Upon your oath of service to the pope, [Exit. K. 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: Enter the Bastard. Bast. All Kent hath yielded; nothing there holds out, But Dover castle: London hath receiv'd, Like a kind host, the Dauphin and his powers: And wild amazement hurries up and down K. John. Would not my lords return to me again, After they heard young Arthur was alive? Bast. They found him dead, and cast into the streets; An empty casket, where the jewel of life 3 By some damn'd hand was robb'd and ta'en away. Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire; 3 Dryden has transferred this image to a speech of Antony, in All for Love: An empty circle, since the jewel's gone.' So in King Richard II: Threaten the threat'ner, and outface the brow K. John. The legate of the pope hath been with me, Bast. O inglorious league! To arms invasive? shall a beardless boy, 4 So in Macbeth: 'Let's briefly put on manly readiness, 5 Thus in Hamlet: 6 such a sight as this Becomes the field.' Forage here seems to mean to range abroad; which Dr. Johnson says is its original sense: but fourrage, the French source of it, is formed from the low Latin foderagium, food: the sense of ranging therefore appears to be secondary. : 7 We have the same image in Macbeth : 'Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky, And fan our people cold.' From these two passages Gray formed the first lines of his 'Bard.' 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. K. John. Have thou the ordering of this present time. Bast. Away then, with good courage; yet, I know, Our party may well meet a prouder foe3. [Exeunt. SCENE II. A Plain, near St. Edmund's-Bury. Lew. My Lord Melun, let this be copied out, Sal. Upon our sides it never shall be broken. To your proceedings; yet, believe me, prince, 8 i. e. I know that our party is able to cope with one yet prouder, and more confident of its strength than theirs. In King e. the rough draught of the original treaty. Cries out upon the name of Salisbury : Her enemies' ranks (I must withdraw and weep 3 To grace the gentry of a land remote, And follow unacquainted colours here? What, here?-O nation, that thou could'st remove! That Neptune's arms, who clippeth thee about, Would bear thee from the knowledge of thyself, And grapple thee unto a Pagan shore; 5 Where these two Christian armies might combine The blood of malice in a vein of league, And not to-spend it so unneighbourly! 2 Shakspeare often uses stranger as an adjective. See the last scene: Swearing allegiance and the love of soul To stranger blood, to foreign royalty.' So in a Midsummer Night's Dream: 'To seek new friends and stranger companies.' 3 i. e. the stain. To clip is to embrace; not yet obsolete in the northern counties. 5 The old copy reads cripple. The emendation was made by Pope. The poet alludes to the wars carried on by the Christian princes in the Holy Land against the Saracens, where the united armies of France and England might have laid their animosities aside and fought in the cause of Christ, instead of fighting against brethren and countrymen. 6 Shakspeare here employs a phraseology used before in the Merry Wives of Windsor: vol. i. p. 269, note 7 :— 'And, fairy-like, to-pinch the unclean knight.' |