ACT V. SCENE I. A Room in the Palace. Enter KING JOHN, PANDULPH, with the crown, and Attendants. K. John. Thus have I yielded up into The circle of my glory. Pand. your hand 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 inflamed. Our people quarrel with obedience; Swearing allegiance, and the love of soul, Rests by you only to be qualified. Then pause not; for the present time's so sick, That present medicine must be ministered, 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. 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 1 Counties here most probably mean, not the divisions of the kingdom, but the lords and nobility in general. Say, that, before Ascension-day at noon, Enter the Bastard. Bast. All Kent hath yielded; nothing there holds out, But Dover castle. London hath received, And wild amazement hurries up and down 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, By some damned hand was robbed and ta'en away. Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire; And fright him there? and make him tremble there? O, let it not be said!-Forage,1 and run To meet displeasure farther 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 ; Bast. O inglorious league! To arms invasive? Shall a beardless boy, Mocking the air with colors idly spread, 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 foe. [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. 1 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. 2 i. e. I know that our party is able to cope with one yet prouder, and more confident of its strength than theirs. Return the precedent1 to these lords again; Sal. Upon our sides it never shall be broken. To your proceedings; yet, believe me, prince, Her enemies' ranks (I must withdraw and weep What, here?-O nation, that thou couldst remove! 4 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." 2 Shakspeare often uses stranger as an adjective. See the last scene :— "Swearing allegiance and the love of soul 3 i. e. the stain. To stranger blood, to foreign royalty." 4 To clip is to embrace; not yet obsolete in the northern counties. Would bear thee from the knowledge of thyself, 1 Where these two Christian armies might combine Lew. A noble temper dost thou show in this; O, what a noble combat hast thou fought, But this effusion of such manly drops, This shower, blown up by tempest of the soul, As Lewis himself.-So, nobles, shall you all, Enter PANDULPH, attended. And even there, methinks, an angel spake. 1 The old copy reads cripple. The emendation was made by Pope. 2 Shakspeare here employs a phraseology used before in the Merry Wives of Windsor: "And, fairy-like, to-pinch the unclean knight." 3 This compulsion was the necessity of a reformation in the state; which, according to Salisbury's opinion (who in his preceding speech calls it an enforced cause), could only be procured by foreign arms; and the brave respect was the love of country. |