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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:

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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.

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 cocker'd silken wanton brave our fields,
And flesh his spirit in a warlike soil,
Mocking the air with colours idly spread7,

4 So in Macbeth:

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

5 Thus in Hamlet:

6

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such a sight as this

Becomes the field.'

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 foe3. [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.

In King

e. the rough draught of the original treaty.
1. the scrivener employed to engross the indictment
tings says,
'It took him eleven hours to write it,
recedent was full as long a doing.'

Cries out upon the name of Salisbury :
But such is the infection of the time,
That, for the health and physick 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 stranger2 march
Upon her gentle bosom, and fill up

Her enemies' ranks (I must withdraw and weep
Upon the spot of this enforced cause),

3

To grace the gentry of a land remote,

And follow unacquainted colours here?

What, here?-O nation, that thou could'st remove! That Neptune's arms, who clippeth thee about, Would bear thee from the knowledge of thyself, And grapple thee unto a Pagan shore;

5

Where these two Christian armies might combine The blood of malice in a vein of league,

And not to-spend it so unneighbourly!

2 Shakspeare often uses stranger as an adjective. See the last scene:

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Swearing allegiance and the love of soul

To stranger blood, to foreign royalty.'

So in a Midsummer Night's Dream:

'To seek new friends and stranger companies.'

3 i. e. the stain.

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

5 The old copy reads cripple. The emendation was made by Pope. The poet alludes to the wars carried on by the Christian princes in the Holy Land against the Saracens, where the united armies of France and England might have laid their animosities aside and fought in the cause of Christ, instead of fighting against brethren and countrymen.

6 Shakspeare here employs a phraseology used before in the Merry Wives of Windsor: vol. i. p. 269, note 7 :—

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

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