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