Enter KING JOHN, ELINOR, BLANCH, the Bastard, PEMBROKE, and Forces.

K. John. Peace be to France; if France in peace permit

Our just and lineal entrance to our own!

If not, bleed France, and peace ascend to heaven!
Whiles we, God's wrathful agent, do correct

Their proud contempt that beat his peace to heaven.
K. Phi. Peace be to England; if that war return
From France to England, there to live in peace!
England we love; and, for that England's sake,
With burden of our armor here we sweat.
This toil of ours should be a work of thine;
But thou from loving England art so far,

1

That thou hast under-wrought his lawful king,
Cut off the sequence of posterity,

Outfaced infant state, and done a rape

Upon the maiden virtue of the crown.

Look here upon thy brother Geffrey's face,

These eyes, these brows, were moulded out of his;
This little abstract doth contain that large,

2

Which died in Geffrey; and the hand of time
Shall draw this brief into as huge a volume.
That Geffrey was thy elder brother born,
And this his son; England was Geffrey's right,
And this is Geffrey's. In the name of God,
How comes it, then, that thou art called a king,
When living blood doth in these temples beat,
Which owe the crown that thou o'ermasterest?
K. John. From whom hast thou this great commis-
sion, France,

To draw my answer from thy articles?

K. Phi. From that supernal Judge, that stirs good thoughts

In any breast of strong authority,

To look into the blots and stains of right-
That Judge hath made me guardian to this boy;

1 Undermined.

2 A short writing, abstract, or description.

Under whose warrant I impeach thy wrong;
And by whose help I mean to chastise it.

K. John. Alack, thou dost usurp authority.
K. Phi. Excuse; it is to beat usurping down.
Eli. Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?
Const. Let me make answer;-thy usurping son.
Eli. Out, insolent! thy bastard shall be king;
That thou mayst be a queen, and check the world.1
Const. My bed was ever to thy son as true,
As thine was to thy husband; and this boy
Liker in feature to his father Geffrey,

Than thou and John in manners; being as like,
As rain to water, or devil to his dam.
My boy a bastard! by my soul, I think,
His father never was so true begot;

It cannot be, an if thou wert his mother.2

Eli. There's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.

Const. There's a good grandam, boy, that would

blot thee.

Aust. Peace!

Bast.

Aust.

Hear the crier.

What the devil art thou?

Bast. One that will play the devil, sir, with you, An 'a may catch your hide and

you alone.3

You are the hare of whom the proverb goes,
Whose valor plucks dead lions by the beard;"

1 "Surely (says Holinshed) Queen Eleanor, the king's mother, was sore against her nephew Arthur, rather moved thereto by envye conceyved against his mother, than upon any just occasion, given in behalfe of the childe: for that she saw, if he were king, how his mother Constance would looke to beare the most rule within the realme of Englande till her son should come of lawful age to governe of himselfe. So hard a thing it is to bring women to agree in one minde, their natures commonly being so contrary."

2 Constance alludes to Elinor's infidelity to her husband, Louis the VIIth, when they were in the Holy Land; on account of which he was divorced from her. She afterwards, in 1151, married Henry II. of England. 3 Austria, who had imprisoned king Richard Cœur-de-lion, wore, as the spoil of that prince, a lion's hide, which had belonged to him. This was the ground of the Bastard's quarrel.

4 The proverb alluded to is "Mortuo leoni et lepores insultant."-Erasmi Adagia.

I'll smoke your skin-coat, an I catch you right.
Sirrah, look to't; i' faith, I will, i' faith.

Blanch. O, well did he become that lion's robe, That did disrobe the lion of that robe!

Bast. It lies as sightly on the back of him,
As great Alcides' shoes upon an ass.-

But, ass, I'll take that burden from your back;
Or lay on that shall make your shoulders crack.

Aust. What cracker is this same, that deafs our ears With this abundance of superfluous breath?

K. Phi. Lewis, determine what we shall do straight. Lew. Women and fools, break off your conference.King John, this is the very sum of all,—

England, and Ireland, Anjou, Touraine, Maine,
In right of Arthur do I claim of thee.

Wilt thou resign them, and lay down thy arms?
K. John. My life as soon.-I do defy thee, France.
Arthur of Bretagne, yield thee to my hand;

And, out of my dear love, I'll give thee more
Than e'er the coward hand of France can win.
Submit thee, boy.

Eli.

Come to thy grandam, child. Const. Do, child, go to it' grandam, child; Give grandam kingdom, and it' grandam will Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig.

There's a good grandam.

Arth.

Good my mother, peace! I would that I were low laid in my grave;

I am not worth this coil 2 that's made for me.
Eli. His mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps.
Const. Now shame upon you, whe'r she does

or no!

3

His grandam's wrongs, and not his mother's shames, Draw those Heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes,

1 Theobald thought that we should read Alcides shows; but Malone has shown that the shoes of Hercules were very frequently introduced in the old comedies on much the same occasions. Theobald supposed that the shoes must be placed on the back of the ass, instead of upon his hoofs, and therefore proposed his alteration.

2 Bustle.

3 Whether.

Which Heaven shall take in nature of a fee;
Ay, with these crystal beads Heaven shall be bribed
To do him justice, and revenge on you.

Eli. Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!

Const. Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth; Call not me slanderer; thou, and thine, usurp The dominations, royalties, and rights,

Of this oppressed boy. This is thy eldest son's son,
Infortunate in nothing but in thee.

Thy sins are visited in this poor child;
The canon of the law is laid on him,
Being but the second generation
Removed from thy sin-conceiving womb.
K. John. Bedlam, have done.
Const.

I have but this to say,

That he's not only plagued for her sin,
But God hath made her sin and her the plague
On this removed issue, plagued for her,
And with her plague, her sin; his injury
Her injury, the beadle to her sin;'
All punished in the person of this child,
And all for her; a plague upon her!

Eli. Thou unadvised scold, I can produce

A will, that bars the title of thy son.

Const. Ay, who doubts that? A will! a wicked will;

A woman's will; a cankered grandam's will!

K. Phi. Peace, lady; pause, or be more temperate. It ill beseems this presence, to cry

aim 2

1 The key to this obscure passage is contained in the last speech of Constance, where she alludes to the denunciation of the second commandment of "visiting the iniquities of the parents upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." Young Arthur is here represented as not only suffering from the guilt of his grandmother, but also by her in person, she being made the very instrument of his sufferings. So that he is plagued on her account, and with her plague, which is her sin, i. e. (taking, by a common figure, the cause for the consequence) the penalty entailed upon it. His injury, or the evil he suffers, her sin brings upon him, and her injury, or the evils she inflicts, he suffers from her, as the beadle to her sin, or executioner of the punishment annexed to it.

2 i. e. to encourage. It is a term taken from archery.

To these ill-tuned repetitions.

Some trumpet summon hither to the walls
These men of Angiers; let us hear them speak,
Whose title they admit, Arthur's or John's.

Trumpets sound. Enter Citizens upon the Walls.

1 Cit. Who is it that hath warned us to the walls? K. Phi. 'Tis France, for England.

K. John. England, for itself. You men of Angiers, and my loving subjects,K. Phi. You loving men of Angiers, Arthur's sub

jects,

Our trumpet called you to this gentle parle.1

K. John. For our advantage; therefore, hear us first.

These flags of France, that are advanced here
Before the eye and prospect of your town,
Have hither marched to your endamagement.
The cannons have their bowels full of wrath;
And ready mounted are they, to spit forth
Their iron indignation 'gainst your walls.
All preparation for a bloody siege,

And merciless proceeding by these French,
Confront your city's eyes, your winking gates,
And, but for our approach, those sleeping stones,
That as a waist do girdle you about,
By the compulsion of their ordnance
By this time from their fixed beds of lime
Had been dishabited, and wide havock made
For bloody power to rush upon your peace.
But, on the sight of us, your lawful king,-
Who painfully, with much expedient march,
Have brought a countercheck before your gates,
To save unscratched your city's threatened cheeks,—
Behold, the French, amazed, vouchsafe a parle ;
And now, instead of bullets wrapped in fire,
To make a shaking fever in your walls,
They shoot but calm words, folded up in smoke,
To make a faithless error in your ears;

1 Conference.