So, in ‘Richard II.,’ John of Gaunt describes England as
‘This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war.
‘The silver sea,’ he says, serves it
‘In the office of a wall,
Or, as a moat, defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
while once again he refers to England as
‘Bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune.’
There is one thing, however, without which, in Shakespeare’s view, even our lucky isolation cannot avail to save us, as a nation, from destruction. ‘If they (the English) were true within themselves they need not to fear, although all nations were set against them.’ So wrote Andrew Borde, when Henry VIII. was King; and in the old play of ‘John, King of England’ the author made one of his personæ say:
‘Let England live but true within itself,
And all the world can never wrong her state.’
So Shakespeare, when he came to treat of the same subject, made the Bastard declare that
‘This England never did, nor never shall
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself...
Nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true.’