And mak'st an oath the surety for thy truth
Against an oath: The truth thou art unsure
To swear, swear only not to be forsworn";
Else, what a mockery should it be to swear?
But thou dost swear only to be forsworn;
And most forsworn, to keep what thou dost swear.
Therefore, thy latter vows, against thy first,
Is in thyself rebellion to thyself:

And better conquest never canst thou make,
Than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts
Against those giddy loose suggestions;
Upon which better part our prayers come in,
If thou vouchsafe them: but, if not, then know,
The peril of our curses light on thee;

So heavy, as thou shalt not shake them off,
But, in despair, die under their black weight.
AUST. Rebellion, flat rebellion!

BAST.

Will't not be?

Will not a calf's-skin stop that mouth of thine?
LEW. Father, to arms!

BLANCH.

Upon thy wedding day?

Against the blood that thou hast married?

What, shall our feast be kept with slaughter'd men? Shall braying trumpets', and loud churlish drums,—

"In this that you accuse her" [f]. MALONE.

9 -SWEAR only not to be forsworn ;] The old copy readsswears, which, in my apprehension, shows that two half lines have been lost, in which the person supposed to swear was mentioned. When the same word is repeated in two succeeding lines, the eye of the compositor often glances from the first to the second, and in consequence the intermediate words are omitted. For what has been lost, it is now in vain to seek; I have therefore adopted the emendation made by Mr. Pope, which makes some kind of sense. MALONE.

1-braying trumpets,] Bray appears to have been particularly applied to express the harsh grating sound of the trumpet. So, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. iv. c. xii. st. 6:

66

And when it ceast shrill trompets loud did bray.” Again, b. iv. c. iv. st. 48:

Clamours of hell,-be measures 2 to our pomp?
O husband, hear me !-ah, alack, how new
Is husband in my mouth!-even for that name,
Which till this time my tongue did ne'er pronounce,
Upon my knee I beg, go not to arms

Against mine uncle.

CONST.

O, upon my knee,

Made hard with kneeling, I do pray to thee,
Thou virtuous Dauphin, alter not the doom
Fore-thought by heaven.

BLANCH. Now shall I see thy love; What motive

may

Be stronger with thee than the name of wife? CONST. That which upholdeth him that thee upholds,

His honour: O, thine honour, Lewis, thine honour! LEW. I muse3, your majesty doth seem so cold,

"Then shrilling trompets loudly 'gan to bray."

And elsewhere in the play before us :

Hard-resounding trumpets' dreadful bray."

Again, in Hamlet:

"The trumpet shall bray out

Gawin Douglas, in his translation of the Eneid, renders "sub axe tonanti." (lib. v. v. 820 :)

Under the brayand quhelis and assiltre."

Blackmore is ridiculed in the Dunciad, (b. ii.) for endeavouring to ennoble this word by applying it to the sound of armour, war, He might have pleaded these authorities, and that of Milton:

&c.

"Arms on armour clashing bray'd

"Horrible discord." Paradise Lost, b. vi. v. 209. Nor did Gray, scrupulous as he was in language, reject it in The Bard:

"Heard ye the din of battle bray?" HOLT WHITE. 2-be MEASURES -] The measures, it has already been more than once observed, were a species of solemn dance in our author's time.

This speech is formed on the following lines in the old play: "Blanch. And will your grace upon your wedding-day

"Forsake your bride, and follow dreadful drums?

"Phil. Drums shall be musick to this wedding-day." MALONE.

When such profound respects do pull you on.
PAND. I will denounce a curse upon his head.
K. PHI. Thou shalt not need ;-England, I'll fall
from thee.

CONST. O fair return of banish'd majesty!
ELI. O foul revolt of French inconstancy!
K. JOHN. France, thou shalt rue this hour within
this hour.

BAST. Old time the clock-setter, that bald sexton

time,

Is it as he will? well then, France shall rue.

BLANCH. The sun's o'ercast with blood: Fair day, adieu!

Which is the side that I must go withal?
I am with both: each army hath a hand;
And, in their rage, I having hold of both,
They whirl asunder, and dismember me *.
Husband, I cannot pray that thou may'st win;
Uncle, I needs must pray that thou may'st lose ;
Father, I may not wish the fortune thine;
Grandam, I will not wish thy wishes thrive:
Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose;

Assured loss, before the match be play'd.

LEW. Lady, with me; with me thy fortune lies. BLANCH. There where my fortune lives, there my life dies.

K. JOHN. Cousin, go draw our puissance toge[Exit Bastard.

ther.

So, in Middleton's Tragi-Coomodie, called The Witch:

And why thou staist, so long, I muse,

"Since the air's so sweet and good" STEEVENS.

4 They whirl asunder, and dismember me.] Alluding to a well-known Roman punishment:

Metium in diversa quadrigæ

Distulerant. Eneid, viii. 642.

STEEVENS.

See vol. xiv. p. 127, n. 3, where I have shewn that Shakspeare was much more likely to have alluded in cases of this sort to events which had happened in his own time than to the Roman history.

MALONE.

France, I am burn'd up with inflaming wrath;
A rage, whose heat hath this condition,
That nothing can allay, nothing but blood,
The blood, and dearest-valu'd blood, of France.
K. PHI. Thy rage shall burn thee up, and thou
shalt turn

To ashes, ere our blood shall quench that fire:
Look to thyself, thou art in jeopardy.

K. JOHN. No more than he that threats.-To arms let's hie!

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.

The Same. Plains near Angiers.

Alarums, Excursions.

Enter the Bastard, with

AUSTRIA'S Head.

BAST. Now, by my life, this day grows wondrous

hot;

Some airy devil hovers in the sky,

5 Some AIRY devil-] Shakspeare here probably alludes to the distinctions and divisions of some of the demonologists, so much regarded in his time. They distributed the devils into dif ferent tribes and classes, each of which had its peculiar qualities, attributes, &c.

These are described at length in Burton's Anatomie of Melancholy, Part I. sect. ii. p. 45, 1632:

"Of these sublunary devils-Psellus makes six kinds; fiery, aeriall, terrestriall, watery, and subterranean devils, besides those faieries, satyres, nymphes," &c.

"Fiery spirits or divells are such as commonly worke by blazing starres, fire-drakes, and counterfeit sunnes and moones, and sit on ships' masts," &c. &c.

"Aeriall spirits or divells are such as keep quarter most part in the aire, cause many tempests, thunder and lightnings, teare oakes, fire steeples, houses, strike men and beasts, make it raine stones," &c. PERCY.

There is a minute description of different devils or spirits, and their different functions, in Pierce Pennilesse his Supplication,

And pours down mischief. Austria's head, lie there; While Philip breathes o.

Enter King JOHN, ARTHUR, and HUBERT.

K. JOHN. Hubert, keep this boy':-Philip, make up:

My mother is assailed in our tent,

And ta'en, I fear.
BAST.
My lord, I rescued her;
Her highness is in safety, fear you not:
But on, my liege; for very little pains
Will bring this labour to an happy end.

[Exeunt.

1592: With respect to the passage in question, take the following: "the spirits of the aire will mixe themselves with thunder and lightning, and so infect the clyme where they raise any tempest, that sodainely great mortalitie shall ensue to the inhabitants. The spirits of fire have their mansions under the regions of the moone." HENDERSON.

While Philip breathes.] Here Mr. Pope, without authority, adds from the old play already mentioned:

"Thus hath king Richard's son perform'd his vow,

"And offer'd Austria's blood for sacrifice

"Unto his father's ever-living soul."

STEEVENS.

Hubert, keep this boy :] Thus the old copies. Mr. Tyrwhitt would read:

"Hubert, keep thou this boy: "

STEEVENS.

8 - Philip,] Here the King, who had knighted him by the name of Sir Richard, calls him by his former name. STEEVENS. 9 My mother is assailed in our tent,] The author has not attended closely to the history. The Queen-mother, whom King John had made Regent in Anjou, was in possession of the town of Mirabeau, in that province. On the approach of the French army with Arthur at their head, she sent letters to King John to come to her relief; which he did immediately. As he advanced to the town, he encountered the army that lay before it, routed them, and took Arthur prisoner. The Queen in the mean while remained in perfect security in the castle of Mirabeau.

Such is the best authenticated account. Other historians however say that Arthur took Eleanor prisoner. The author of the old play has followed them. In that piece Eleanor is taken by Arthur, and rescued by her son. MALONE.