AND DEATH of KING JOHN.

ACT I. SCENE I.

Northampton.

A room of state in the palace. Enter king John, queen Elinor, Pembroke, Esex, and

Salisbury, with Chatillion.

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King John.
OW, say, Chatillion, what would France with

us ?
Chat. Thus, after greeting, speaks the king

of France, In my behaviour, 2 to the majesty, The borrow'd majesty of England here,

Eli. 'The troublesome reign of king John was written in two parts, by W. Shakespeare and W. Rowley, and printed 1611. But the present play is intirely different, and infinitely superior to it.

Pope. The edition of 1611 has no mention of Rowley, nor in the account of Rowley's works is any mention made of his conjunction with Shakespeare in any play. King John was reprinted in two parts in 1622. The first edition that I have found of this play in its present form, is that of 1623, in fol. The edition of 159. I have not seen. JoHNSON.

Hall, Holinshead, Stowe, &c. are closely followed not only in the conduct, but sometimes in the expressions throughout the following historical dramas ; viz. Macbeth, this play, Richard II. Henry IV. 2 parts, Henry V. Henry VI. 3 parts, Richard III. and Henry VIII. Steevens.

The Life and Death - ] Though this play hath this title, yet the action of it begins at the thirty-fourth year of his life ; and takes in only some transactions of his reign at the time of his demise, being an interval of about seventeen years. T'A EOBALD.

? In my behaviour, -- ] The word behaviour feems here to have a signification that l' have never found in any other author

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Eli. A strange beginning !-borrow'd majesty!
K. John. Silence, good mother; hear the embaffy,

Chat. Philip of France, in right and true behalf
Of thy deceased brother Geffrey's son,
Arthur Plantagenet, lays most lawful claim
To this fair island, and the territories ;
To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine;
Desiring thee to lay aside the sword,
Which sways usurpingly these several titles;
And put the same into young Arthur's hand,
Thy nephew, and right-royal sovereign.

K. Föhn. What follows, if we disallow of this ?
Chat. The proud 3 controul of fierce and bloody

war,

To inforce these rights so forcibly with-held.
K. John. Here have we war for war, and blood for

blood, Controulment for controulment; so answer France.

Chat. Then take my king's defiance from my mouth, The farthest limit of my embassy.

K. John. Bear mine to him, and so depart in peace. 4 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. So, hence! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath, . And 5 sullen presage of your own decay.

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The king of France, says the envoy, thus speaks in my behaviour to the majesty of England; that is, the king of France speaks in the character which I here assume. I once thought that these two lines, in my behaviour, &c. had been uttered by the ambarsador as part of his master's message, and that behaviour had meant ihe conduct of the king of France towards the king of England; but the ambassador's speech, as continued after the interruption, will not admit this meaning. JOHNSON.

S contron)-] Opposition, from controller. JOHNSON.

4 Be thou as lightning-) The fimile does not suit well: the lightning indeed appears before the thunder is heard, but the lightning is destructive, and the thunder innocent. JOHNSON. °5 - Süllen presage ] By the epithet jullen, which cannot be ap

An honourable conduct let him have,
Pembroke, look to't: Farewell, Chatillion.

(Exeunt Chat. and Pem.
Eli. What now, my fon? 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

Elex 6.
Effex. My liege, here is the strangest controversy,
Come from the country to be judg’d by you,
That e'er I heard. Shall I produce the men ?

[Exit sherif.
K. John. Let them approach.-
Our abbies and our priories shall pay
This expedition's charge
Re-enter sheriff with Robert Faulconbridge, and Philip, his .

brother 7. What men are you?

Phil.

plied to a trumpet, it is plain, that our author's imagination had now suggested a new idea. It is as if he had taid, be a trumpet to alarm with our invasion, be a bird of ill omen to croak out the prognostick of your own ruin. JOHNSON.

Enter the fiseriff of Northamptonshire, &c.] This stage-direction I have taken from the old quarto. STEEVENS.

- and Philip, his brother. Though Shakespeare adopted this character of Philip Faulconbridge from the old play, it is

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But for the cer to heaven, ans children

Phil. 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 Cæur-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?
· Phil. 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 mens' children may.
Eli. Out on thee, rude man! thou dost shame thy

mother, And wound her honour with this diffidence.

Phil. I, madam ? no, I have no reason for it ; That is my brother's plea, and none of mine; The which if he can prove, he pops me out At least from fair five hundred pound a year : Heaven guard iny mother's honour, and my land ! K. John. A good blunt fellow: why, being younger

born,
Doth he lay claim to thine inheritance ?

Phil. 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,
That still I lay upon my mother's head ;

not improper to mention that it is compounded of two diftinct personages.

Matthew Paris says " Sub illius temporis curriculo, Fal. “ cafius de Brente, Neulierienfis, et spurius ex parte matris, al“ que Bastardus, qui in vili jumento manticato ad Regis paulo

ante clientelam defcenderat," c.

Matt. Paris, in his History of the Monks of St. Albans, calls him Falco, but in his general History Falcafius de Brentc, as above.

Holinhead says, that Richard I. had a natural fon named Philip, who in the year following killed the viscount De Limoges to revenge the death of his father. STEEVENS.

But

Bat that I am as well begot, my liege,
(Fair fall the bones, that took the pains for me!)
Compare out 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 mad-cap hath heaven lent

us here?
Eli. He hath a trick of Ceur-de-lion's face 8,
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?

Phil. Because he hath a half-face, like my father, 9 With that half-face would he have all my land : A half-fac'd groat, five hundred pound a 'year !

Rob. * He hasb a trick of Çæur-de-lion's face,] The trick or tricking is the same as the tracing of a drawing, meaning that peculiarity of face which may be sufficiently sewn by the Nightelt outline. This cxpreflion. is used by Heywood and Rowley in their comedy called Fortune by Land and Sea." Her face sbe trick " of her eya, her leer." The following passages may more evidently prove the expression to be borrowed from delineation. Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour,

“ You can blazon the rest, Signior ? " O ay, I have it in writing here o' purpose, it cost me two “ shillings the tricking.” So again in Cyninia's Revels.

" —the parish-buckets with his name at length trick'd upon chem.” STEEVENS.

9 With half that face-] But why with half that face? There is no question but the poet wrote, as I have restored the text, With that half-face- Mr. Popc, perhaps, will be angry with me for discovering an anachronism of our poet's in the next line; where he alludes to a coin not struck till the year 1904, in the reign of king Henry VII. viz. a groat, which, as well as the half groat, bare but half faces impressed. Vide Stow's Sure vey of London, p. 47. Holling Med, Camden's Remains, &c. The poet sneers at the meagre Tharp visage of the elder brother, by comparing him to a lilver groat, that bore the king's face ia

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