And shall I now give o'er the yielded set?
No, no, on my soul, it never shall be said.
PAND. You look but on the outside of this work.
LEW. Outside or inside, I will not return
Till my attempt so much be glorified,
As to my ample hope was promised
Before I drew this gallant head of war,
And cull'd these fiery spirits from the world,
To outlook conquest, and to win renown
Even in the jaws of danger and of death.-
[Trumpet sounds.
What lusty trumpet thus doth summon us?

Enter the Bastard, attended.

BAST. According to the fair play of the world, Let me have audience: I am sent to speak. My holy lord of Milan, from the king, I come to learn how you have dealt for him;

This unhair'd sauciness,-] Unhair'd, meaning unbearded, is the suggestion of Theobald, the old text having "unheard."

And, as you answer, I do know the scope
And warrant limited unto my tongue.

PAND. The Dauphin is too wilful-opposite,
And will not temporize with my entreaties;
He flatly says, he'll not lay down his arms.

BAST. By all the blood that ever fury breath'd, The youth says well.-Now hear our English king; For thus his royalty doth speak in me. He is prepar'd, and reason too, he should: This apish and unmannerly approach, This harness'd masque, and unadvised revel, This unhair'd sauciness, and boyish troops, The king doth smile at; and is well prepar'd To whip this dwarfish war, these pigmy arms, From out the circle of his territories. That hand, which had the strength, even at your To cudgel you, and make you take the hatch; To dive, like buckets, in concealed wells; To crouch in litter of your stable planks;

(*) Old copies, this.

b And make you take the hatch;] To take, i. e. to leap.

[door,

To lie, like pawns, lock'd up in chests and trunks;
To hug with swine; to seek sweet safety out
In vaults and prisons; and to thrill, and shake,
Even at the crying of your nation's crow,"
Thinking this voice an armed Englishman :-
Shall that victorious hand be feebled here,
That in your chambers gave you chastisement?
No! Know, the gallant monarch is in arms,
And, like an eagle o'er his aiery, towers
To souse annoyance that comes near his nest. (1)
And you degenerate, you ingrate revolts,
You bloody Neros, ripping up the womb

Of
your dear mother England, blush for shame :
For your own ladies, and pale-visag'd maids,
Like Amazons, come tripping after drums;
Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change,
Their neelds to lances, and their gentle hearts
To fierce and bloody inclination.

[in peace;

LEW. There end thy brave, and turn thy face We grant thou canst outscold us, fare thee well; We hold our time too precious to be spent With such a brabbler.

BAST. No, I will speak. LEW. We will attend to neither :Strike up the drums; and let the tongue of war Plead for our interest, and our being here. [out; BAST. Indeed, your drums, being beaten, will cry And so shall you, being beaten. Do but start An echo with the clamour of thy drum, And even at hand a drum is ready brac'd That shall reverberate all as loud as thine; Sound but another, and another shall, As loud as thine, rattle the welkin's ear, And mock the deep-mouth'd thunder: for at hand (Not trusting to this halting legate here, Whom he hath us'd rather for sport than need), Is warlike John; and in his forehead sits A bare-ribb'd death, whose office is this day To feast upon whole thousands of the French. LEW. Strike up our drums, to find this danger

a Of your nation's crow,-] "That is, at the crowing of a cock; gallus meaning both a cock and a Frenchman."-DOUCE.

b Unthread the rude eye of rebellion,-] Retrace the difficult path upon which you have entered. Theobald proposed to read, untread the rude way, &c., but to thread one's way through any intricacy is still an habitual figure, and to pass through the eye of a needle is an oriental metaphor for any troublesome undertaking, familiar to us all by the passage in St. Matthew, chap. xix., which Shakespeare has himself paraphrased in Richard II. Act V. Sc. 5:

HUB. Badly, I fear: how fares your majesty? K. JOHN. This fever, that hath troubled me so long,

Lies heavy on me; O, my heart is sick!

Enter a Messenger.

MESS. My lord, your valiant kinsman, Faulconbridge,

Desires your majesty to leave the field,
And send him word by me which way you go.
K. JOHN. Tell him, toward Swinstead, to the
abbey there.

MESS. Be of good comfort; for the great supply, That was expected by the Dauphin here,

Are wrack'd three nights ago on Goodwin sands. This news was brought to Richard but even now; The French fight coldly, and retire themselves.

K. JOHN. Aye me! this tyrant fever burns me

"It is as hard to come, as for a camel To thread the postern of a needle's eye." So in Coriolanus, Act III. Sc. 1, we have:"Even when the navel of the state was touch'd, They would not thread the gates."

Moreover, the original spelling is unthred, and it is remarkable that in the folio, 1623, thread, which occurs many times, is invariably spelt thred, whilst tread is always exhibited in its present form.

[SCENE VIL

Thou hast a perfect thought;

I will, upon all hazards, well believe

[well. Thou art my friend, that know'st my tongue so Who art thou? BAST. Who thou wilt: an if thou please, Thou mayst befriend me so much, as to think I come one way of the Plantagenets.

[night,

HUB. Unkind remembrance! thou, and eyeless Have done me shame :-brave soldier, pardon me, That any accent, breaking from thy tongue, Should 'scape the true acquaintance of mine ear. BAST. Come, come; sans compliment, what news abroad? [night, HUB. Why, here walk I, in the black brow of To find you out.

BAST. Brief, then; and what's the news? HUB. O, my sweet sir, news fitting to the night, Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible.

BAST. Show me the very wound of this ill news; I am no woman, I'll not swoon at it.

HUB. The king, I fear, is poison'd by a monk : I left him almost speechless, and broke out To acquaint you with this evil, that you might The better arm you to the sudden time, Than if you had at leisure known of this. [him? BAST. How did he take it? who did taste to HUB. A monk, I tell you; a resolved villain, Whose bowels suddenly burst out: the king Yet speaks, and, peradventure, may recover.

BAST. Who didst thou leave to tend his majesty? HUB. Why, know you not the lords are all come back,

And brought prince Henry in their company?
At whose request the king hath pardon'd them,
And they are all about his majesty.

[heaven,

BAST. Withhold thine indignation, mighty And tempt us not to bear above our power! I'll tell thee, Hubert, half my power this night, Passing these flats, are taken by the tide, These Lincoln washes have devoured them; Myself, well mounted, hardly have escap'd. Away, before! conduct me to the king.

I doubt he will be dead, or e'er I come. [Exeunt.

SCENE VII.-The Orchard of Swinstead Abbey.
Enter PRINCE HENRY, SALISBURY, and BIGOT.
P. HEN. It is too late; the life of all his blood
Is touch'd corruptibly; and his
pure brain

a Thou, and eyeless night,-] The old text has "endless night." Eyeless, which is peculiarly applicable, we owe to Theobald.

b Leaves them insensible;] The original lection is invisible; a word, notwithstanding Malone's defence of it, that appears to be without sense in this passage. Hanmer first suggested the reading in the text, and his emendation is in some degree verified by the corresponding passage in the earlier play,

PEM. His highness yet doth speak; and holds
belief,

That being brought into the open air
It would allay the burning quality

Of that fell poison which assaileth him.

P. HEN. Let him be brought into the orchard here.Doth he still rage ? [Exit BIGOT. PEM. He is more patient Than when you left him; even now he sung. P. HEN. O vanity of sickness! fierce extremes, In their continuance, will not feel themselves. Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts, Leaves them insensible; and his siege is now Against the mind, the which he pricks and wounds With many legions of strange fantasies;

*

b

Which, in their throng and press to that last hold, Confound themselves. 'Tis strange that death should sing!

I am the cygnet † to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death;
And, from the organ-pipe of frailty, sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.

SAL. Be of good comfort, prince; for you are

born

To set a form upon that indigest,

Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude.

Re-enter BIGOT and Attendants, who bring in KING JOHN in a Chair.

K. JOHN. Ay, marry, now my soul hath elbow

room;