Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France;
For ere thou canst report I will be there,
The thunder of my cannon shall be heard :1
So, hence! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath,
And sullen presage of your own decay.
An honourable conduct let him have :-
Pembroke, look to 't: Farewell, Chatillon.

[Exeunt CHATILLON and PEMBROKE.

Eli. What now, my son? have I not ever said, How that ambitious Constance would not cease, Till she had kindled France, and all the world, Upon the right and party of her son ?

This might have been prevented, and made whole,

With very easy arguments of love;
Which now the manage of two kingdoms must
With fearful bloody issue arbitrate.

K. John. Our strong possession, and our right, for us.

Eli. Your strong possession much more than your right;

Or else it must go wrong with you and me:
So much my conscience whispers in your ear;
Which none but Heaven, and you, and I, shall
hear.

Enter the Sheriff of Northamptonshire, who
whispers ESSEX.

Essex. My liege, here is the strangest controversy,

Come from the country to be judged by you,
That e'er I heard: Shall I produce the men?

K. John. Let them approach.-[Exit Sheriff. Our abbeys, and our priories, shall pay

Re-enter Sheriff, with ROBERT FAULCONBRIDGE,

and PHILIP, his bastard Brother.

This expedition's charge.-What men are you?
Bast. Your faithful subject I, a gentleman,
Born in Northamptonshire; and eldest son,
As I suppose, to Robert Faulconbridge;
A soldier, by the honour-giving hand
Of Cœur-de-Lion, knighted in the field.2
K. John. What art thou?

Rob. The son and heir to that same Faulconbridge.

K. John. Is that the elder, and art thou the heir? You came not of one mother then, it seems.

Bast. Most certain of one mother, mighty king,
That is well known: and, as I think, one father:
But, for the certain knowledge of that truth,
I put you o'er to heaven, and to my mother;
Of that I doubt, as all men's children may.
Eli. Out on thee, rude man! thou dost shame
thy mother,

And wound her honour with this diffidence.
Bast. I, madam? no, I have no reason for it;
That is my brother's plea, and none of mine;

a Manage has, in Shakspere, the same meaning as management and managery,-which, applied to a state, is equivalent to government. Prospero says of Antonio, "He whom next thyself

Of all the world I lov'd, and to him put
The manage of my state."

The which if he can prove, 'a pops me out
At least from fair five hundred pound a-year:
Heaven guard my mother's honour, and my land!
K. John. A good blunt fellow :-Why, being

younger born,

Doth he lay claim to thine inheritance?

Bast. I know not why, except to get the land.
But once he slander'd me with bastardy :
But whe'r I be as true begot, or no,
That still I lay upon my mother's head;
But, that I am as well begot, my liege,
(Fair fall the bones that took the pains for me!)
Compare our faces, and be judge yourself.
If old sir Robert did beget us both,

And were our father, and this son, like him
O old sir Robert, father, on my knee

I give Heaven thanks I was not like to thee.
K. John. Why, what a madcap hath Heaven
lent us here!

Eli. He hath a trick of Coeur-de-Lion's face; The accent of his tongue affecteth him : Do you not read some tokens of my son In the large composition of this man?

K. John. Mine eye hath well examined his parts,

And finds them perfect Richard. Sirrah, speak, What doth move you to claim your brother's land?

Bast. Because he hath a half-face, like my

father.

With that half-face would he have all my land: A half-faced groat3 five hundred pound a-year!

Rob. My gracious liege, when that my father

liv'd

Your brother did employ my father much :—

Bast. Well, sir, by this you cannot get my land: Your tale must be how he employ'd my mother.

Rob. And once dispatch'd him in an embassy To Germany, there, with the emperor, To treat of high affairs touching that time: Th' advantage of his absence took the king,

& Whe'r. To prevent confusion, we give this word as a contraction of the wher of the original, which has the meaning of whether, but does not appear to have been written as a contraction either by Shakspere or his contemporaries.

b Trick, here and elsewhere in Shakspere, means peculiarity. Gloster remembers the "trick" of Lear's voice ;Helen, thinking of Bertram, speaks

"Of every line and trick of his sweet favour;" Falstaff notes the "villainous trick" of the prince's eye. In all these cases trick seems to imply habitual manner. In this view it is not difficult to trace up the expression to the same common source as trick in its ordinary acceptation; as, habitual manner, artificial habit, artifice, entanglement; from tricare. Wordsworth has the Shaksperean use of "trick" in the Excursion (book i.):

"Her infant babe

Had from its mother caught the trick of grief,
And sigh'd among its playthings."

e That half-face is a correction by Theobald, which appears just, the first folio giving "half that face." For an explanation of half-face, see Illustrations.

And in the mean time sojourn'd at my father's;
Where how he did prevail, I shame to speak:
But truth is truth; large lengths of seas and
shores

Between my father and my mother lay,—
As I have heard my father speak himself,—
When this same lusty gentleman was got.
Upon his death-bed he by will bequeath'd
His lands to me; and took it, on his death,
That this, my mother's son, was none of his;
And, if he were, he came into the world

Full fourteen weeks before the course of time.
Then, good my liege, let me have what is mine,
My father's land, as was my father's will.

K. John. Sirrah, your brother is legitimate; Your father's wife did after wedlock bear him: And, if she did play false, the fault was her's; Which fault lies on the hazards of all husbands That marry wives. Tell me, how if my brother, Who, as you say, took pains to get this son, Had of your father claim'd this son for his? In sooth, good friend, your father might have kept This calf, bred from his cow, from all the world; In sooth, he might: then, if he were my brother's, My brother might not claim him; nor your father, Being none of his, refuse him: This concludes: My mother's son did get your father's heir; Your father's heir must have your father's land. Rob. Shall then my father's will be of no force, To dispossess that child which is not his ?

Bast. Of no more force to dispossess me, sir, Than was his will to get me, as I think.

Eli. Whether hadst thou rather be a Faulconbridge,

And like thy brother, to enjoy thy land;
Or the reputed son of Coeur-de-Lion,
Lord of thy presence, and no land beside ?

Bast. Madam, an if my brother had my shape,
And I had his, sir Robert his, like him?
And if my legs were two such riding-rods;
My arms such eel-skins stuff'd; my face so thin,
That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose,
Lest men should say, Look, where three-far-
things goes ;*

And, to his shape, were heir to all this land,

* Presence may here mean "priority of place," préséance. As the son of Coeur-de-Lion, Faulconbridge would take rank without his land. Warburton judged it meant "master of thyself." If this interpretation be correct, the passage may have suggested the lines in Sir Henry Wotton's song on a Happy Life,"

"Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing yet hath all."

h Sir Robert his. This is the old form of the genitive, such as all who have looked into a legal instrument know. The original has Sir Roberts his," which Mr. Lettsom considers a double genitive.

To his shape-in addition to his shape. HISTORIES. VOL. I.

C

'Would I might never stir from off this place, I would give it every foot to have this face; It would not be sir Nob in any case.

Eli. I like thee well: Wilt thou forsake thy fortune,

Bequeath thy land to him, and follow me?
I am a soldier, and now bound to France.
Bast. Brother, take you my land, I'll take
my chance:

Your face hath got five hundred pound a-year;
Yet sell your face for five pence, and 't is dear.
Madam, I'll follow you unto the death.

Eli. Nay, I would have you go before me thither.

Bast. Our country manners give our betters

way.

K. John. What is thy name?

Bast. Philip, my liege; so is my name begun; Philip, good old sir Robert's wife's eldest son.

K. John. From henceforth bear his name whose form thou bearest :

Kneel thou down Philip, but arise more great; Arise sir Richard, and Plantagenet.5

Bast. Brother, by the mother's side, give me

your hand;

My father gave me honour, yours gave land:
Now blessed be the hour, by night or day,
When I was got, sir Robert was away.
Eli. The very spirit of Plantagenet!

I am thy grandame, Richard; call me so.
Bast. Madam, by chance, but not by truth:
What though?

Something about, a little from the right,

In at the window, or else o'er the hatch; Who dares not stir by day must walk by night; And have is have, however men do catch : Near or far off, well won is still well shot; And I am I, howe'er I was begot.

K. John. Go, Faulconbridge; now hast thou thy desire,

A landless knight makes thee a landed squire.Come, madam, and come, Richard; we must

speed

For France, for France; for it is more than need.

Bast. Brother, adieu; Good fortune come to

thee!

For thou was got i' the way of honesty.

[Exeunt all but the Bastard.

a We have given the text of the folio-" It would not be Sir Nob," not "I would not be." "This face," he says, "would not be Sir Nob." Nob is now, and was in Shakspere's time, a cant word for the head.

b In at the window, &c. These were proverbial expressions, which, by analogy with irregular modes of entering a house, had reference to cases such as that of Faulconbridge's, which he gently terms " a little from the right."

15

6

My dear sir,

For your conversion. Now your traveller,
He and his tooth-pick at my worship's mess,
And when my knightly stomach is suffic'd,
Why then I suck my teeth, and catechise
My picked man of countries:"
(Thus, leaning on my elbow, I begin,)
I shall beseech you-That is question now;
And then comes answer like an Absey book :
O, sir, says answer, at your best command;
At your employment; at your service, sir:
No, sir, says question, I, sweet sir, at yours:
And so, ere answer knows what question would,
Saving in dialogue of compliment ;
And talking of the Alps and Apennines,
The Pyrencan, and the river Po,

It draws toward supper in conclusion so.
But this is worshipful society,

And fits the mounting spirit like myself :
For he is but a bastard to the time,
That doth not smack of observation;
(And so am I, whether I smack, or no ;)
And not alone in habit and device,
Exterior form, outward accoutrement;
But from the inward motion to deliver
Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth:
Which, though I will not practise to deceive,
Yet to avoid deceit I mean to learn;
For it shall strew the footsteps of my rising.—
But who comes in such haste, in riding robes?
What woman-post is this? hath she no husband,
That will take pains to blow a horn before her?

Enter Lady FAULCONBRIDGE, and JAMES
GURNEY.

O me! it is my mother:-How now, good lady?
What brings you here to court so hastily?

a Good den-good evening-good e'en.

b Conversion. This is the reading of the folio, but was altered, by Pope, to conversing. The Bastard, whose "new made honour" is a conversion,-a change of condition,— would say that to remember men's names (opposed, by implication, to forget) is too respective (punctilious, discriminating) and too sociable, for one of his newly attained rank. c Picked man of countries. "The travelled fool," "the pert, conceited, talking spark," of the modern fable, is the old "picked man of countries." "To pick," is the same as to "trim." Steevens says it is a metaphor derived from the action of birds in picking their feathers. "He is too picked, too spruce, too affected," occurs in Love's Labour's Lost.

d Absey book, the common name for the first, or A, B, C, book. The catechism was generally included in these books; and thus the reference in the text to "question ' and answer."

Lady F. Where is that slave, thy brother? where is he?

That holds in chase mine honour up and down? Bast. My brother Robert? old sir Robert's

son?

Colbrand the giant,7 that same mighty man?
Is it sir Robert's son, that you seek so?

Lady F. Sir Robert's son! Ay, thou unre-
verend boy,

Sir Robert's son: Why scorn'st thou at sir Robert?

He is sir Robert's son; and so art thou. Bast. James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave a while?

Gur. Good leave, good Philip.

Bast.
Philip ?-sparrow!-James,
There's toys abroad; anon I'll tell thee more,
[Exit GURNEY.
Madam, I was not old sir Robert's son;
Sir Robert might have eat his part in me
Upon Good-friday, and ne'er broke his fast:
Sir Robert could do well; Marry-to confess-
Could he get me? Sir Robert could not do it;
We know his handy-work:-Therefore, good
mother,

To whom am I beholden for these limbs ?
Sir Robert never holp to make this leg.

Lady F. Hast thou conspired with thy brother
too,

That for thine own gain should'st defend mine honour?

What means this scorn, thou most untoward knave?

Bast. Knight, knight, good mother, - Basi

lisco-like:b