BASTARD.
Well, sir, by this you cannot get my land.
Your tale must be how he employ’d my mother.
ROBERT.
And once dispatch’d him in an embassy
To Germany, there with the emperor
To treat of high affairs touching that time.
Th’ advantage of his absence took the King
And in the meantime sojourn’d at my father’s;
Where how he did prevail I shame to speak;
But truth is truth: large lengths of seas and shores
Between my father and my mother lay,
As I have heard my father speak himself,
When this same lusty gentleman was got.
Upon his death-bed he by will bequeath’d
His lands to me, and took it, on his death
That this my mother’s son was none of his;
And if he were, he came into the world
Full fourteen weeks before the course of time.
Then, good my liege, let me have what is mine,
My father’s land, as was my father’s will.
KING JOHN.
Sirrah, your brother is legitimate;
Your father’s wife did after wedlock bear him,
And if she did play false, the fault was hers;
Which fault lies on the hazards of all husbands
That marry wives. Tell me, how if my brother,
Who, as you say, took pains to get this son,
Had of your father claim’d this son for his?
In sooth, good friend, your father might have kept
This calf, bred from his cow, from all the world;
In sooth, he might; then, if he were my brother’s,
My brother might not claim him; nor your father,
Being none of his, refuse him. This concludes;
My mother’s son did get your father’s heir;
Your father’s heir must have your father’s land.
ROBERT.
Shall then my father’s will be of no force
To dispossess that child which is not his?
BASTARD.
Of no more force to dispossess me, sir,
Than was his will to get me, as I think.
QUEEN ELEANOR.
Whether hadst thou rather be: a Faulconbridge
And like thy brother, to enjoy thy land,
Or the reputed son of Cœur-de-lion,
Lord of thy presence and no land besides?
BASTARD.
Madam, and if my brother had my shape
And I had his, Sir Robert’s his, like him;
And if my legs were two such riding-rods,
My arms such eel-skins stuff’d, my face so thin
That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose
Lest men should say “Look where three-farthings goes!”
And, to his shape, were heir to all this land,
Would I might never stir from off this place,
I would give it every foot to have this face.
I would not be Sir Nob in any case.
QUEEN ELEANOR.
I like thee well. Wilt thou forsake thy fortune,
Bequeath thy land to him, and follow me?
I am a soldier and now bound to France.
BASTARD.
Brother, take you my land, I’ll take my chance.
Your face hath got five hundred pound a year,
Yet sell your face for five pence and ’tis dear.
Madam, I’ll follow you unto the death.
QUEEN ELEANOR.
Nay, I would have you go before me thither.