To stop their marches ‘fore we are enflamed.

Our discontented counties do revolt,

Our people quarrel with obedience,

Swearing allegiance and the love of soul

To stranger blood, to foreign royalty.

This inundation of mistempered humour

Rests by you only to be qualified.

Then pause not, for the present time’s so sick

That present med’cine must be ministered,

Or overthrow incurable ensues.

PANDOLF

It was my breath that blew this tempest up,

Upon your stubborn usage of the Pope,

But since you are a gentle convertite,

My tongue shall hush again this storm of war

And make fair weather in your blust’ring land.

On this Ascension Day, remember well,

Upon your oath of service to the Pope,

Go I to make the French lay down their arms.

⌈Exeunt all but King John⌉

KING JOHN

Is this Ascension Day Did not the prophet

Say that before Ascension Day at noon

My crown I should give off? Even so I have.

I did suppose it should be on constraint,

But, heaven be thanked, it is but voluntary.

Enter Bastard

BASTARD

All Kent hath yielded; nothing there holds out

But Dover Castle. London hath received,

Like a kind host, the Dauphin and his powers.

Your nobles will not hear you, but are gone

To offer service to your enemy;

And wild amazement hurries up and down

The little number of your doubtful friends.

KING JOHN

Would not my lords return to me again

After they heard young Arthur was alive?

BASTARD

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.

KING JOHN

That villain Hubert told me he did live.

BASTARD

Soon my soul he did, for aught he knew.

But wherefore do you droop? Why look you sad?

Be great in act as you have been in thought.

Let not the world see fear and sad distrust

Govern the motion of a kingly eye.

Be stirring as the time, be fire with fire;

Threaten the threat’ner, and outface the brow

Of bragging horror. So shall inferior eyes,

That borrow their behaviours from the great,

Grow great by your example, and put on

The dauntless spirit of resolution.

Away, and glisten like the god of war

When he intendeth to become the field.

Show boldness and aspiring confidence.

What, shall they seek the lion in his den

And fright him there, and make him tremble there?

O, let it not be said I Forage, and run

To meet displeasure farther from the doors,

And grapple with him ere he come so nigh.

KING JOHN

The legate of the Pope hath been with me,

And I have made a happy peace with him,

And he hath promised to dismiss the powers

Led by the Dauphin.

BASTARD O inglorious league!

Shall we, upon the footing of our land,

Send fair-play orders, and make compromise,

Insinuation, parley, and base truce

To arms invasive? Shall a beardless boy,

A cockered silken wanton, brave our fields

And flesh his spirit in a warlike soil,

Mocking the air with colours idly spread,

And find no check? Let us, my liege, to arms!

Perchance the Cardinal cannot make your peace,

Or if he do, let it at least be said

They saw we had a purpose of defence.

KING JOHN

Have thou the ordering of this present time.

BASTARD

Away, then, with good courage! ⌈Aside⌉Yet I know

Our party may well meet a prouder foe. Exeunt

5.2 Enter, ⌈marching⌉ in arms, Louis the Dauphin, the Earl off Salisbury, Count Melun, the Earl of Pembroke, and Lord Bigot, with soldiers

LOUIS THE DAUPHIN

My Lord Melun, let this be copied out,

And keep it safe for our remembrance.

Return the precedent to these lords again,

That having our fair order written down,

Both they and we, perusing o’er these notes,

May know wherefore we took the sacrament

And keep our faiths firm and inviolable.

SALISBURY

Upon our sides it never shall be broken.

And, noble Dauphin, albeit we swear

A voluntary zealand an unurgéd faith

To your proceedings, yet believe me, Prince,

I am not glad that such a sore of time

Should seek a plaster by contemned revolt,

And heal the inveterate canker of one wound

By making many. O,it grieves my soul

That I must draw this metal from my side

To be a widow-maker! O, and there

Where honourable rescue and defence

Cries out upon the name of Salisbury I

But such is the infection of the time,

That for the health and physic of our right,

We cannot deal but with the very hand

Of stern injustice and confused wrong.

And is’t not pity, O my grieved friends,

That we the sons and children of this isle