6

So, hence! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath,
And fullen prefage of your own decay.-
An honourable conduct let him have;-
Pembroke, look to't: Farewell, Chatillon.

[Exeunt CHATILLON and PEMBROKE.

ELI. What now, my fon? have I not ever said, How that ambitious Conftance would not cease, Till she had kindled France, and all the world, Upon the right and party of her fon?

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 iffue arbitrate.

K. JOHN. Our ftrong poffeffion, and our right,

for us.

ELI. Your ftrong poffeffion, much more than your right;

Or else it must go wrong with you, and me:
So much my confcience whifpers in your car;
Which none but heaven, and you, and I, fhall hear.

6 fullen prefage] By the epithet fullen, which cannot be applied to a trumpet, it is plain that our author's imagination had now fuggefted a new idea. It is as if he had faid, be a trumpet to alarm with our invafion, be a bird of ill omen to croak out the prognoftick of your own ruin. JOHNSON.

I do not fee why the epithet fullen may not be applied to a trumpet, with as much propriety as to a bell. In our author's Henry IV. P. II. we find

"Sounds ever after as a fullen bell—." MALONE.

That here are two ideas, is evident; but the fecond of them has not been luckily explained. The fullen prefage of your own decay, means, the difmal paffing bell, that announces your own approaching diffolution. STEEVENS.

7

the manage-] i. e. conduct, administration. So, in

K. Richard II :

Enter the Sheriff of Northamptonshire, who whifpers ESSEX.

ESSEX. My liege, here is the ftrangest controverfy,

Come from the country to be judg'd by you,
That e'er I heard: Shall I produce the men?
K. JOHN. Let them approach.- [Exit Sheriff.
Our abbies, and our priories, fhall pay

Re-enter Sheriff, with ROBERT FAULCONBRIDGE, and PHILIP, bis baftard brother."

This expedition's charge.-What men are you?

Enter the Sheriff of Northamptonshire, &c.] This ftage direction I have taken from the old quarto. STEEVENS.

9 — and Philip, his baftard brother.] Though Shakspeare adopted this character of Philip Faulconbridge from the old play, it is not improper to mention that it is compounded of two distinct perfonages.

Matthew Paris fays:-" Sub illius temporis curriculo, Falcafius de Brente, Neufterienfis, et fpurius ex parte matris, atque Bastardus, qui in vili jumento manticato ad Regis paulo ante clientelam defcenderat," &c.

Matthew Paris, in his Hiftory of the Monks of St. Albans, calls him Falco, but in his General Hiftory, Falcafius de Brente, as above. Holinfhed fays, 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.

Perhaps the following paffage in the Continuation of Harding's Chronicle, 1543, fol. 24, b. ad ann. 1472, induced the author of the old play to affix the name of Faulconbridge to King Richard's natural fon, who is only mentioned in our hiftories by the name of Philip: "one Faulconbridge, therle of Kent, his baftarde, a ftoute-harted man."

Who the mother of Philip was, is not ascertained. It is faid that he was a lady of Poitou, and that King Richard bestowed upon her fon a lordship in that province.

BAST. Your faithful fubject I, a gentleman,
Born in Northamptonshire; and eldest son,
As I fuppofe, to Robert Faulconbridge;
A foldier, by the honour-giving hand
Of Coeur-de-lion knighted in the field.
K. JOHN. What art thou?

ROB. The fon and heir to that fame Faulconbridge.

K. JOHN. Is that the elder, and art thou the heir? You came not of one mother then, it feems.

BAST. Moft 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 men's children may.' ELI. Out on thee, rude man! thou doft fhame thy mother,

And wound her honour with this diffidence.

BAST. 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, 'a pops me out

In expanding the character of the Baftard, Shakspeare seems to have proceeded on the following flight hint in the original play : "Next them, a baftard of the king's deceas'd,

"A kardie wild-head, rough, and venturous." MALONE.

2 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.] The refemblance between this fentiment, and that of Telemachus in the first Book of the Odyey, is apparent. The paffage is thus tranflated by Chapman:

"My mother, certaine, fayes I am his fonne;

"I know not; nor was ever fimply knowne,

By any child, the fure truth of his fire."

Mr. Pope has obferved that the like fentiment is found in Euripides, Menander, and Ariftotle. Shakspeare expreffes the fame doubt in feveral of his other plays. STEEVENS.

At least from fair five hundred pound a year: Heaven guard my mother's honour, and my land! 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 flander'd me with bastardy:
But whe'r' I be as true begot, or no,
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 fir Robert did beget us both,

And were our father, and this fon like him ;—
O old fir 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,

But whe'r-] Whe'r for whether. So, in The Comedy of Errors:

"Good fir, fay whe'r you'll anfwer me, or no."

STEEVENS.

He hath a trick of Coeur-de-lion's face,] The trick, or tricking, is the fame as the tracing of a drawing, meaning that peculiarity of face which may be fufficiently fhown by the flightest outline. This expreffion is ufed by Heywood and Rowley in their comedy called Fortune by Land and Sea: "Her face, the trick of her eye, her leer." The following paffage in Ben Jonfon's Every Man out of bis Humour, proves the phrafe to be borrowed from delineation : You can blazon the reft, Signior?

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"O ay, I have it in writing here o'purpofe; it cost me two fhillings the tricking." So again, in Cynthia's Revels:

-the parish-buckets with his name at length trick'd upon them." STEEVENS,

By a trick, in this place, is meant fome peculiarity of look or motion. So, Helen, in All's well that ends well, fays, speaking of Bertram:

The accent of his tongue affecteth him:
Do you not read fome tokens of my son
In the large compofition of this man?

K. JOHN. Mine eye hath well examined his parts, And finds them perfect Richard.Sirrah, fpeak, What doth move you to claim your brother's land?

BAST. Because he hath a half-face, like my father; With that half-face would he have all my land: A half-faced groat five hundred pound a year!

'Twas pretty, though a plague,

"To fee him every hour; to fit and draw
"His arched brows, &c.

"In our heart's table; heart too capable
"Of every line and trick of his sweet favour."

And Glofter, in K. Lear fays,

"The trick of that voice I do well remember." M. MASON, Our author often uses this phrafe, and generally in the fenfe of a peculiar air or caft of countenance or feature. So, in K. Henry VI. Part I: "That thou art my fon, I have partly thy mother's word, partly my own opinion; but chiefly a villainous trick of thine

MALONE.

4 With that half-face-] The old copy-with half that face. But why with half that face? There is no queftion but the poet wrote, as I have reftored the text: With that half-faceMr. Pope, 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 ftruck till the year 1504, in the reign of King Henry VII. viz. a groat, which, as well as the half groat, bore but half faces impreffed. Vide Stowe's Survey of London, p. 47. Holinfbed, Camden's Remains, &c. The poet fneers at the meagre sharp vifage of the elder brother, by comparing him to a filver groat, that bore the King's face in profile, fo fhowed but half the face: the groats of all our Kings of England, and indeed all their other coins of filver, one or two only excepted, had a full face crowned; till Henry VII. at the time above mentioned, coined groats and half-g groats, as alfo fome fhillings, with half faces, i. e. faces in profile, as all our coin has now. The firft groats of King Henry VIII, were like thofe of his father; though afterwards he returned to the broad faces again. Thefe groats, with the impreffion in profile, are undoubtedly here alluded to: though, as I faid, the poet is knowingly guilty of an anachronism in it: for in the time of King John there were no groats at all;