How we cite our quotes: (Act.Scene.Line)
Quote #10
BASTARD
O, let us pay the time but needful woe,
Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.
This England never did, nor never shall
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror
But when it first did help to wound itself.
Now these her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms
And we shall shock them. Naught shall make us rue,
If England to itself to rest but true. (5.7.116-124)
Throughout the whole play, these lines (the very last in the play) seem to draw the most obvious parallel between the era when King John takes place and the era in which it was performed. The Bastard here is admitting that England almost got conquered by Louis the Dauphin, but he says that that was only because it had "wound[ed] itself" first through civil war. Provided that the English stick together, he says, they will never be at risk of being conquered by a foreign enemy. The message for Shakespeare's contemporaries seems to be clear: put their quarrels aside and stick together, because that's the only way they will be able to resist foreign enemies like Spain that menace them.