38 issue action, but with the resonating sense of ‘offspring’ or ‘descendant’, a term suggesting the origin of his anticipated bloody action. Cf. the proleptically ambiguous instance in Westmorland’s ‘Uncertain of the issue any way’ (1H4 1.1.61).

  arbitrate decide, determine; cf. Mac 5.4.20.

  39 John declares both possession of the crown and lineal right of succession to justify the superiority of his claim to Arthur’s. In asserting possession John ‘asserts the law of a sovereign de facto, as afterwards declared by the statute of Henry VII … “If there be a king regnant in possession of the crown, though he be but rex de facto and not de jure, yet he is seignour le roy; and if another hath right, if he be out of possession, he is not within the meaning of the statute 11 Henry VII.c.1” ’ (Davis, 150–1). John makes a similar assertion of possession to the citizens of Angiers: ‘Doth not the crown of England prove the king?’ (2.1.273). The fundamentals of the law of seisen seem to underlie John’s claim: ‘he who possesses has by the mere fact of his possession more right in the thing than the non-possessor has; he of all men has most right in the thing until someone has asserted and proved a greater right’ (Pollock & Maitland, 2.43). The issue of possession vs right becomes one of the central debates argued in the play. For the collocation of possession and right, cf. H5 4.5.221–2, ‘You won it [the crown], wore it, kept it, gave it me; / Then plain and right must my possession be’; E3 4.107–10, ‘claim Edward what he can, / And bring he ne’er so plain a pedigree, / ’Tis you are in possession of the crown, / And that’s the surest point of all the law’. Ard2 notes further, ‘W. Rushton [Shakespeare’s Legal Maxims (1859), p. 12] thought Shakespeare had in mind the maxim “In aequali jure melior est conditio possidentis” (= Where the right is equal, the claim of the party in possession shall prevail).’

  40 a clear admission of John’s status as a usurper who may possess the crown but has no lineal right to it. Shakespeare deliberately departs from his source material that showed that John had a legitimate claim to the throne and succeeded with popular acclamation and without opposition. Eleanor refers again to John’s unstable position at 2.1.470–1, ‘For by this knot thou shalt so surely tie / Thy now unsured assurance to the crown’.

  42 conscience both (political) awareness, knowledge; and moral sense that recognizes wrongdoing

  43.1 *and … Essex The Sheriff enters but speaks no lines. In order for Essex to speak his next line there must be some sort of unheard conversation between them, which simply acts as a prompt for the next court business.

  Sheriff chief local representative of the royal government; primarily a financial officer

  44–5 controversy … by you This point of legal proceeding is accurately presented by Shakespeare: ‘John’s father, Henry II, had accomplished numerous legal reforms, one group of which had the effect of securing the trial of all actions relating to the ownership of land in the King’s Courts, instead of (as heretofore) the court of the feudal overlord from whom the land was held … the king’s officer in the shires was the sheriff, and to him, therefore, in the first place, belonged cognisance of the dispute. The parties [Robert and Philip], however, have appealed to the King’s Court’ (Keeton, 119).

  controversy dispute

  45 country provinces (McEachern)

  48 abbeys ‘monaster[ies] of religious persons secluded from the world and under vows of celibacy, consisting of monks governed by an abbot or nuns under an abbess’ (OED 1, citing this line). The strained relationship between John and the clergy was owed partly to the heavy taxation on the monastic orders. See Holinshed, 167a: ‘by leauieng a subsidie of his people, he got togither an huge summe of monie … Neither were the bishops, abbats, nor any other ecclesiasticall persons exempted, by meanes whereof he ran first into the hatred of the clergie’; also 196b: ‘to mainteine his warres which he was forced to take in hand, as well in France as elsewhere, he was constreined to make all the shift he could devise to recouer monie, and, bicause he pinched their purses, they conceiued no small hatred against him’. A further reference to ransacking the abbeys is made at 3.3.6–10.

  priories ‘A monastery or nunnery governed by a Prior or Prioress; generally an off-shoot of an abbey on which it was more or less dependent; also a house of canons regular’ (OED 1).

  pay subsidise by taxes

  * * *

  41 me;] Pope; me, F 43.1 and … Essex] this edn 47 SD] Capell

  49 *expedition’s expedition is setting forth with martial intentions; a warlike enterprise (OED 2); perhaps with the secondary sense of speedy performance or prompt execution, speed (OED 1); cf. H5 1.2.301–2, ‘omit no happy hour / That may give furtherance to our expedition’. F has ‘expeditious’, which is possible in the same sense as ‘quick’, ‘speedy’. Ard2’s holding to F’s reading, bolstered by evidence that the adjective was in use at the time, is still not so persuasive as the correction ‘expeditions’ in F2.

  charge two meanings are simultaneously implied: the cost in financing the expedition (OED n. II 10b), and military attack (OED n. III 18). For the collocation of speed and attack cf. H5 4.3.69–70, ‘The French are bravely in their battles set / And will with all expedience charge on us’.

  49 SD *BASTARD There are two main traditions of bastards in literature and legend, one of them suggesting an immorality consequent upon illegitimacy. The other, to which our hero belongs, is that illegitimacy has no effect on morality, and, indeed, may provide the bastard with a jolt of energy and wit, qualities lacking in the many legitimate offspring who are the products of scarcely passionate marital intercourse, as, in the words of Shakespeare’s villainous bastard Edmund, ‘Got ’tween a sleep and wake’ (KL 1.2.15).

  49 What men i.e. who; of what name

  50 I Ard2 notes the more than 50 times Faulconbridge uses this first-person pronoun and finds the large number indicative of ‘his self-reliance, and his narrow limits’.

  51 Northamptonshire county in the middle of England; like that of his later fellow countryman Lemuel Gulliver, born in Nottinghamshire, the Bastard’s birthplace serves geographically as a representative of sturdy Englishness.

  53 honour-giving hand the second of the many symbolically significant manual references

  54 Cordelion Coeur de Lion, ‘the Lionheart’; Richard I (1157–99), who came to the throne in 1189, was the third-born son of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. A king of legendary and heroic reputation and the subject of much romantic literature, he was said to have torn the heart from a living lion (see 265–8; 2.1.3, 141–2).

  knighted … field The honour of knighthood was often conferred before or after battle; cf. Tit 1.1.198–9, ‘And buried one-and-twenty valiant sons, / Knighted in field’.

  55 What both ‘who’ and ‘of what rank or station in life’

  * * *

  49 expedition’s] F2 subst.; expeditious F SD] Dyce; after you? F the BASTARD] Smallwood subst. 50 subject, I,] Capell; subiect, I F 53 honour-giving hand] Rowe; Honor-giuing-hand F

  57 that he (Ard2)

  58 You … mother ‘John assumes paternal infidelity’ (Smallwood).

  60–2 as I … mother proverbial: Dent, M1193, ‘Ask the mother if the child be like his father’; an elaborated witticism in Shakespeare, cf. TS 5.1.30–2, MA 1.1.98–100, 1H4 2.4.392–3, Tem 1.2.55–7. The Bastard repeats his doubt concerning his mother at 76.

  60 as I think John shows a keen intelligence in the analysis of other people’s heredity. The Bastard’s parenthetical hesitation allows the actor playing him a wider range of tonal and facial indications about the truth of the matter at hand.

  61 that truth the true facts (Ard2)

  62 put you o’er refer you (Ard2)

  64 rude unmannerly, uncivil, impolite; offensively or deliberately discourteous (OED a. 4b)

  64–5 shame … honour Cf. 1H6 4.4.13–15, ‘O, if you love my mother, / Dishonour not her honourable name / To make a bastard and a slave of me.’

  65 diffidence distrust, misgiving, doubt (OED 1, citing this line)

  66 I … No, I The pun on ‘Ay’ (‘yes’) clearly reinforces the Bastard’s scepticism even as he denies that he has any doubt. Cf. Richard’s demurring over his surrendering of his crown in R2: ‘Ay, no. No, ay; for I must nothing be. / Therefore, no ‘no’, for I resign to thee’ (4.1.201–2).

  67 brother’s plea Robert is the plaintiff.

  68 The which i.e. maternal infidelity

  ’a … out he puts me promptly, suddenly or unexpectedly out (of the succession to and income from his land) (OED pop v.1 5 trans.)

  ’a he; Honigmann notes that this ‘[u]nstressed form’ together with the colloquial, lower-class pops and the singular pound where we would expect the plural indicates a kind of rough familiarity. Cf. Hamlet’s phrasing regarding his own loss of the Danish throne, referring to Claudius, who ‘killed my King and whored my mother, / Popped in between th’election and my hopes’ (Ham 5.2.63–4).

  69 fair likely; fully, at least; implying an attractive sum, with alliteration characteristic of the energetic Bastard, who repeats Fair and the f alliteration at 78

  72 inheritance John articulates the issue that belongs not only to the brothers Faulconbridge, but to Arthur and himself.

  73–4 land … slandered The Bastard continues the theme of property rights in slandered, which contains the word, land, that is the subject at stake.

  74 once (1) sometime in the past; and (2) on a single occasion (in that Robert Faulconbridge would ‘not dare to repeat the slander’ (Ard2))

  74 slandered … bastardy Accusations of bastardy are frequent insults in Shakespeare; cf. 2.1.122 and see n.

  75 whe’er … or no whether I am legitimate or not

  76 lay … head leave my mother to answer for (OED lay 35a)

  78 ‘May good fortune befall (or fair hap befall) the man that took the trouble to beget me’, with a sexual double entendre on fall; cf. LLL 2.1.123–5, ‘BEROWNE Now fair befall your mask. / ROSALINE Fair fall the face it covers. / BEROWNE And send you many lovers.’ The term pains might suggest his mother’s travails in giving birth to him, but the greater probability is that the Bastard is ironically, coarsely referring to the male work required in intercourse (cf. the clear reference to male effort at 121).

  79–81 Cf. R3 3.7.11–13, ‘And his resemblance, being not like the Duke. / Withal, I did infer your lineaments, / Being the right idea of your father’. The comparison of the child’s likeness to the father is one of several mirroring devices used in the play: Eleanor and John see Richard’s resemblance in the Bastard (85–90); Arthur is described as the copy of his father, Geoffrey (2.1.99–103, 125–6).

  80 old Cf. ‘olde Faukenbridge’ in Looke About You (anon., 1600), who ‘is the butt of a cuckold subplot’ (Ard2).

  81 this son Philip is referring to his brother.

  82–3 a couplet; characteristic of the Bastard’s style in the first half of the play

  * * *

  81 him –] Collier; him: F 82 SD] this edn

  84 madcap reckless, wildly impulsive person (OED A n. b). Cf. Berowne, ‘the merry madcap lord’ (LLL 2.1.214).

  lent given, bestowed upon (Schmidt)

  85 trick characteristic expression (of the face or voice); peculiar feature; distinguishing trait (OED n. 8b, citing this example). Cf. 1H4 2.4.392–5, ‘That thou art my son … but chiefly a villainous trick of thine eye, … that doth warrant me’, and see Gloucester’s ‘The trick of that voice I do well remember: / Is’t not the King?’ (KL 4.6.105–6), as well as Lear’s response, which concerns the frequency of adultery.

  86 tongue voice

  affecteth resembles or assumes the character of (a person) (OED v.1 5b)

  87 read discern. The metaphor of the body as a read document recurs at 2.1.101–3, 485; 5.7.32–3.

  tokens signs or marks indicating some quality (OED n. 2a)

  my son i.e. Richard the Lionheart; Eleanor, at this point of the play and contrary to history, seems to value Richard most, calling him ‘her son’ in the presence of her youngest son, John.

  88 large both ‘big’, in keeping with the idea of the historical Richard as above average in stature; and ‘general’, that is, not merely in size but in overall shape, the Bastard resembles Richard.

  composition constitution of mind and body combined; the combination of personal qualities that make someone what they are (OED n. 16b)

  89 examined examinèd

  parts appearance, features

  90 perfect i.e. the exact likeness or image of

  Sirrah a slightly contemptuous form of address to inferiors

  92 half-face thin, pinched face, figuratively from the profile stamped on a coin (OED half-faced a. 1, citing this and the next two lines). The insulting implication is that Robert is less than a full man; cf. 1H4 1.3.207, ‘out upon this half-faced fellowship’; TN 5.1.203, ‘a knave, a thin-faced knave, a gull’.

  93 half that face i.e. half a half-face, with a probable pun on face = impudence, cheek

  94 half-faced groat A groat was a thin silver coin worth about four pence, introduced in the time of Edward I, and by Shakespeare’s day a coin of small value; ironically, in this case, with a profile (face) of the monarch. Cf. 141–3n.

  96 Your brother i.e. Richard the Lionheart

  98 tale story, narrative with a sexual quibble on ‘tail’ (= pudendum, penis; OED tail n.1 5c); cf. TGV 2.3.45–7, ‘PANTINO Where should I lose my tongue? / LAUNCE In thy tale. / PANTINO In thy tail!’

  employed used; with bawdy connotation

  99 dispatched got rid of, sent, but with the association of ‘sent out of his way for selfish reasons’

  100 Emperor the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI (reigned 1191–7)

  101 touching concerned with

  103 in … time at the same time, with mean having the secondary sense of ‘low’ (morally speaking)

  sojourned visited; stayed overnight

  104 prevail i.e. with Robert’s mother

  105 truth is truth proverbial (Dent, T581); frequent in Shakespeare, and most celebrated in Falstaff’s deceitful defence of his conduct at Gad’s Hill: ‘Art thou mad? Is not the truth the truth?’ (1H4 2.4.222–3)

  lengths of seas Ard2 notes that ‘No child born of a married woman could be bastardized in Shakespeare’s day – unless the husband was “beyond the four seas during the whole period of the wife’s pregnancy” ’ (Davis, 144). But as Robert admits his father’s return before the birth of Philip (113), John rightly ignores the point.

  108 lusty vigorous; Robert seems to be accepting the distinction between his own slenderness and the Bastard’s strength as proof of the latter’s being King Richard’s offspring.

  got conceived

  110 took … death (1) staked his mortal soul on it; and (2) asserted on his deathbed (repeating the idea in 109). OED, illustrating (1) (take v. 40b), cites the line of the drunken armourer Horner, who prophetically says, ‘I will take my death’ (2H6 2.3.90–1).

  it an oath

  113 Full fourteen weeks a time sufficient to rule out a premature birth. Shakespeare’s most notorious bastard, Edmund, is ‘fourteen moonshines / Lag of a brother’ (KL 1.2.5–6).

  course of time usual period of gestation (i.e. nine months)

  115 father’s will Robert Faulconbridge’s last words, as opposed to Richard’s will, as cited in 109–10

  will intention, and testament

  116–17 your brother … him John rules correctly according to the law’s presumption of legitimacy where the child is born in wedlock.

  118 fault wrong, defect; also with the sexual connotation of ‘vagina’ (Williams, fault = vulva)

  119 lies … hazards is one of the risks, perils; cf. 2.1.71, ‘To make a hazard of new fortunes here’; 5.6.7, ‘I will upon all hazards well believe’.

  120 marry wives a temporal compression: men marry women who are then wives, the better to underscore the inescapable danger of cuckoldry.

  123–4 kept … calf … cow i.e. the owner of the cow keeps the calf; ‘he which maried the woman, shall bee saide to bee the father of the childe, and not hee which did beget the same … for whose the cow is, as it is commonly said, his is the calfe also’ (Swinburne, sig. Y6, cited in Ard2).

  125 sooth truth

  125–7 if … him i.e. if Philip were my brother’s son, my brother could not legally acknowledge him, nor could your father disclaim him even if he were not his son.

  127 concludes is decisive, settles the matter

  * * *

  122 his?] Theobald; his, F

  129 Early English common law disallowed any effort of a testator to will or devise lands away from the heir.

  130 will testament; desire or wish

  131 It was firmly established in English common law that ‘an illegitimate child was filius nullius (the son of nobody), and could not inherit … blood was conceived as the basis of inheritance, and bastards were deemed to “have no blood in them, at least no inheritable blood” ’ (Clarkson & Warren, 225, quoting Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 2.247).

  133 will readiness or inclination; lust; possibly also penis (Williams)

  134 Whether i.e. which of the two (scanned as one syllable)

  135 like … land Honigmann’s note is of considerable interest here: ‘rated the like of your brother, so as to enjoy possession of your land. It was thought that a child could resemble a possible adulterer physically, yet the husband be the true father: “Wherein diuerse (I confesse) of no small aucthoritie haue contended mightilie … [But] forme or similitude maie happen to the infant by the mothers … firme imagination at the time of the conception” (Swinburne, sig. Y7); cf. TR, 1.1.200–2. Eleanor, therefore, tests Faulconbridge’s spriritual likeness: Is he mean-spirited like a Faulconbridge, or a gambler like a Plantagenet?’

  to ‘When two infinitives follow whether, a to before the second was common’ (Abbott, 350, cited in Ard2).