From first to last the onset and retire

Of both your armies, whose equality

By our best eyes cannot be censurèd.

Blood hath bought blood and blows have answered

blows,

Strength matched with strength and power confronted

power. 330

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 door King John, the Bastard, Queen Eleanor and Lady Blanche, with soldiers; at another door King Philip, Louis the Dauphin, and the Duke of Austria with soldiers

KING JOHN

France, hast thou yet more blood to cast away?

Say, shall the current of our right run on, 335

Whose passage, vexed with thy impediment,

Shall leave his native channel and o’erswell

With course disturbed even thy confining shores,

Unless thou let his silver water keep

A peaceful progress to the ocean? 340

KING PHILIP

England, thou hast not saved 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, 345

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.

BASTARD

Ha, majesty! How high thy glory towers 350

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 undetermined differences of kings.

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!

KING JOHN

Whose party do the townsmen yet admit?

KING PHILIP

Speak, citizens, for England: who’s your king?

⌈CITIZEN⌉

The King of England, when we know the King.

KING PHILIP

Know him in us, that here hold up his right.

KING JOHN

In us, that are our own great deputy

And bear possession of our person here,

Lord of our presence, Angers, and of you.

[CITIZEN⌉

A greater power than we denies all this,

And, till it be undoubted, we do lock

Our former scruple in our strong-barred gates, 370

Kinged of our fear, until our fears resolved

Be by some certain king, purged and deposed.

BASTARD

By heaven, these scroyles of Angers flout you, Kings,

And stand securely on their battlements

As in a theatre, whence they gape and point 375

At your industrious scenes and acts of death.

Your royal presences be ruled by me.

Do like the mutines of Jerusalem:

Be friends awhile, and both conjointly bend

Your sharpest deeds of malice on this town. 380

By east and west let France and England mount

Their battering cannon, charged to the mouths,

Till their soul-fearing clamours have brawled down

The flinty ribs of this contemptuous city.

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 ?

KING JOHN

Now, by the sky that hangs above our heads,

I like it well.-France, shall we knit our powers,

And lay this Angers even with the ground,

Then after fight who shall be king of it?

BASTARD (to King Philip)

An if thou hast the mettle of a king,

Being wronged 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 dashed them to the ground,

Why, then defy each other, and pell-mell

Make work upon ourselves, for heaven or hell.

KING PHILIP

Let it be so.-Say, where will you assault?

KING JOHN

We from the west will send destruction

Into this city’s bosom.

AUSTRIA I from the north.

KING PHILIP Our thunder from the south

Shall rain their drift of bullets on this town.

BASTARD ⌈to King John⌉

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!

⌈CITIZEN⌉

Hear us, great Kings, vouchsafe a while to stay,

And I shall show you peace and fair-faced league.

Win you this city without stroke or wound;

Rescue those breathing lives to die in beds, 420

That here come sacrifices for the field.

Persever not, but hear me, mighty Kings.