Bast.
According to the fair play of the world,
Let me have audience: I am sent to speak:
My holy lord of Milain, from the King
I come, to learn how you have dealt for him?
And as you answer, I do know the scope
And warrant limited unto my tongue.

Pand.
The Dauphin is too wilful, opposite,
And will not temporize with my entreaties:
He flatly says, he'll not lay down his arms.

Bast.
By all the blood that ever fury breath'd,
The youth says well. Now hear our English King,
For thus his royalty doth speak in me:
He is prepar'd, and reason too he should.
This apish and unmannerly approach,
This harness'd mask, and unadvised revel,
This unhear'd sawciness and boyish troops,
The King doth smile at; and is well-prepar'd
To whip this dwarfish war, these pigmy arms,
From out the circle of his territories.
That hand which had the strength, ev'n at your door
To cudgel you, and make you take the hatch,
To dive like buckets in concealed wells,
To crouch in litter of your stable planks,
To lye like pawns, lock'd up in chests and trunks,
To herd with swine, to seek sweet safety out
In vaults and prisons, and to thrill and shake
Ev'n at the crying of our nation's Crow,
Thinking his voice an armed English man;

Shall that victorious hand be feebled here,
That in your chambers gave you chastisement?
No; know the gallant monarch is in arms,
And like an Eagle o'er his Aiery tow'rs,
To souse annoiance that comes near his nest.
And you degen'rate, you ingrate revolters,
You bloody Nero's, ripping up the womb
Of your dear mother-England, blush for shame.
For your own ladies, and pale-visag'd maids,
Like Amazons, come tripping after drums:
Their thimbles into armed gantlets change,
Needles to lances, and their gentle hearts
To fierce and bloody inclination.

Lewis.
There end thy brave, and turn thy face in peace,
We grant thou canst out-scold us; fare thee well:
We hold our time too precious to be spent
With such a babler.

Pand.
Give me leave to speak.

Bast.
No, I will speak.

Lewis.
We will attend to neither:
Strike up the drums, and let the tongue of war
Plead for our int'rest, and our being here.

Bast.
Indeed your drums being beaten, will cry out;
And so shall you, being beaten; do but start
An eccho with the clamour of thy drum,
And ev'n at hand a drum is ready brac'd,
That shall reverb'rate all as loud as thine.
Sound but another, and another shall
As loud as thine, rattle the welkin's ear,
And mock the deep-mouth'd thunder. For at hand
(Not trusting to this halting legate here,
Whom he hath us'd rather for sport than need)

Is warlike John; and in his forehead sits
A bare-ribb'd death, whose office is this day
To feast upon whole thousands of the French.

Lewis.
Strike up our drums, to find this danger out.

Bast.
And thou shalt find it, Dauphin, do not doubt. [Exeunt.

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