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Bast. Knight, knight, good mother,-Basilis

co-like:

What! I am dubbed; I have it on my shoulder.
But, mother, I am not Sir Robert's son:
I have disclaimed Sir Robert and my land;
Legitimation, name, and all is gone:

Then, good my mother, let me know my father:
Some proper man, I hope: who was it, mother?
Lady F. Hast thou denied thyself a Falcon-
bridge?

Bast. As faithfully as I deny the devil.
Lady F. King Richard Coeur-de-lion was thy
father:

By long and vehement suit I was seduced
To make room for him in my husband's bed.-
Heaven lay not my transgression to my charge!-
Thou art the issue of my dear offence,

Which was so strongly urged, past my defence.

Bast. Now, by this light, were I to get again, Madam, I would not wish a better father. Some sins do bear their privilege on earth, And so doth yours: your fault was not your folly. Needs must you lay your heart at his dispose (Subjected tribute to commanding love), Against whose fury and unmatched force The awless lion could not wage the fight, Nor keep his princely heart from Richard's hand. He that perforce robs lions of their hearts, May easily win a woman's. Ay, my mother, With all my heart I thank thee for my father! Who lives, and dares but say thou didst not well When I was got, I'll send his soul to hell. Come, lady, I will shew thee to my kin;

And they shall say, when Richard me begot, If thou hadst said him nay, it had been sin. Who says it was, he lies: I say 't was not.

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Lew. Before Angiers well met, brave Austria.—
Arthur, that great forerunner of thy blood,
Richard, that robbed the lion of his heart,
And fought the holy wars in Palestine,
By this brave duke came early to his grave:
And, for amends to his posterity,
At our importance hither is he come
To spread his colours, boy, in thy behalf,
And to rebuke the usurpation

Of thy unnatural uncle, English John.
Embrace him, love him, give him welcome hither.
Arth. God shall forgive you Coeur-de-lion's
death

The rather that you give his offspring life,
Shadowing their right under your wings of war.
I give you welcome with a powerless hand,
But with a heart full of unstainéd love:
Welcome before the gates of Angiers, duke.

Lew. A noble boy! Who would not do thee right?
Aust. Upon thy cheek lay I this zealous kiss,
As seal to this indenture of my love:
That to my home I will no more return,
Till Angiers, and the right thou hast in France,
Together with that pale, that white-faced shore,
Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides,
And coops from other lands her islanders,
Even till that England, hedged in with the main,
That water-walléd bulwark, still secure
And confident from foreign purposes,
Even till that utmost corner of the west
Salute thee for her king: till then, fair boy,
Will I not think of home, but follow arms.
Const. O, take his mother's thanks, a widow's
thanks,

Till your strong hand shall help to give him strength

To make a more requital to your love.

Aust. The peace of heaven is theirs that lift

their swords

In such a just and charitable war.

K. Phi. Well, then, to work; our cannon shall

be bent

Against the brows of this resisting town.-
Call for our chiefest men of discipline,
To cull the plots of best advantages:
We'll lay before this town our royal bones,
Wade to the market-place in Frenchmen's blood,
But we will make it subject to this boy.

Const. Stay for an answer to your embassy, Lest unadvised you stain your swords with blood: My lord Chatillon may from England bring That right in peace which here we urge in war; And then we shall repent each drop of blood That hot rash haste so indirectly shed.

Enter CHATILLON.

K. Phi. A wonder, lady!-lo, upon thy wish, Our messenger Chatillon is arrived.— What England says, say briefly, gentle lord; We coldly pause for thee: Chatillon, speak. Chat. Then turn your forces from this paltry

siege,

And stir them up against a mightier task.
England, impatient of your just demands,
Hath
put himself in arms: the adverse winds,
Whose leisure I have stayed, have given him time
To land his legions all as soon as I:
His marches are expedient to this town,

His forces strong, his soldiers confident.
With him along is come the mother-queen,
An Até, stirring him to blood and strife;
With her her niece, the lady Blanch of Spain;
With them a bastard of the king deceased:
And all the unsettled humours of the land,—
Rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntaries,

With ladies' faces and fierce dragons' spleens,-
Have sold their fortunes at their native homes,
Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs,
To make a hazard of new fortunes here.
In brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits,
Than now the English bottoms have waft o'er,
Did never float upon the swelling tide,
To do offence and scath in Christendom.
The interruption of their churlish drums

[Drums beat.

Cuts off more circumstance: they are at hand, To parley or to fight: therefore, prepare.

K. Phi. How much unlooked for is this expedition!

Aust. By how much unexpected, by so much We must awake endeavour for defence; For courage mounteth with occasion:

Let them be welcome, then; we are prepared.

Enter KING JOHN, ELINOR, BLANCH, the Bastard, PEMBROKE, and Forces.

K. John. Peace be to France, if France in peace permit

Our just and lineal entrance to our own:
If not, bleed France, and peace ascend to heaven:
Whiles we, God's wrathful agent, do correct
Their proud contempt that beat his peace to
heaven.

K. Phi. Peace be to England, if that war re

turn

From France to England, there to live in peace.
England we love; and for that England's sake
With burden of our armour here we sweat.
This toil of ours should be a work of thine :
But thou from loving England art so far,
That thou hast under-wrought his lawful king,
Cut off the sequence of posterity,
Outfacéd infant state, and done a rape
Upon the maiden virtue of the crown.
Look here upon thy brother Geffrey's face :
These eyes, these brows, were moulded out of his :
This little abstract doth contain that large
Which died in Geffrey; and the hand of time
Shall draw this brief into as huge a volume.
That Geffrey was thy elder brother born,
And this his son: England was Geffrey's right
And this is Geffrey's: in the name of God,
How comes it, then, that thou art called a king,
When living blood doth in these temples beat,
Which owe the crown that thou o'ermasterest?

K. John. From whom hast thou this great commission, France,

To draw my answer from thy articles?

K. Phi. From that supernal Judge that stirs good thoughts

In any breast of strong authority,

To look into the blots and stains of right.
That Judge hath made me guardian to this boy :
Under whose warrant I impeach thy wrong;
And by whose help I mean to chastise it.

K. John. Alack, thou dost usurp authority.
K. Phi. Excuse: it is to beat usurping down.
Eli. Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?
Const. Let me make answer :-thy usurping son.
Eli. Out, insolent! thy bastard shall be king,
That thou mayst be a queen, and check the world!
Const. My bed was ever to thy son as true
As thine was to thy husband: and this boy
Liker in feature to his father Geffrey
Than thou and John in manners,-being as like
As rain to water, or devil to his dam.
My boy a bastard! By my soul, I think
His father never was so true begot:
It cannot be an if thou wert his mother.

Eli. There's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.

Const. There's a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee.

Aust. Peace!

Bast.

Aust.

Hear the crier.

What the devil art thou? Bast. One that will play the devil, sir, with you, An 'a may catch your hide and you alone. You are the hare of whom the proverb goes, Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard. I'll smoke your skin-coat, an I catch you right: Sirrah, look to 't; i' faith, I will, i' faith.

Blanch. O, well did he become that lion's robe That did disrobe the lion of that robe!

Bast. It lies as sightly on the back of him, As great Alcides' shoes upon an ass:— But, ass, I'll take that burden from your back; Or lay on that shall make your shoulders crack. Aust. What cracker is this same, that deafs

our ears

With this abundance of superfluous breath? K. Phi. Lewis, determine what we shall do straight.

Lew. Women and fools, break off your conference.

King John, this is the very sum of all :—
England, and Ireland, Anjou, Touraine, Maine,
In right of Arthur, do I claim of thee:
Wilt thou resign them, and lay down thy arms?
K. John. My life as soon: I do defy thee,

France.

Arthur of Bretagne, yield thee to my hand;

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Draw those heaven-moving pearls from his poor

eyes,

Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee: Ay, with these crystal beads heaven shall be bribed

To do him justice, and revenge on you.

Eli. Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and

earth!

Const. Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth!

Call not me slanderer: thou and thine usurp
The dominations, royalties, and rights

Of this oppressed boy. This is thy eldest son's

son,

Infortunate in nothing but in thee:

Thy sins are visited in this poor child;
The canon of the law is laid on him,
Being but the second generation
Removed from thy sin-conceiving womb.
K. John. Bedlam, have done.
Const. I have but this to say,-
That he's not only plagued for her sin,
But God hath made her sin and her the plague
On this removed issue, plagued for her,
And with her plague, her sin; his injury
Her injury, the beadle to her sin :
All punished in the person of this child,
And all for her a plague upon her!

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