How like you this wild counsel,mighty states?
Smacks it not something of the policy?KING JOHN Now,by the sky that hangs above our heads,I like it well.France,shall we knit our powers And lay this Angiers even to the ground;Then after fight who shall be king of it?BASTARD An if thou hast the mettle of a king,Being wronged as we are by this peevish town,Turn thou the mouth of thy artillery,As we will ours,against these saucy walls;And when that we have dash'd them to the ground,Why then defy each other and pell-mell Make work upon ourselves,for heaven or hell.KING PHILIP Let it be so.Say,where will you assault?KING JOHN We from the west will send destruction Into this city's bosom.AUSTRIA I from the north.KING PHILIP Our thunder from the south Shall rain their drift of bullets on this town.BASTARD O prudent discipline!From north to south:
Austria and France shoot in each other's mouth:
I'll stir them to it.Come,away,away!First Citizen Hear us,great kings:vouchsafe awhile to stay,And I shall show you peace and fair-faced league;Win you this city without stroke or wound;
Rescue those breathing lives to die in beds,That here come sacrifices for the field:
Persever not,but hear me,mighty kings.KING JOHN Speak on with favour;we are bent to hear.First Citizen That daughter there of Spain,the Lady Blanch,Is niece to England:look upon the years Of Lewis the Dauphin and that lovely maid:
If lusty love should go in quest of beauty,Where should 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 sought a match of birth,Whose veins bound richer blood than Lady Blanch?
Such as she is,in beauty,virtue,birth,Is the young Dauphin every way complete:
If not complete of,say he is not she;
And she again wants nothing,to name want,If want it be not that she is not he:
He is the half part of a blessed man,Left to be finished by such as she;And she a fair divided excellence,Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.
O,two such silver currents,when they join,Do glorify the banks that bound them in;And two such shores to two such streams made one,Two such controlling bounds shall you be,kings,To these two princes,if you marry them.
This union shall do more than battery can To our fast-closed gates;for at this match,With swifter spleen than powder can enforce,The mouth of passage shall we fling wide ope,And give you entrance:but without this match,The sea enraged is not half so deaf,Lions more confident,mountains and rocks More free from motion,no,not Death himself In moral fury half so peremptory,As we to keep this city.BASTARD Here's a stay That shakes the rotten carcass of old Death Out of his rags!Here's a large mouth,indeed,That spits forth death and mountains,rocks and seas,Talks as familiarly of roaring lions As maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs!
What cannoneer begot this lusty blood?
He speaks plain cannon fire,and smoke and bounce;He gives the bastinado with his tongue:
Our ears are cudgell'd;not a word of his But buffets better than a fist of France:
Zounds!I was never so bethump'd with words Since I first call'd my brother's father dad.QUEEN ELINOR Son,list to this conjunction,make this match;Give with our niece a dowry large enough:
For by this knot thou shalt so surely tie Thy now unsured assurance to the crown,That yon green boy shall have no sun to ripe The bloom that promiseth a mighty fruit.
I see a yielding in the looks of France;
Mark,how they whisper:urge them while their souls Are capable of this ambition,Lest zeal,now melted by the windy breath Of soft petitions,pity and remorse,Cool and congeal again to what it was.First Citizen Why answer not the double majesties This friendly treaty of our threaten'd town?KING PHILIP Speak England first,that hath been forward first To speak unto this city:what say you?KING JOHN If that the Dauphin there,thy princely son,Can in this book of beauty read 'I love'.
