Bastard

“ The anguish which was now pent up in my bosom, seemed to open a new world to me: I began to extend my thoughts beyond myself, and grieve for human misery, till I discovered, with horror—ah! what horror!—that I was with child. I know not why I felt a mixed sensation of despair and tenderness, excepting that, ever called a bastard, a bastard appeared to me an object of the greatest compassion in creation. ”

“ Shall I live on to see this bastard kneel
And call me father? better burn it now
Than curse it then. But be it; let it live.
It shall not neither. [To Antigonus.] You, sir, come you hither,
You that have been so tenderly officious
With Lady Margery, your midwife, there,
To save this bastard’s life—for ’tis a bastard,
So sure as this beard’s grey. What will you adventure
To save this brat’s life?
ANTIGONUS.
Anything, my lord,
That my ability may undergo,
And nobleness impose: at least thus much:
I’ll pawn the little blood which I have left
To save the innocent. Anything possible. ”

“ If they do not think it worth while to defend a fortress, that is to be demolished in a few days, let them reflect, that it will be a melancholy thing nine months hence to be brought to bed of a bastard; a posthumous bastard, as it were, to which the quondam father can be no more than a dry nurse.
This wonderful transformation is the instrument of nature to balance matters between the sexes. The cruelty of scornful mistresses shall be returned; the slighted maid shall grow into an imperious gallant, and reward her undoer with a big belly, and a bastard. ”

“ ELINOR. Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?
CONSTANCE. Let me make answer: thy usurping son.
ELINOR. Out, insolent! Thy bastard shall be king,
That thou mayst be a queen and check the world!
CONSTANCE. My bed was ever to thy son as true
As thine was to thy husband; and this boy
Liker in feature to his father Geffrey
Than thou and John in manners-being as like
As rain to water, or devil to his dam.
My boy a bastard! By my soul, I think
His father never was so true begot;
It cannot be, an if thou wert his mother.
ELINOR. There's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father. ”

“ Amb. 'Sfoot, brother, hold.
Sup. Woult let the bastard shame us?
Amb. Hold, hold, brother! there's fitter time than now.
Sup. Now, when I see it!
Amb. 'Tis too much seen already.
Sup. Seen and known;
The nobler she's, the baser is she grown.
Amb. If she were bent lasciviously (the fault
Of mighty women, that sleep soft) —O death!
Must she needs choose such an unequal sinner,
To make all worse?—
[Pg 84]
Sup. A bastard! the duke's bastard! shame heap'd on shame!
Amb. O our disgrace!
Most women have small waists the world throughout ”

“ And, again, in respect of temperance, courage, magnificence, and every other virtue, should we not carefully distinguish between the true son and the bastard? for where there is no discernment of such qualities states and individuals unconsciously err; and the state makes a ruler, and the individual a friend, of one who, being defective in some part of virtue, is in a figure lame or a bastard. ”

“ Does it not condemn her to the block, does it not degrade and shame her if she refuses to buy her right to motherhood by selling herself? Does not marriage only sanction motherhood, conceived in hatred, in compulsion? Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, of love, of ecstasy, of defiant passion, does it not place a crown of thorns upon an innocent head and carve in letters of blood the hideous epithet, Bastard? ”

“ When she goes out among children, in the streets or at school, they will no doubt tell her she is a bastard! She may come to me crying, and ask me what it means. Sometimes I think I would rather she should die than grow up to find her mother—— Oh! ”

“ And the Divine Goodness, which is perfect charity and true love, took pity upon her grief and long suffering, in such wise that a few days afterwards the Bastard died while occupied in seeking after another woman. ”

“ BASTARD. By heaven, these scroyles of Angiers flout you, kings,
And stand securely on their battlements
As in a theatre, whence they gape and point
At your industrious scenes and acts of death.
Your royal presences be rul'd by me:
Do like the mutines of Jerusalem,
Be friends awhile, and both conjointly bend
Your sharpest deeds of malice on this town.
By east and west let France and England mount
Their battering cannon, charged to the mouths,
Till their soul-fearing clamours have brawl'd down
The flinty ribs of this contemptuous city. ”

“ A reader feels that in the figure of the Bastard he set down what he found most significant in the common English character. With the exceptions of Sir Toby Belch and Justice Shallow, the Bastard is the most English figure in the plays. He is the Englishman neither at his best nor at his worst, but at his commonest. ”

“ The Bastard makes the most of his grace; his prayer is very long. He sees that a fight is going on below, and knocks the hangman dead from the tree with his fist, then comes down from the tree and joins in the fray. ”

“ Yet now you would divorce all that goodnesse; and why? for a little letchery of revenge? it's a lye: the Burre that stickes in your throat is a throane: let him out of his messe of Kingdomes cut out but one, and lay Sicilia, Arragon, Naples or any else upon your trencher, and you'll prayse Bastard [196] for the sweetest wine in the world and call for another quart of it. 'Tis not because the man has left you but because you are not the woman you would be, that mads you: a shee-cuckold is an untameable monster. ”

“ An interesting compilation might be made from the Plays, of passages expressive of strong passion of various kinds, the several vocabularies of which testify to Shakespeare's having imaginatively or actually voiced what he [113] wrote. The speech of the Bastard to Hubert, in King John (A. iv. S. 3) , is a signal example:
Bastard. ”

“ The OFr. bastard (Fr. bâtard) has a Teut. termination; see Bankert. The first part of the word, which in MidE. and OFr. signifies ‘illegal marriage,’ is generally derived from MidLat. and Rom. bastum, ‘pack-saddle’; comp. Ital. and Span. basto, Fr. bât, ‘pack-saddle.’ Bastard would then mean ‘the son of a pack saddle’ (comp. Bast) the saddles serving the Spanish muleteers as beds; comp. Bankert. ”

“ Who woud gar her lord gae landless,
And children bastards to be?'
'She shoud be brunt upon a hill,
Or hangd upon a tree,
That woud gar her lord gang landless,
And children bastards be.'
'Your judgment is too rash, father ”

“ At a time when marks of illegitimacy, both in fact and in theory, were nothing more than marks of cadency and difference from the arms of the head of the house, it was no venality of the heralds, but merely the acceptance of current ideas, that permitted them to recognise the undifferenced arms for the illegitimate descendants when there were no legitimate owners from whose claim the arms of the others needed to be differentiated, and when lordships and lands had lapsed to a bastard branch. ”

“ Now, gods, stand up for bastards! ”

“ And so sych a bastard is forbedyn to bere the hooƚƚ armys of his fader for the reuerans of his blode. bot his faderis armys he may bere with sych a staffe as is sayd afore: in signe and finaƚƚ declaracion of his bastardy and to the differance of propur and naturaƚƚ hayre of his fader. And when ye haue any sych a playn fissure or a staffe ī armys or ingraylit inueckyt or fusillatit: of that same staffe ye shaƚƚ say as a fore is rehersit in the chapiture of bendys moore playnli. And the bastarde the wich berith theys armys possessis in latyn on thys maner as now here folowys. ”

“ Quitting thee thereby of ten thousand shames,
And that my Soueraignes presence makes me milde,
I would, false murd'rous Coward, on thy Knee
Make thee begge pardon for thy passed speech,
And say, it was thy Mother that thou meant'st,
That thou thy selfe wast borne in Bastardie;
And after all this fearefull Homage done,
Giue thee thy hyre, and send thy Soule to Hell,
Pernicious blood-sucker of sleeping men
Suff. Thou shalt be waking, while I shed thy blood,
If from this presence thou dar'st goe with me
Warw. ”

“ Our poet, though vindicating the ladies and the happy state of matrimony, cannot help introducing this stroke of satire: Bastards have no place, or rank. ↑ That is, will not even go to church if they have not their right of precedence. ”

“ Here fiercer rage her fiercer rancour pours.
Your crime was vengeance on the faithless sires,
But here ambition with foul lust conspires.
'Twas rage of love, O Scylla, urged the knife
That robb'd thy father of his fated life;
Here grosser rage the mother's breast inflames,
And at her guiltless son the vengeance aims;
But aims in vain; her slaughter'd forces yield,
And the brave youth rides victor o'er the field.
No more his subjects lift the thirsty sword,
And the glad realm proclaims the youthful lord. ”

“ To master you I do not hesitate to strike at your nephews with the lethal weapons that are mine. When you shall have seen them hang you will understand the things that argument could not make clear to you. In the vileness of my act you will see a reflection of the vileness of your own, and perhaps your heart will be touched, your monstrous pride abated. ”

“ But there are two sorts of madness, the one that which the revengeful Furies send privily from hell, as often as they let loose their snakes and put into men's breasts either the desire of war, or an insatiate thirst after gold, or some dishonest love, or parricide, or incest, or sacrilege, or the like plagues, or when they terrify some guilty soul with the conscience of his crimes ”

“ O God, which this blood mad'st, revenge his death!
O earth, which this blood drink'st, revenge his death!
Either, heaven, with lightning strike the murderer dead;
Or, earth, gape open wide and eat him quick,
As thou dost swallow up this good king's blood,
Which his hell-govern'd arm hath butchered!
GLOSTER
Lady, you know no rules of charity,
Which renders good for bad, blessings for curses.
ANNE
Villain, thou knowest nor law of God nor man:
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. ”

“ As for the rest of him, he was a brute-beast, wholly unmoral, and with all the passion and turgid violence of the brute-beast. What saved him, what made him possible for me, were those corners of his eyes--the humor and laughter and kindliness of the beast when unaroused. ”

“ Slowly, at last, came the step of the dead, heavily ascending the stairs;—he entered—I rushed to meet him, and the long pent up agony of my soul burst forth in madness uncontrolled. ‘Monster!—murderer!—destroyer of thy father and thy brother! why comest thou thus to torture and not kill? why is thy bloody hand for ever raised, and yet forbearing to fall? If thine aim be vengeance, strike—strike—strike—thou blood-bespotted horror! ”

“ All, therefore, who have been murdered, you, the instigator of the deed, have slain. Nor indeed does the hand of the butcher glow save at the instigation of your tongue; and that terrible heat of the breast is inflamed by your words to take the blood of others,—blood that shall take a just vengeance upon him who shed it. ”

“ Thief, coward, blackguard, they are stamped upon his face, but under the face, under the evil outside? Is there no remnant of manhood—nothing tender, nothing, true? A woman has crept to the cross to kiss him: no evidence in his favour, my Lord? Love is blind-aye, to our faults. ”

“ Men who stood vacantly staring in muttered, "Beast!" women, shrinking from the unsightly spectacle, whispered, "Beast!" and children, gazing in silent horror with the rest, stared "Beast!" out of their wonder-stricken eyes. ”

“ E'en in its own revenge. This very skull,
Whose mistress the duke poison'd with this drug,
The mortal curse of the earth shall be reveng'd
In the like strain, and kiss his lips to death.
As much as the dumb thing can, he shall feel:
What fails in poison, we'll supply in steel.
Hip. Brother, I do applaud thy constant vengeance—
The quaintness of thy malice—above thought.
Ven. So, 'tis laid on [He poisons the lips of the skull] : now come and welcome, duke,
I have her for thee. ”

“ In thine ears, till thy soul quake to hear it,
That like a villain hast undone thy brothers.
SCAR. Would thou wert not so near me! yet, farewell.
THOM. By Nature and her laws make [419] us akin—
As near as are these hands, or sin to sin—
Draw and defend thyself, or I'll forget
Thou art a man.
SCAR. Would thou wert not my brother!
THOM. I disclaim thee [420] .
SCAR. Are we not offspring of one parent, wretch?
THOM. I do forget it; pardon me the dead,
I should deny the pains you bid for me.
My blood grows hot for vengeance, thou hast spent
My life's revenues, that our parents purchas'd. ”

“ And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute beast—whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed—a brute beast to work out for me—for me, a man, fashioned in the image of the High God—so much of insufferable woe! ”

“ Wantoning like a harlot, thou hast entered a wicked and abominable state of wedlock, embracing with incestuous bosom thy husband's slayer, and wheedling with filthy lures of blandishment him who had slain the father of thy son. This, forsooth, is the way that the mares couple with the vanquishers of their mates; for brute beasts are naturally incited to pair indiscriminately ”

“ Until this happen, let the poor victim be accursed, and evil work with the posterity of her betrayer!' The miserable murderer invoked the infernal powers to assist in the fulfilment of his curse, and then, as if beside himself, ran to the turf-pits. ”

“ Hast thou command? By him that gave it thee,
From a pure heart command thy rebel will.
Draw not thy sword to guard iniquity,
For it was lent thee all that brood to kill.
Thy princely office how canst thou fulfill,
When, patterned by thy fault, foul Sin may say
He learned to sin, and thou didst teach the way?
“Think but how vile a spectacle it were
To view thy present trespass in another.
Men’s faults do seldom to themselves appear;
Their own transgressions partially they smother.
This guilt would seem death-worthy in thy brother. ”