NEW READINGS AND NEW RENDERINGS

OF

SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES.

KING JOHN.

ACT I.

SCENE I.

K. John. What follows, if we disallow of this? Chat. The proud control of fierce and bloody war, To enforce these rights so forcibly withheld.

K. John. Here have we war for war, and blood for blood,

Controlment for controlment : so answer France.

Although the language of Chatillon and the music of the line would be better preserved thus:

Controlment for control: so answer France,

yet the traditional line is probably right with this scansion: Controllment for | controlm'nt |: so answer France.

Beginning nor supplym'nt. Thou 'rt all the comfort.

Doth he lay claim to thine inheritance?

Bast. I know not why, except to get the land.
But once he slandered me with bastardy :

But whether I be as true begot or no,

That I still 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.

Pope, simply to amend the measure, omitted 'as' before 'true' in the fifth line. But since 'as well' in the seventh line answers manifestly to 'as true' in this line, 'as' can be ill spared. Whether is to be pronounced wheth'r.'

'Fair fall the bones' must mean 'good befall the bones.' 'Fair' has the power of a noun substantive here, as in many other passages of our author's writing, although often with a signification slightly different. We have in Richard III. :

'Now fair befall thee and thy noble house.'-Act i. sc. 3. 'Fall' again has the meaning of 'befall' in other places, as in Anthony and Cleopatra :

'No disgrace

'Shall fall you for refusing him at sea,

'Being prepared for land.'-Act iii. sc. 4.

In this speech we have three 'buts' commencing three lines out of five very unpleasantly. Perhaps the poet is not in fault the third 'but' may be the work of corruption. On the point of illegitimacy the Bastard had immediately before referred the King, for the truth, 'to heaven and his mother.' He returns to this point here, therefore, only in a parenthesis, reminding the King of this reference. We might read and print the passage thus:

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,