By this brave duke came early to his grave :
And, for amends to his posterity,
At our importance hither is he come,
To spread his colours, boy, in thy behalf;
And to rebuke the usurpation

Of thy unnatural uncle, English John :

Embrace him, love him, give him welcome hither.
Arthur. God shall forgive you Coeur-de-lion's death,
The rather, that you give his offspring life,
Shadowing their right under your wings of war:
I give you welcome with a powerless hand,
But with a heart full of unstained love :
Welcome before the gates of Angiers, duke.

Lewis. A noble boy! Who would not do thee right ?
Aust. Upon thy cheek lay I this zealous kiss,
As seal to this indenture of my love;

That to my home I will no more return,
Till Angiers, and the right thou hast in France,
Together with that pale, that white-fac'd shore,
Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides,
And coops from other lands her islanders,
Even till that England, hedg'd in with the main,
That water-walled bulwark, still secure
And confident from foreign purposes,
Even till that utmost corner of the west
Salute thee for her king: till then, fair boy,
Will I not think of home, but follow arms.

Const. O, take his mother's thanks, a widow's thanks, Till your strong hand shall help to give him strength, To make a more requital to your love.

Aust. The peace of heaven is theirs, that lift their swords In such a just and charitable war.

K. Phil. Well then, to work; our cannon shall be bent Against the brows of this resisting town.

Call for our chiefest men of discipline,

To cull the plots of best advantages :*

We'll lay before this town our royal bones,

Wade to the market-place in Frenchmen's blood,
But we will make it subject to this boy.

Const. Stay for an answer to your embassy,

[6] England is supposed to be called Albion from the white rocks facing France.

JOHNSON.

More signified, in our author's time, greater. STEEVENS. [8] i. e. to mark such stations as might most over-awe the town. HENLEY.

Lest unadvis'd you stain your swords with blood:
My lord Chatillon may from England bring
That right in peace, which here we urge in war;
And then we shall repent each drop of blood,
That hot rash haste so indirectly shed.

Enter CHATILlon.

K. Phil. A wonder, lady!-lo, upon thy wish,
Our messenger Chatillon is arriv'd.-

What England says, say briefly, gentle lord,
We coldly pause for thee; Chatillon, speak.

Chat. Then turn your forces from this paltry siege, And stir them up against a mightier task.

England, impatient of your just demands,

Hath put himself in arms; the adverse winds,
Whose leisure I have staid, have given him time
To land his legions all as soon as I :
His marches are expedient to this town,
His forces strong, his soldiers confident.
With him along is come the mother-queen,
An Atè, stirring him to blood and strife;
With her her niece, the lady Blanch of Spain;
With them a bastard of the king deceas'd:
And all the unsettled humours of the land,-
Rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntaries,
With ladies' faces, and fierce dragons' spleens,
Have sold their fortunes at their native homes,
Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs,
To make a hazard of new fortunes here.
In brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits,
Than now the English bottoms have waft o'er,
Did never float upon the swelling tide,
To do offence and scath' in Christendom.
The interruption of their churlish drums
Cuts off more circumstance: they are at hand,
To parley, or to fight; therefore, prepare.

[Drums beat.

K. Phil. How much unlook'd for is this expedition ! Aus. By how much unexpected, by so much We must awake endeavour for defence e;

For courage mounteth with occasion :

Let them be welcome then, we are prepar'd.

[9] Immediate, expeditious. [1] Scath-Destruction, harm. JOHNSON.

Enter King JOHN, ELINOR, BLANCH, the Bastard, PEмBROKE, and Forces.

K. John. Peace be to France; if France in peace permit Our just and lineal entrance to our own!

If not; bleed France, and peace ascend to heaven!
Whiles we, God's wrathful agent, do correct

Their proud contempt that beat his peace to heaven.
K. Phil. Peace be to England; if that war return
From France to England, there to live in peace!
England we love; and, for that England's sake,
With burden of our armour here we sweat:
This toil of ours should be a work of thine ;
But thou from loving England art so far,
That thou hast under-wrought his lawful king,
Cut off the sequence of posterity,

Outfaced infant state, and done a rape
Upon the maiden virtue of the crown.

Look here upon thy brother Geffrey's face ;-
These eyes, these brows, were moulded out of his :
This little abstract doth contain that large,
Which died in Geffrey; and the hand of time
Shall draw this brief into as huge a volume."
That Geffrey was thy elder brother born,
And this his son; England was Geffrey's right,
And this is Geffrey's: In the name of God,
How comes it then, that thou art call'd a king,
When living blood doth in these temples beat,
Which owe the crown that thou o'er-masterest?

K. John. From whom hast thou this great commission,
France,

To draw my answer from thy articles?

K. Phil. From that supernal judge, that stirs good thoughts

In any breast of strong authority,

To look into the blots and stains of right.

That judge hath made me guardian to this boy :
Under whose warrant, I impeach thy wrong;
And, by whose help, I mean to chastise it.

K. John. Alack, thou dost usurp authority.
K. Phil. Excuse; it is to beat usurping down.
Eli. Who is it, thou dost call usurper, France?

[2] A brief is a short writing, abstract, or description. STEEVENS.

Const. Let me make answer;-thy usurping son.
Eli. Out, insolent! thy bastard shall be king;
That thou may'st be a queen, and check the world!
Const. My bed was ever to thy son as true,
As thine was to thy husband: and this boy
Liker in feature to his father Geffrey,

Than thou and John in manners; being as like,
As rain to water, or devil to his dam.
My boy a bastard! By my soul, I think,
His father never was so true begot;

It cannot be, an if thou wert his mother."

Eli. There's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father. Con. There's a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee. Aust. Peace!

Bast. Hear the crier.

Aust. What the devil art thou?

Bast. One that will play the devil, sir, with you,
An a' may catch your hide and you alone.
You are the hare of whom the proverb goes,
Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard;
I'll smoke your skin-coat, an I catch you right;
Sirrah, look to't; i'faith, I will, i'faith.

Blanch. O, well did he become that lion's robe,
That did disrobe the lion of that robe !

Bast. It lies as sightly on the back of him,
As great Alcides' shoes upon an ass :-

But, ass, I'll take that burden from your back;
Or lay on that, shall make your shoulders crack.*

Aust. What cracker is this same, that deafs our ears

With this abundance of superfluous breath?

K. Phil. Lewis, determine what we shall do straight. Lew. Women and fools, break off your conference.King John, this is the very sum of all,—

[3] Constance alludes to Elinor's infidelity to her husband, Lewis the Seventh, when they were in the Holy Land; on account of which he was divorced from her She afterwards (1151) married our King Henry II. MALONE.

[4] The ground of the quarrel of the Bastard to Austria is no where specified in the present play. But the story is, that Austria, who killed King Richard Cœurde-lion, wore, as the spoil of that prince, a lion's hide which had belonged to him. This circumstance renders the anger of the Bastard very natural, and ought not to have been omitted. POPE.

The omission of this incident was natural. Shakespeare having familiarized the story to his own imagination, forgot that it was obscure to his audience; or, what is equally probable, the story was then so popular, that a hint was sufficient, at that time, to bring it to mind; and these plays were written with very little care for the approbation of posterity. JOHNSON.

England, and Ireland, Anjou, Touraine, Maine,
In right of Arthur, do I claim of thec :

Wilt thou resign them, and lay down thy arms?

K. John. My life as soon:-I do defy thee, France.
Arthur of Bretagne, yield thee to my hand;

And, out of my dear love, I'll give thee more
Than e'er the coward hand of France can win :
Submit thee, boy.

Eli. Come to thy grandam, child.

Const. Do, child, go it' grandam, child
Give grandam kingdom, and it' grandam will
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig:
There's a good grandam.

Arth. Good my mother, peace!

I would, that I were low laid in my grave;
I am not worth this coil that's made for me.

Eli. His mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps. Const. Now shame upon you, whe'r she does, or no! His grandam's wrongs, and not his mother's shames, Draw those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes, Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee;

Ay, with these crystal beads heaven shall be brib'd
To do him justice, and revenge on you.

Eli. Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth! Const. Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth! Call not me slanderer; thou, and thine, usurp

The dominations, royalties, and rights,

Of this oppressed boy: This is thy eldest son's son,
Infortunate in nothing but in thee;

Thy sins are visited in this poor child ;
The canon of the law is laid on him,
Being but the second generation
Removed from thy sin-conceiving womb.
K. John. Bedlam, have done.
Const. I have but this to say,--
That he's not only plagued for her sin,
But God hath made her sin and her the plague

On this removed issue, plagu'd for her,

[5] Read whe'r he does, or no!-i. e. whether he weeps, or not. Constance, so far from admitting, expressly denies that she shames him. RITSON.

[6] The key to these words is contained in the last speech of Constance, where she alludes to the denunciation of the second commandment, of "visiting the ini quities of the parents upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation," &c. HENLEY.