Be friends a while,' and both conjointly bend
Your sharpeft deeds of malice on this town:
By east and weft let France and England mount
Their battering cannon, charged to the mouths;
Till their foul-fearing clamours have brawl'd
down

The flinty ribs of this contemptuous city:
I'd play inceffantly upon these jades,

Even till unfenced defolation

Leave them as naked as the vulgar air.
That done, diffever your united strengths,
And part your mingled colours once again;
Turn face to face, and bloody point to point:
Then,in a moment, fortune fhall cull forth
Out of one fide her happy minion;

To whom in favour fhe fhall give the day,
And kifs him with a glorious victory.

How like you this wild counsel, mighty states?
Smacks it not fomething of the policy?

K. JOHN. Now, by the sky that hangs above our

heads,

I like it well;-France, fhall we knit our powers,
And lay this Angiers even with the ground;
Then, after, fight who fhall be king of it?

BAST. An if thou haft the mettle of a king,Being wrong'd, as we are, by this peevish town,Turn thou the mouth of thy artillery,

As we will ours, against these faucy walls:
And when that we have dafh'd them to the ground,
Why, then defy each other; and, pell-mell,
Make work upon ourselves, for heaven, or hell.

3 Be friends a while, &c.] This advice is given by the Bastard in the old copy of the play, though comprized in fewer and less fpirited lines. STEEVENS.

4 Till their foul-fearing clamours-] i. e. foul-appalling. See Vol. V. p. 423, n. 9. MALONE.

K. PHI. Let it be fo:-Say, where will you

affault?

K. JOHN. We from the weft will fend deftruction Into this city's bofom.

AUST. I from the north.

K. PHI. Our thunder from the fouth, Shall rain their drift of bullets on this town.

BAST. O prudent difcipline! From north to fouth;

Auftria and France shoot in each other's mouth :

I'll stir them to it:-Come, away, away!

[Afide.

I CIT. Hear us, great kings: youchsafe a while

to stay,

And I shall show you peace, and fair-faced league;
Win you this city without ftroke, or wound;
Rescue those breathing lives to die in beds,
That here come facrifices for the field:
Perféver not, but hear me, mighty kings.

K. JOHN. Speak on, with favour; we are bent to hear.

I CIT. That daughter there of Spain, the lady
Blanch,'

Is near to England; Look upon the years
Of Lewis the Dauphin, and that lovely maid:
If lufty love should go in queft of beauty,
Where fhould he find it fairer than in Blanch?
If zealous love should go in search of virtue,"
Where should he find it purer than in Blanch?
If love ambitious fought a match of birth,

5

the lady Blanch,] The lady Blanch was daughter to Alphonfo the Ninth, king of Caftile, and was niece to King John by his fifter Elianor. STEEVENS.

6 If zealous love, &c.] Zealous feems here to fignify pious, or influenced by motives of religion. JOHNSON.

Whofe veins bound richer blood than lady Blanch?
Such as the is, in beauty, virtue, birth,

Is the young Dauphin every way complete:
If not complete, O fay, he is not the ;
And the again wants nothing, to name want,
If want it be not, that she is not he:
He is the half part of a bleffed man,
Left to be finifhed by fuch a fhe;"
And fhe a fair divided excellence,
Whofe fulness of perfection lies in him.
O, two fuch filver currents, when they join,
Do glorify the banks that bound them in:

And two fuch fhores to two fuch ftreams made

one,

Two fuch controlling bounds fhall you be, kings,
To these two princes, if you marry them.
This union fhall do more than battery can,
To our faft-clofed gates; for, at this match,
With fwifter fpleen' than powder can enforce,
The mouth of paffage fhall we fling wide ope,
And give you entrance: but, without this match,
The fea enraged is not half so deaf,

Lions more confident, mountains and rocks
More free from motion; no, not death himself
In mortal fury half so peremptory,

As we to keep this city.

If not complete, Ofay,] The old copy reads-If not complete of, Jay, &c. Corrected by Sir T. Hanmer. MALONE.

8

-fuch a fhe;] The old copy-as fhe. STEEVENS.

Dr. Thirlby prefcribed that reading, which I have here restored

to the text.

9

THEOBALD.

at this match,

With fawifter fpleen, &c.] Our author ufes Spleen for any violent hurry, or tumultuous fpeed. So, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, he applies Spleen to the lightning. I am loath to think that Shakspeare meant to play with the double of match for nuptial, and the match of a gun. JOHNSON.

: BAST.

That shakes the rotten carcafe of old death

Out of his rags!

Here's a stay,

Here's a stay,

Here's a large mouth, indeed,

That Shakes the rotten carcafe of old death

Out of his rags!] I cannot but think that every reader wishes for fome other word in the place of flay, which though it may fignify an hindrance, or man that hinders, is yet very improper to introduce the next line. I read:

Here's a flaw,

That Shakes the rotten carcafe of old death.

This fuits

That is, here is a guft of bravery, a blast of menace.
well with the spirit of the fpeech. Stay and flaw, in a careless
hand are not easily distinguished; and if the writing was obfcure,
flaw being a word lefs ufual, was eafily miffed. JOHNSON.

Shakspeare feems to have taken the hint of this fpeech from the
following in The Famous Hiftory of Tho. Stukely, 1605, bl. 1:
Why here's a gallant, here's a king indeed!

66

"He fpeaks all Mars:-tut, let me follow fuch
"A lad as this:-This is pure fire:

"Ev'ry look he cafts, flafheth like lightning;

"There's mettle in this boy.

"He brings a breath that fets our fails on fire:

Why now I fee we fhall have cuffs indeed."

Perhaps the force of the word flay, is not exactly known. I meet with it in Damon and Pythias, 1582:

"Not to prolong my life thereby, for which I reckon not

this,

"But to fet my things in a fay."

Perhaps by a fay, the Baftard means "a fteady, refolute fellow,
who fhakes," &c. So, in Fenton's Tragical Difcourfes, bl. 1. 4to.
1567: "
more apt to follow th' inclination of vaine and
lafcivious defyer, than difpofed to make a ftaye of herselfe in the
trade of honeft vertue." A ftay, however, feems to have been
meant for fomething active, in the following paffage in the 6th
canto of Drayton's Baron's Wars:

"Oh could ambition apprehend a ftay,

"The giddy course it wandereth in, to guide."

Again, in Spenfer's Faery Queen, B. II. c. x :

"Till riper yeares he raught, and stronger stay."

Shakspeare therefore, who ufes wrongs for wrongers, &c. &c. might have used a ftay for a flayer. Churchyard, in his Siege of Leeth, 1575, having occafion to fpeak of a trumpet that founded to proclaim a truce, fays

"

This faye of warre made many men to mufe."

Λ

d-401.

That fpits forth death, and mountains, rocks, and
feas;

Vol. X. Talks as familiarly of roaring lions,
As maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs!
What cannoneer begot this lufty blood?
Hefpeaks plain cannon, fire, and fmoke, and bounce;
He gives the baftinado with his tongue;
Our ears are cudgel'd; not a word of his,
But buffets better than a fift of France:
Zounds! I was never fo bethump'd with words,
Since I first call'd my brother's father, dad.

ELI. Son, lift to this conjunction, make this
match;

Give with our niece a dowry large enough:

I am therefore convinced that the firft line of Faulconbridge's fpeech needs no emendation. STEEVENS.

Stay, I apprehend, here fignifies a fupporter of a caufe. Here's an extraordinary partizan, that shakes, &c. So, in the last act of this play:

"What furety in the world, what hopes, what fay, "When this was now a king, and now is clay?" Again, in K. Henry VI. Part III:

"Now thou art gone, we have no staff, no stay.”

Again, in K. Richard III:

66

"What Atay had I, but Edward, and he's gone." Again, in Davies's Scourge of Folly, printed about the year 1611: England's faft friend, and Ireland's conftant stay." It is obfervable that partizan in like manner, though now generally ufed to fignify an adherent to a party, originally meant a pike or halberd.

Perhaps, however, our author meant by the words, Here's a stay, Here's a fellow, who whilft he makes a propofition as a stay or obftacle, to prevent the effufion of blood, fhakes," &c. The Citizen has just faid:

"Hear us, great kings, vouchsafe a while to stay,

"And I fhall fhow you peace," &c.

It is, I conceive, no objection to this interpretation, that an impediment or obftacle could not shake death, &c. though the perfon who endeavoured to stay or prevent the attack of the two kings, might. Shakspeare feldom attends to fuch minutia.-But the firk explanation appears to me more probable. MALONE.