"I'll tell thee what, my friend, He is a very serpent in my way; And wheresoe'er this foot of mine doth tread, He lies before me. Dost thou understand me? Thou art his keeper. _Hub_. And I'll keep him so, That he shall not offend your majesty. _K. John_. Death. _Hub_. My Lord. _K. John_. A grave. _Hub_. He shall not live. _K. John_. Enough _I could be merry now_. Hubert, I love thee; Well, I'll not say what I intend for thee: Remember.--Madam, fare you well: I'll send those powers o'er to your majesty. _Elinor_. My blessing go with thee!" The character that bears the weight of the piece, as an acting play, is the illegitimate son of Richard Cœur-de-Lion, Philip Faulconbridge. He is John Bull himself in the guise of a mediæval knight, equipped with great strength and a racy English humour, not the wit of a Mercutio, a gay Italianising cavalier, but the irrepressible ebullitions of rude health and blunt gaiety befitting an English Hercules. The scene in the first act, in which he appears along with his brother, who seeks to deprive him of his inheritance as a Faulconbridge on the ground of his alleged illegitimacy, and the subsequent scene with his mother, from whom he tries to wring the secret of his paternity, both appear in the old play; but in it everything that the Bastard says is in grim earnest--the embroidery of wit belongs to Shakespeare alone. It is he who has placed in Faulconbridge's mouth such sayings as this:-- "Madam, I was not old Sir Robert's son: Sir Robert might have eat his part in me Upon Good Friday, and ne'er broke his fast." And it is quite in Shakespeare's spirit when the son, after her confession, thus consoles his mother:-- "Madam, I would not wish a better father. Some sins do bear their privilege on earth, And so doth yours." In later years, at a time when his outlook upon life was darkened, Shakespeare accounted for the villainy of Edmund, in _King Lear_ and for his aloofness from anything like normal humanity, on the ground of his irregular birth; in the Bastard of this play, on the contrary, his aim was to present a picture of all that health, vigour, and full-blooded vitality which popular belief attributes to a "Love-child."