Enter a

Alarums and Excursions; then a Retreat.
French Herald, with trumpets, to the gates.

F. Her. You men of Angiers, open wide your

gates,

And let young Arthur, duke of Bretagne, in;

Who by the hand of France this day hath made
Much work for tears in many an English mother,
Whose sons lie scatter'd on the bleeding ground.
Many a widow's husband grovelling lies,
Coldly embracing the discolour'd earth;
And victory, with little loss, doth play
Upon the dancing banners of the French;
Who are at hand, triumphantly display'd,
To enter conquerors, and to proclaim
Arthur of Bretagne, England's king, and yours.

Enter an English Herald, with trumpets.

E. Her. Rejoice, you men of Angiers, ring your bells:

1

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 blood: '
There stuck no plume in any English crest,
That is removed by a staff of France:
Our colours do return in those same hands,
That did display them when we first march'd forth;

Shakespeare has used this image again in Macbeth, Act . sc. 3: "Here lay Duncan, his silver skin laced with his golden blood." It occurs also in Chapman's translation of the sixteenth Iliad 6. The curets from great Hector's breast all gilled with his

gore.'

2

And like a jolly troop of huntsmen come
Our lusty English, all with purpled hands,
Dy'd in the dying slaughter of their foes.
Open your gates, and give the victors way.
Cit. Heralds, from off our towers we might be-
hold,

From first to last, the onset and retire
Of both your armies; whose equality
By our best eyes cannot be censured:
Blood hath bought blood, and blows have answer'd

blows;

4

Strength match'd with strength, and power con fronted 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.

John. France, hast thou yet more blood to cast away?

2 It was anciently the practice of the chase for all to stain their nands in the blood of the deer as a trophy. Shakespeare alludes to the practice again in Julius Cæsar: "Here thy hunters stand, sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy lethe."

3 The original has Hubert and Hub. prefixed to this and the following speeches of the Citizen. These prefixes Mr. Knight retains, so obstinate is he in restoration. The speeches are most evidently from the same person who was introduced as Citizen at the opening of the preceding scene, and whose speeches there have the prefix Cit. What makes the case still stronger is, that in the original the two scenes are printed as one, the Citizens hav ing remained on the walls during the fight. Mr. Collier suggests that the actor of Hubert's part may have also personated the Citizen, in order that the speeches of the latter might be well deliv ered, and hence the irregularity in the prefixes. It was certainly not uncommon for two or more parts to be sustained by one actor and this often occasioned mistakes in the distribution of the dia logue.

4 Estimated, judged, determined.

H

Say, shall the current of our right roam 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.

Phil. 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;
The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs;
And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of men,
In undetermin'd differences of kings.

6

Why stand these royal fronts amazed thus ?
Cry havoc, 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!

5 So in the first folio: the second has run instead of roam; a needless change, and therefore not to be received.

H.

Pope changed this to mouthing, and was followed by subsequent editors. Mousing 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 Dekker, 1603. also, A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act v. sc. 1, note 17. * Equal potents is equally powerful, equi-potent.

See

Н

John. Whose party do the townsmen yet admit ? Phil. Speak, citizens, for England, who's your king?

Cit. The king of England, when we know the king.

Phil. Know him in us, that here hold up his right. John. In us, that are our own great deputy, And bear possession of our person here; Lord of our presence, Angiers, and of you.

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 fear, until our fears, resolv'd,
Be by some certain king purg'd and depos'd.
Bast. By Heaven, these scroyles 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 awhile, and both conjointly bend
Your sharpest deeds of malice on this town.
By east and west let France and England mount
Their battering cannon, charged to the mouths,
Till their soul-fearing " clamours have brawl'd down
The flinty ribs of this contemptuous city:

11

The original has

8 That is, ruled, mastered by our fear. "kings of our fear," out of which it is not easy to extract a meaning, as may be seen by consulting Knight and Collier. The emendation is Tyrwhitt's, and it seems to us eminently happy. Warburton proposed "kings are our fear."

• Escroulles, Fr., scabby fellows.

H.

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. Shakespeare probably took the hint from Ben Gorion's Historie of the Latter Tymes of the Jew's Common-Weale, translated by Peter Morwyng, 1558.

That is, soul-appalling; from the verb to fear, to make afraid

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?

John. Now, by the sky that hangs above our heads,

I like it well. — France, shall we knit our powers.
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.
Phil. Let it be so: - Say, where will you assault?
John. We from the west will send destruction

Into this city's bosom.

Aust. I from the north.

Phil.

Our thunders from the south

Shall rain their drift of bullets on this town.

Bast. [Aside.] O, prudent discipline! From north to south,

Austria and France shoot in each other's mouth: I'll stir them to it. Come, away, away!

Cit. Hear us, great kings! vouchsafe awhile to

stay,