Bast. Knight, knight, good mother,-Basilis
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 (Subjécted tribute to commanding love), Against whose fury and unmatchéd 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.
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 unstained 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
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.
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
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
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.
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
With this abundance of superfluous breath? K. Phi. Lewis, determine what we shall do straight.
Lew. Women and fools, break off your con
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,
Arthur of Bretagne, yield thee to my band;
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 plaguéd 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!
Eli. Thou unadviséd scold, I can produce A will that bars the title of thy son.
Const. Ay, who doubts that? A will! a wicked will;
A woman's will; a cankered grandam's will! K. Phi. Peace, lady; pause, or be more temperate:
It ill beseems this presence to cry aim
To these ill-tunéd repetitions.
Some trumpet summon hither to the walls These men of Angiers: let us hear them speak, Whose title they admit, Arthur's or John's.
Trumpets sound. Enter Citizens upon the walls. 1st Cit. Who is it that hath warned us to the walls?
K. Phi. "Tis France for England.
You men of Angiers, and my loving subjects, K. Phi. You loving men of Angiers, Arthur's subjects,
Our trumpet called you to this gentle parle,― K. John. For our advantage :-therefore, hear us, first.
These flags of France, that are advanced here Before the eye and prospect of your town, Have hither marched to your endamagement: The cannons have their bowels full of wrath, And ready mounted are they to spit forth Their iron indignation 'gainst your walls: All preparation for a bloody siege
And merciless proceeding, by these French, Confront your city's eyes, your winking gates; And, but for our approach, those sleeping stones That as a waist do girdle you about, By the compulsion of their ordnance By this time from their fixéd beds of lime Had been dishabited, and wide havoc made For bloody power to rush upon your peace. But, on the sight of us, your lawful king,— Who painfully, with much expedient march, Have brought a countercheck before your gates, To save unscratched your city's threatened cheeks,-| Behold, the French, amazed, vouchsafe a parle: And now, instead of bullets wrapped in fire, To make a shaking fever in your walls, They shoot but calm words, folded up in smoke, To make a faithless error in your ears: Which trust accordingly, kind citizens, And let us in, your king; whose laboured spirits, Forwearied in this action of swift speed, Crave harbourage within your city walls.
K. Phi. When I have said, make answer to us both.
Lo, in this right hand, whose protection
Is most divinely vowed upon the right Of him it holds, stands young Plantagenet;
Son to the elder brother of this man, And king o'er him and all that he enjoys. For this down-trodden equity, we tread
In warlike march these greens before your town: Being no further enemy to you
Than the constraint of hospitable zeal, In the relief of this oppressed child, Religiously provokes. Be pleaséd, then, Το pay that duty which you truly owe,
To him that owes it; namely, this young prince: And then our arms, like to a muzzled bear, Save in aspéct, have all offence scaled up; Our cannons' malice vainly shall be spent Against the invulnerable clouds of heaven; And, with a blessed and unvexed retire, With unhacked swords and helmets all unbruised, We will bear home that lusty blood again Which here we came to spout against your town, And leave your children, wives, and you, in peace. But if you fondly pass our proffered offer, "Tis not the roundure of your old-faced walls Can hide you from our messengers of war, Though all these English and their discipline Were harboured in their rude circumference. Then tell us, shall your city call us lord, In that behalf which we have challenged it; Or shall we give the signal to our rage, And stalk in blood to our possession?
1st Cit. In brief, we are the King of England's subjects:
For him, and in his right, we hold this town. K. John. Acknowledge then the king, and let
1st Cit. That can we not: but he that proves the king
To him will we prove loyal: till that time Have we rammed up our gates against the world. K. John. Doth not the crown of England prove the king?
And if not that, I bring you witnesses, Twice fifteen thousand hearts of England's breed,- Bast. Bastards and else.
K. John. To verify our title with their lives. K. Phi. As many and as well-born bloods as those
Bast. Some bastards too.
K. Phi. Stand in his face, to contradict his claim. 1st Cit. Till you compound whose right is
We, for the worthiest, hold the right from both. K. John. Then God forgive the sin of all those souls
That to their everlasting residence, Before the dew of evening fall, shall fleet, In dreadful trial of our kingdom's king!
K. Phi. Amen, amen!-Mount, chevaliers :
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