; a rush will be

A beam to hang thee on; or would'st thou drown

thyself,

Put but a little water in a spoon,

And it shall be as all the ocean,
Enough to stifle such a villain up.-
I do suspect thee very grievously.

Hub. If I in act, consent, or sin of thought
Be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath
Which was embounded in this beauteous clay,
Let hell want pains enough to torture me!
I left him well.

Bast.
Go, bear him in thine arms.—
I am amaz'd 14, methinks; and lose my way
Among the thorns and dangers of this world.-
How easy dost thou take all England up!
From forth this morsel of dead royalty,
The life, the right, and truth of all this realm
Is fled to heaven: and England now is left
To tug and scamble, and to part by the teeth
The unowed 15 interest of proud-swelling state.
Now, for the bare-pick'd bone of majesty,
Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest,
And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace:
Now powers from home, and discontents at home,
Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits
(As doth a raven on a sick-fall'n beast),
The imminent decay of wrested pomp.

Now happy he, whose cloak and cincture 16 can
Hold out this tempest. Bear away that child,
And follow me with speed; I'll to the king:
A thousand businesses are brief in hand,

And heaven itself doth frown upon the land. [Exeunt.

14 i. e. unowned. See before, p. 402.

15 i. e. the interest which is not at this moment legally possessed by any one. On the death of Arthur, the right to the crown devolved to his sister Eleanor.

16 Girdle.

ACT V.

SCENE I. The same. 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 inflam'd.
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 mistemper'd humour
Rests by you only to be qualified.

Then pause not; for the present time's so sick,
That present medicine must be minister'd,

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,

1 Counties here most probably mean not the divisions of the kingdom, but the lords and nobility in general. As in Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado about Nothing.

2 Convert.

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

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 thank'd, it is but voluntary.

Enter the Bastard.

Bast. All Kent hath yielded; nothing there holds out,

But Dover castle: London hath receiv'd,
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 3
By some damn'd hand was robb'd 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;

3 Dryden has transferred this image to a speech of Antony, in All for Love :

An empty circle, since the jewel's gone.'

So in King Richard II :

A jewel in a ten times barr'd up
Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.'

chest

Threaten the threat'ner, and outface the brow

Of bragging horror: so shall inferior
eyes,
That borrow their behaviours 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 5:
Show boldness, and aspiring confidence.
What, shall they seek the lion in his den,
And fright him there? and make him tremble there?
O, let it not be said!-Forage, and run
To meet displeasure further 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.

Shall we, upon

O inglorious league!

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 cocker'd silken wanton brave our fields,
And flesh his spirit in a warlike soil,
Mocking the air with colours idly spread",

4 So in Macbeth:

'Let's briefly put on manly readiness,
And meet i' the hall together.'

5 Thus in Hamlet:

such a sight as this

Becomes the field.'

6 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.

7 We have the same image in Macbeth :

'Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky,

And fan our people cold.'

From these two passages Gray formed the first lines of his 'Bard.'

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 foe8. [Exeunt.

SCENE II. A Plain, near St. Edmund's-Bury.
Enter, in arms, LEWIS, SALISBURY, Melun,
PEMBROKE, BIGOT, and Soldiers.

Lew. My Lord Melun, let this be copied out,
And keep it safe for our remembrance:
Return the precedent1 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 unurg'd faith,

To your proceedings; yet, believe me, prince,
I am not glad that such a sore of time
Should seek a plaster by contemn'd 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 honourable rescue and defence,

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

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.'