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The thunder of my cannon shall be heard:

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.

30

[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 35
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, 40
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 a Sheriff.

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?
29. An honourable conduct
have] In Troublesome Raigne, 1. i. 61
et seq. John says:-

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Pembroke, convay him safely to
the sea,

But not in hast: for as we are
advisde

We mean to be in France as soone as he."

45

37. the manage of two kingdoms] i.e. those who manage the two kingdoms, the powers, the authori

ties.

Compare note on line 17 supra. Fleay wished to treat it as a plural noun, but if we take it in the more abstract sense this is unnecessary.

38. fearful-bloody] Mr. Craig suggests the hyphen-a typically Shake

Shakespeare does not ascribe this spearian compound. petty treachery to John.

29. conduct] safe conduct.

Enter a Sheriff] The Troublesome Raigne, Part i., has the stage

K. John. Let them approach.

Our abbeys and our priories shall pay

This expedition's charge.

Enter ROBERT FAULCONBRIDGE, and PHILIP his bastard

brother.

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 Coeur-de-lion knighted in the field.

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.

50

55

Bast. Most certain of one mother, mighty king;
That is well known; and, as I think, one father: 60
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.

49. expedition's] expeditious F 1; Fleay keeps this reading. 54. Cœurde-lion] Ff and Troublesome Raigne spell Richard's appellation Cordelion.

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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;

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65

That is my brother's plea and none of mine;

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! 70 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 whether I be as true begot or no,

75

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

80

75. whether] Ff 1-3 have where for whether according to the pronunciation.

66

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64. rude man] rúde-man. Compare rudesby' "in Taming of the Shrew, III. ii. 10, and Twelfth Night, IV. i. 55. Mr. Craig suggests reading "Out, out on thee, rude man! Dost shame thy mother!"

65. diffidence] obsolete sense of "mistrust." Compare King Lear, I. ii. 161: "heedless diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts."

69. pound] The singular is often used for the plural by Shakespeare in these cases. Here it adds to the colloquialism of the Bastard's speech, who also uses the colloquial a' for

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would then require alteration to "slanders." There seems no adequate reason for rejecting the obvious meaning of "once"-in time past. "Slander'd" does not here necessarily imply falseness of accusation as it does nowadays, but accusation merely.

74-78. But] Vaughan suggests that three initial "buts" in five lines could not be due to Shakespeare. He would put line 76 in brackets, and read "Yet" for "But" in line 77.

78. Fair fall] fair hap befal. Compare Richard III. 1. iii. 282: "Now fair befal thee and thy noble house"; Beaumont and Fletcher, The Captain, iii. 3: "Fair fall thy sweet face for it"; Burns' Lines to a Haggis: "Fair fa' thy honest sonsie face."

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

85

And finds them perfect Richard. Sirrah, speak, 90 What doth move you to claim your brother's land? Bast. Because he hath a half-face, like my father.

84. lent] sent Hudson (Heath conj.). year!] father?

92-94. father.

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land:

land,

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land?

land, year? Ff 1, 2; father,
land;

year? Ff 3, 4; father,

year! Theobald.

85. He hath a trick] Vaughan would prefer to read "the trick." As it stands it means "He hath a copy of Coeur-de-lion's face"; "trick" being a heraldic term for a pen-and-ink copy of a coat-of-arms. "Tricked: sketched in outline with pen and ink" (Boutell's Heraldry, p. 84). Compare "Copy of the father, eye, nose, lip, The trick of's frown" (The Winter's Tale, II. iii. 100); "The trick of that voice I do well remember" (King Lear, Iv. vi. 108), which seem to be less pertinent examples, where "trick is used in the more modern sense of "peculiarity."

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86. affecteth] resembleth. There is no other example of this use in Shakespeare.

88. large composition] big build. Compare 1 Henry VI. II. iii. 75: "You did mistake The outward composition of his body"; and Lyly's Euphues (ed. Arber, p. 293, line 6):

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year. Capell; father,

'disposition of the mind follows composition of the body."

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66

92, 94. half-face] profile. For "half that face" (line 93) Theobald reads that half-face"; Vaughan suggests half a face," and another conjecture is "half the face." Theobald's reading seems to be the most rational. Half-faced groat: a groat with the sovereign's face in profile. Compare Boorde, Introduction to Knowledge (quoted in New Eng. Dict.): They have half-face crowns." There seems to be at least a suggestion of contempt in the use of the term. Compare 2 Henry IV. III. ii. 283: "And this same halffaced fellow, Shadow . . . the foeman may with as great aim level at the edge of a penknife"; and Munday's Downfall of Richard Earl of Huntington (quoted in New Eng. Dict.): "You half-fac'd groat! You thick- (? thin-) cheek'd chittiface."

With half that face would he have all my land:
A half-faced groat five hundred pound a year!
Rob. My gracious liege, when that my father lived,
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

95

100

To treat of high affairs touching that time.
The advantage of his absence took the king
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 105
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.

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115

this wound on the thigh." Owing to the mention of "death-bed" in line 109, Steevens explains it as "entertained it as his fixed opinion when he was dying." Vaughan takes it to mean engaged to be responsible for it as for a statement made at the approach of death," which seems to be exactly the meaning here. "Oath" has been need-' lessly suggested for "death.”

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