King John E-Book

William Shakespeare

• Herausgeber: Interactive Media
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

"King John" by William Shakespeare portrays the turbulent reign of King John of England. Focused on political intrigue and power struggles, it delves into John's conflicts with France, disputes over succession, and his struggles to maintain control. The play offers a vivid depiction of the complexities of medieval politics, loyalty, and betrayal, showcasing Shakespeare's skill in capturing the human drama amidst historical events.

Leseprobe

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

King John

LONDON ∙ NEW YORK ∙ TORONTO ∙ SAO PAULO ∙ MOSCOW

PARIS ∙ MADRID ∙ BERLIN ∙ ROME ∙ MEXICO CITY ∙ MUMBAI ∙ SEOUL ∙ DOHA

TOKYO ∙ SYDNEY ∙ CAPE TOWN ∙ AUCKLAND ∙ BEIJING

New Edition

Published by Sovereign Classic

www.sovereignclassic.net

This Edition

First published in 2015

Copyright © 2015 Sovereign Classic

Contents

CAST

ACT I

SCENE I. KING JOHN’S PALACE.

ACT II

SCENE I. FRANCE. BEFORE ANGIERS.

ACT III

SCENE I. THE FRENCH KING’S PAVILION.

SCENE II. THE SAME. PLAINS NEAR ANGIERS.

SCENE III. THE SAME.

SCENE IV. THE SAME. KING PHILIP’S TENT.

ACT IV

SCENE I. A ROOM IN A CASTLE.

SCENE II. KING JOHN’S PALACE.

SCENE III. BEFORE THE CASTLE.

ACT V

SCENE I. KING JOHN’S PALACE.

SCENE II. LEWIS’S CAMP AT ST. EDMUNDSBURY.

SCENE III. THE FIELD OF BATTLE.

SCENE IV. ANOTHER PART OF THE FIELD.

SCENE V. THE FRENCH CAMP.

SCENE VI. AN OPEN PLACE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF SWINSTEAD ABBEY.

SCENE VII. THE ORCHARD IN SWINSTEAD ABBEY.

CAST

KING JOHN.

PRINCE HENRY, his son; afterwards KING HENRY III.

ARTHUR, Duke of Bretagne, son to GEFFREY, late Duke of Bretagne,

the elder brother to King John.

WILLIAM MARSHALL, Earl of Pembroke.

GEOFFREY FITZ-PETER, Earl of Essex, Chief Justiciary of England.

WILLIAM LONGSWORD, Earl of Salisbury.

ROBERT BIGOT, Earl of Norfolk.

HUBERT DE BURGH, Chamberlain to the King.

ROBERT FALCONBRIDGE, son to Sir Robert Falconbridge.

PHILIP FALCONBRIDGE, his half-brother, bastard son to King

Richard I.

JAMES GURNEY, servant to Lady Falconbridge.

PETER OF POMFRET, a prophet

PHILIP, King of France.

LOUIS, the Dauphin.

ARCHDUKE OF AUSTRIA.

CARDINAL PANDULPH, the Pope’s legate.

MELUN, a French lord.

CHATILLON, Ambassador from France to King John.

ELINOR, Widow of King Henry II and Mother to King John.

CONSTANCE, Mother to Arthur.

BLANCH OF SPAIN, Daughter to Alphonso, King of Castile, and Niece

to King John.

LADY FALCONBRIDGE, Mother to the Bastard and Robert Falconbridge.

Lords, Citizens of Angiers, Sheriff, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, Messengers, Attendants and other Attendants.

SCENE: Sometimes in England, and sometimes in France.

ACT I

SCENE I. KING JOHN’S PALACE.

Enter KING JOHN, QUEEN ELINOR, PEMBROKE, ESSEX, SALISBURY, and others, with CHATILLON

KING JOHN

Now, say, Chatillon, what would France with us?

CHATILLON

Thus, after greeting, speaks the King of FranceIn my behavior to the majesty,The borrow’d majesty, of England here.

QUEEN ELINOR

A strange beginning: ‘borrow’d majesty!’

KING JOHN

Silence, good mother; hear the embassy.

CHATILLON

Philip of France, in right and true behalfOf thy deceased brother Geffrey’s son,Arthur Plantagenet, lays most lawful claimTo this fair island and the territories,To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine,Desiring thee to lay aside the swordWhich sways usurpingly these several titles,And put these same into young Arthur’s hand,Thy nephew and right royal sovereign.

KING JOHN

What follows if we disallow of this?

CHATILLON

The proud control of fierce and bloody war,To enforce these rights so forcibly withheld.

KING JOHN

Here have we war for war and blood for blood,Controlment for controlment: so answer France.

CHATILLON

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

KING JOHN

Bear mine to him, and so depart in peace: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 wrathAnd sullen presage of your own decay.An honourable conduct let him have:Pembroke, look to ‘t. Farewell, Chatillon.

Exeunt CHATILLON and PEMBROKE

QUEEN ELINOR

What now, my son! have I not ever saidHow that ambitious Constance would not ceaseTill she had kindled France and all the world,Upon the right and party of her son?This might have been prevented and made wholeWith very easy arguments of love,Which now the manage of two kingdoms mustWith fearful bloody issue arbitrate.

KING JOHN

Our strong possession and our right for us.

QUEEN ELINOR

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 a Sheriff

ESSEX

My liege, here is the strangest controversyCome from country to be judged by you,That e’er I heard: shall I produce the men?

KING JOHN

Let them approach.Our abbeys and our priories shall payThis expedition’s charge.

Enter ROBERT and the BASTARD

What men are you?

BASTARD

Your faithful subject I, a gentlemanBorn in Northamptonshire and eldest son,As I suppose, to Robert Faulconbridge,A soldier, by the honour-giving handOf Coeur-de-lion knighted in the field.

KING JOHN

What art thou?

ROBERT

The son and heir to that same Faulconbridge.

KING JOHN

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

BASTARD

Most certain of one mother, mighty king;That is well known; and, as I think, one father:But for the certain knowledge of that truthI put you o’er to heaven and to my mother:Of that I doubt, as all men’s children may.

QUEEN ELINOR

Out on thee, rude man! thou dost shame thy motherAnd wound her honour with this diffidence.

BASTARD

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 outAt least from fair five hundred pound a year:Heaven guard my mother’s honour and my land!

KING JOHN

A good blunt fellow. Why, being younger born,Doth he lay claim to thine inheritance?

BASTARD

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,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 sir Robert did beget us bothAnd were our father and this son like him,O old sir Robert, father, on my kneeI give heaven thanks I was not like to thee!

KING JOHN

Why, what a madcap hath heaven lent us here!

QUEEN ELINOR

He hath a trick of Coeur-de-lion’s face;The accent of his tongue affecteth him.Do you not read some tokens of my sonIn the large composition of this man?

KING JOHN

Mine eye hath well examined his partsAnd finds them perfect Richard. Sirrah, speak,What doth move you to claim your brother’s land?

BASTARD

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

ROBERT

My gracious liege, when that my father lived,Your brother did employ my father much,--

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 embassyTo Germany, there with the emperorTo treat of high affairs touching that time.The advantage of his absence took the kingAnd in the mean time sojourn’d at my father’s;Where how he did prevail I shame to speak,But truth is truth: large lengths of seas and shoresBetween 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’dHis lands to me, and took it on his deathThat this my mother’s son was none of his;And if he were, he came into the worldFull 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 husbandsThat 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 keptThis 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 forceTo 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 ELINOR

Whether hadst thou rather be a FaulconbridgeAnd like thy brother, to enjoy thy land,Or the reputed son of Coeur-de-lion,Lord of thy presence and no land beside?

BASTARD

Madam, an 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 thinThat in mine ear I durst not stick a roseLest 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 ELINOR

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 ELINOR

Nay, I would have you go before me thither.

BASTARD

Our country manners give our betters way.

KING JOHN

What is thy name?

BASTARD

Philip, my liege, so is my name begun,Philip, good old sir Robert’s wife’s eldest son.

KING JOHN

From henceforth bear his name whose form thou bear’st:Kneel thou down Philip, but rise more great,Arise sir Richard and Plantagenet.

BASTARD

Brother by the mother’s side, give me your hand:My father gave me honour, yours gave land.Now blessed by the hour, by night or day,When I was got, sir Robert was away!

QUEEN ELINOR

The very spirit of Plantagenet!I am thy grandam, Richard; call me so.

BASTARD

Madam, by chance but not by truth; what though?Something about, a little from the right,In at the window, or else o’er the hatch:Who dares not stir by day must walk by night,And have is have, however men do catch:Near or far off, well won is still well shot,And I am I, howe’er I was begot.

KING JOHN

Go, Faulconbridge: now hast thou thy desire;A landless knight makes thee a landed squire.Come, madam, and come, Richard, we must speedFor France, for France, for it is more than need.

BASTARD

Brother, adieu: good fortune come to thee!For thou wast got i’ the way of honesty.

Exeunt all but BASTARD

A foot of honour better than I was;But many a many foot of land the worse.Well, now can I make any Joan a lady.‘Good den, sir Richard!’--’God-a-mercy, fellow!’--And if his name be George, I’ll call him Peter;For new-made honour doth forget men’s names;‘Tis too respective and too sociableFor your conversion. Now your traveller,He and his toothpick at my worship’s mess,And when my knightly stomach is sufficed,Why then I suck my teeth and catechiseMy picked man of countries: ‘My dear sir,’Thus, leaning on mine elbow, I begin,‘I shall beseech you’--that is question now;And then comes answer like an Absey book:‘O sir,’ says answer, ‘at your best command;At your employment; at your service, sir;’‘No, sir,’ says question, ‘I, sweet sir, at yours:’And so, ere answer knows what question would,Saving in dialogue of compliment,And talking of the Alps and Apennines,The Pyrenean and the river Po,It draws toward supper in conclusion so.But this is worshipful societyAnd fits the mounting spirit like myself,For he is but a bastard to the timeThat doth not smack of observation;And so am I, whether I smack or no;And not alone in habit and device,Exterior form, outward accoutrement,But from the inward motion to deliverSweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age’s tooth:Which, though I will not practise to deceive,Yet, to avoid deceit, I mean to learn;For it shall strew the footsteps of my rising.But who comes in such haste in riding-robes?What woman-post is this? hath she no husbandThat will take pains to blow a horn before [...]