How we cite our quotes: (Act.Scene.Line)
Quote #1
KING JOHN
You came not of one mother then, it seems.
BASTARD
Most certainly one mother, mighty king—
That is well known—and, as I think, one father.
But for the certain knowledge of that truth
I put you o'er to heaven and to my mother.
Of that I doubt, as all men's children may.
QUEEN ELEANOR
Out on thee, rude man! Thou dost shame thy
mother
And wound her honor with this diffidence. (1.1.59-67)
In this passage, Queen Eleanor reacts angrily to the Bastard's statement that he can't be 100% sure that his mother was faithful to her husband. (The Bastard really shouldn't be saying this, since at this point, he's totally trying to claim that he was Robert Falconbridge, Sr.'s son, so that he can inherit the guy's land.) By the way, we've gotta say it: Eleanor is kind of a hypocrite, seeing as later in the play, she herself accuses Constance of giving birth to a "bastard."
Quote #2
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 claimed the child as his?
In sooth, good friend, your father might have kept
The calf, bred from his cow, from all the world; (1.1.119-127)
King John's speech here conveys some pretty offensive attitudes toward women. The first is the assumption that all "husbands / That marry wives" are at risk of being cheated upon. The second is the way he phrases the law that says that any child born from a man's wife will be considered that man's child: he compares this to a farmer getting to claim any "calf, bred from his cow" as his.
So, yes, he is comparing a wife to a cow, and a husband to a farmer. The fact that this calf/cow expression was actually a common one in Shakespeare's day doesn't get King John off the hook: as a king, couldn't he have found a better way of phrasing things? In any case, King John doesn't seem to think too highly of women; we don't hear any mention of him having a wife throughout the whole play, and it's only in Act V that we learn he has a son, Henry. Go figure. (By the way, where the heck did that son come from?)
Quote #3
LADY FAULCONBRIDGE
King Richard Coeur de Lion was thy father.
By long and vehement suit I was seduced
To make room for him in my husband's bed.
Heaven, lay not my transgression to my charge!
That art the issue of my dear offense,
Which was so strongly urged past my defense! (1.1.261-266)
Given the standards of female virtue in King John's time (and in Shakespeare's, too), it makes sense that Lady Falconbridge would want to emphasize that she was "seduc'd" by a "long and vehement suit"—it would be completely unacceptable for her to say that she had had an affair with Richard willingly. And yet, don't the closing words of her speech suggest a darker possibility? The idea that Richard "urg'd" himself past her "defence" almost makes it sound as if the Bastard was conceived as the result of a rape. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing for sure what happened—mainly because Shakespeare doesn't tell us.