10

  Is but a preface of her worthy praise.

  11

  The chief perfections of that lovely dame,

  12

  Had I sufficient skill to utter them,

  13

  Would make a volume of enticing lines

  14

  Able to ravish any dull conceit;

  15

  And, which is more, she is not so divine,

  16

  So full replete with choice of all delights,

  17

  But with as humble lowliness of mind

  18

  She is content to be at your command—

  19

  Command, I mean, of virtuous chaste intents—

  20

  To love and honor Henry as her lord.

  21

  KING HENRY

  And otherwise will Henry ne’er presume.—

  22

  Therefore, my Lord Protector, give consent

  23

  That Margaret may be England’s royal queen.

  24

  GLOUCESTER

  So should I give consent to flatter sin.

  25

  You know, my lord, your Highness is betrothed

  26

  Unto another lady of esteem.

  27

  How shall we then dispense with that contract

  28

  And not deface your honor with reproach?

  29

  SUFFOLK

  As doth a ruler with unlawful oaths;

  30

  Or one that, at a triumph having vowed

  31

  To try his strength, forsaketh yet the lists

  32

  By reason of his adversary’s odds.

  33

  A poor earl’s daughter is unequal odds,

  34

  And therefore may be broke without offense.

  35

  GLOUCESTER

  Why, what, I pray, is Margaret more than that?

  36

  Her father is no better than an earl,

  37

  Although in glorious titles he excel.

  38

  SUFFOLK

  Yes, my lord, her father is a king,

  39

  The King of Naples and Jerusalem,

  40

  And of such great authority in France

  41

  As his alliance will confirm our peace,

  42

  And keep the Frenchmen in allegiance.

  43

  GLOUCESTER

  And so the Earl of Armagnac may do,

  44

  Because he is near kinsman unto Charles.

  45

  EXETER

  Besides, his wealth doth warrant a liberal dower,

  46

  Where Reignier sooner will receive than give.

  47

  SUFFOLK

  A dower, my lords? Disgrace not so your king

  48

  That he should be so abject, base, and poor,

  49

  To choose for wealth and not for perfect love.

  50

  Henry is able to enrich his queen,

  51

  And not to seek a queen to make him rich;

  52

  So worthless peasants bargain for their wives,

  53

  As market men for oxen, sheep, or horse.

  54

  Marriage is a matter of more worth

  55

  Than to be dealt in by attorneyship.

  56

  Not whom we will, but whom his Grace affects,

  57

  Must be companion of his nuptial bed.

  58

  And therefore, lords, since he affects her most,

  59

  Most of all these reasons bindeth us

  60

  In our opinions she should be preferred.

  61

  For what is wedlock forcèd but a hell,

  62

  An age of discord and continual strife?

  63

  Whereas the contrary bringeth bliss

  64

  And is a pattern of celestial peace.

  65

  Whom should we match with Henry, being a king,

  66

  But Margaret, that is daughter to a king?

  67

  Her peerless feature, joinèd with her birth,

  68

  Approves her fit for none but for a king.

  69

  Her valiant courage and undaunted spirit,

  70

  More than in women commonly is seen,

  71

  Will answer our hope in issue of a king.

  72

  For Henry, son unto a conqueror,

  73

  Is likely to beget more conquerors,

  74

  If with a lady of so high resolve

  75

  As is fair Margaret he be linked in love.

  76

  Then yield, my lords, and here conclude with me

  77

  That Margaret shall be queen, and none but she.

  78

  KING HENRY

  Whether it be through force of your report,

  79

  My noble Lord of Suffolk, or for that

  80

  My tender youth was never yet attaint

  81

  With any passion of inflaming love,

  82

  I cannot tell; but this I am assured:

  83

  I feel such sharp dissension in my breast,

  84

  Such fierce alarums both of hope and fear,

  85

  As I am sick with working of my thoughts.

  86

  Take therefore shipping; post, my lord, to France;

  87

  Agree to any covenants, and procure

  88

  That Lady Margaret do vouchsafe to come

  89

  To cross the seas to England and be crowned

  90

  King Henry’s faithful and anointed queen.

  91

  For your expenses and sufficient charge,

  92

  Among the people gather up a tenth.

  93

  Be gone, I say, for till you do return,

  94

  I rest perplexèd with a thousand cares.—

  95

  And you, good uncle, banish all offense.

  96

  If you do censure me by what you were,

  97

  Not what you are, I know it will excuse

  98

  This sudden execution of my will.

  99

  And so conduct me where, from company,

  100

  I may revolve and ruminate my grief.

  101

  He exits

  GLOUCESTER

  Ay, grief, I fear me, both at first and last.

  102

  Gloucester exits

  SUFFOLK

  Thus Suffolk hath prevailed, and thus he goes

  103

  As did the youthful Paris once to Greece,

  104

  With hope to find the like event in love,

  105

  But prosper better than the Trojan did.

  106

  Margaret shall now be queen, and rule the King,

  107

  But I will rule both her, the King, and realm.

  108

  He exits.

  Longer Notes

  1.1.61. Roan, Orleance: Several names of French towns and French persons are given anglicized spellings in the Folio text of this play. While it is customary for editors to replace these spellings with the appropriate French spellings (so that Roan becomes Rouen and Orleance appears as Orléans), such a practice disrupts the meter of many lines of dialogue in this play, in which the iambic pentameter rhythm is strongly emphasized. Retaining the anglicized spellings grants the reader or actor the flexibility to place the stress as the line demands, with Roan pronounced sometimes as a single syllable (RONE) and sometimes, as in the present case, as two syllables (ROW-an) and with Orleance pronounced with the stress on the first (instead of the final) syllable.

  Other French names that appear in our edition with their anglicized Folio spellings are Callice instead of Calais, Saint Dennis instead of Saint Denis, and Alanson (stressed sometimes on the first syllable as AL-anson and sometimes on the second syllable as a-LAN-son) instead of Alençon.

  We have used the French spelling for Dauphin because the anglicized Folio version, “Dolphin,” though the standard English spelling at the time, seems distractingly comic. It is important, though, to accent Dauphin on the first syllable (DAW-fin), as the Folio “DOL-phin” indicates.

  1.1.65. lead: According to one of Shakespeare’s sources, Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles, “[Henry V’s] body, embalmed and closed in lead, was laid in a chariot royal, richly appareled with cloth of gold. Upon his coffin was laid a representation of his person, adorned with robes, diadem, scepter, and ball, like a king.”

  1.1.133. Sir John Fastolf: In the Folio, this character is given the name “Sir Iohn Falstaffe,” the same name as that of the famous knight in Shakespeare’s two Henry IV plays and The Merry Wives of Windsor. This more famous cowardly knight is Prince Hal’s companion, who dies, in Henry V, before Henry first sails to France. The character in Henry VI, Part 1 betrays Talbot through his cowardice and is stripped by Talbot and Henry VI of his honors.

  While it is impossible to demonstrate how two different Shakespeare characters came to share the same name and similar behaviors, at least two possible scenarios can be imagined. In both scenarios, the relevant facts are these: (1) the character depicted in Henry VI, Part 1 was named, in the chronicles, “Sir Iohn Fastolfe”; (2) the character depicted in the plays about Henry IV was named “Sir Iohn Oldcastle” before his name was changed to “Falstalffe” in the quarto printings of Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2. (See “Historical Background: Sir John Falstaff and Sir John Oldcastle,” in the Folger Shakespeare Library Henry IV, Part 1, pages 235–41.) The “Sir John Falstaff” of the Henry IV plays, in other words, is a representation of the historical figure Sir John Oldcastle; the “Sir John Falstaff” of the Folio’s The first Part of Henry the Sixt is a representation of the historical figure Sir John Fastolf. Both were knights with interesting historical connections to Henry V and Henry VI.

  In one possible scenario, Shakespeare, in writing Henry VI, Part 1, changed the knight’s name from “Fastolf” to “Falstaff”; then, when he later wrote his plays about Henry IV and was forced to change the name of Sir John Oldcastle, he simply reused the Falstaff name. In a second, more interesting, scenario, Shakespeare, in writing Henry VI, Part 1, retained the name “Fastolf” for that play’s cowardly knight. When, in writing the Henry IV plays in the late 1590s, he replaced the Oldcastle name, he used a version of the “Fastolf” name—“Falstalffe”: a name filled with wordplay, reminiscent of “Fastolf” but different enough to prevent confusion. In this scenario, when Henry VI, Part 1 was first printed (in 1623 in the First Folio), the Fastolf character was renamed “Falstaff”—probably through a scribe’s or compositor’s substitution of a name that, by 1623, had become very familiar through the quartos and performances of the Henry IV plays and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

  As complicated as it is, the scenario involving scribal or compositorial change is just as likely (indeed, in our opinion, more likely) than the one in which Shakespeare simply used the name “Sir John Falstaff” as the fictional name for two different historical characters. For this reason, and in order to save unnecessary confusion between two different characters, we have given Sir John Fastolf the name he bears in the chronicles, as have many editors before us. (The first was Lewis Theobald in the early eighteenth century, the most recent Michael Hattaway in his New Cambridge Shakespeare edition of the play [1990]; Edward Burns, in the Arden 3 edition [2000]; and Michael Taylor, in the Oxford edition [2003].) See also George Walton Williams, “Fastolf or Falstaff,” English Literary Renaissance 5 (1975): 308–12.

  1.2.1–2. Mars . . . not known: These lines play on “Mars his” (i.e., Mars’s) double identity as a planet and as a mythological god. The planet’s “true moving . . . in the heavens” (i.e., its precise orbit) was, in a sense, not known to early astronomers. Mars, as the Roman god of war controlling the successes and failures of warfare in the earth, was similarly inscrutable. Lines 1–2 quote Cornelius Agrippa: “Neither hath the true moving of Mars been known until this date” (De Incertitudine . . . , trans. James Sandford, 1569, with spelling modernized).

  1.2.64 SD. la Pucelle: This French word, which means “the virgin,” was the term that the historical Jeanne d’Arc, or Joan of Arc, used to name herself. As the play reminds us, the name sounds like the English word puzel, which means “whore.” (See 1.4.107.)

  1.2.141–42. Now . . . once: These lines allude to the following episode in Caesar’s life: “Caesar in the meantime being in the city of APOLLONIA, having but a small army to fight with Pompey, it grieved him for that the rest of his army was so long a coming, not knowing what way to take. In the end he followed a dangerous determination, to embark unknown in a little pinnace of twelve oars only, to pass over the sea again unto BRUNDISIUM: the which he could not do without great danger, considering that all that sea was full of Pompey’s ships and armies. So he took ship in the night appareled like a slave, and went aboard upon this little pinnace, & said never a word, as if he had been some poor man of mean condition. The pinnace lay in the mouth of the river of Anius, the which commonly was wont to be very calm & quiet, by reason of a little wind that came from the shore, which every morning drove back the waves far into the main sea. But that night, by ill fortune, there came a great wind from the sea that overcame the land wind, insomuch as the force & strength of the river fighting against the violence of the rage & waves of the sea, the encounter was marvelous dangerous, the water of the river being driven back, and rebounding upward, with great noise and danger in turning of the water. Thereupon the master of the pinnace, seeing he could not possibly get out of the mouth of this river, bade the mariners to cast about again, and to return against the stream. Caesar hearing that, straight discovered him self unto the master of the pinnace, who at the first was amazed when he saw him: but Caesar then taking him by the hand said unto him, ‘Good fellow, be of good cheer, and forwards hardily; fear not, for thou hast Caesar and his fortune with thee.’ Then the mariners, forgetting the danger of the storm they were in, laid on lode with oars, and labored for life what they could against the wind, to get out of the mouth of this river. But at length, perceiving they labored in vain, and that the pinnace took in abundance of water, and was ready to sink: Caesar then to his great grief was driven to return back again” (Plutarch, The lives of the noble Grecians and Romans, translated by Sir Thomas North, 1579, with the spelling modernized).

  1.2.143. Was . . . dove: This line apparently accepts the account of Muhammad being inspired by a dove. There was also a slanderous story current in Shakespeare’s time that accused Muhammad of training a dove to approach him by placing grains of wheat in his ear; when the dove put his beak in the Prophet’s ear to get the corn, the Prophet claimed that the dove was the Holy Spirit inspiring him.

  1.3.36. cardinal’s hat: The dialogue in this scene makes it abundantly clear that Winchester here wears the garb of a cardinal. This introduces what for many editors is a serious problem with the text, because the dialogue in 5.1 indicates instead that in Act 5 he is wearing such garb for the first time. Some editors solve this problem by changing the dialogue in 1.3 so that it refers to bishop’s purple rather than cardinal’s scarlet clothing. Others allow the dialogue to stand, but follow the Folio in assigning Winchester the new speech prefix of “Cardinal” in 5.4. Both of these solutions assume that 5.1 shows Winchester having just been elevated by the pope from a bishop to a cardinal. This assumption fails to consider two historical facts. First, because Beaufort remained a bishop after he was elevated to cardinal, he need not be called Cardinal in 5.4. Second, and more significant, the historical chronicles used in the creation of Henry VI, Part 1 make it clear that Beaufort was actually appointed a cardinal during the reign of Henry V, whose burial opens the play. Thus, in terms of the history of the period, he is a cardinal throughout the play, just as he is a bishop. Because Henry V forbade Beaufort to be installed as a cardinal in England, Beaufort was prohibited from dressing as a cardinal during Henry V’s lifetime and on into the reign of Henry VI, who eventually lifted the prohibition. The play may then be read as showing Beaufort, in 1.3, defying the royal prohibition by wearing his cardinal’s hat and scarlet robes outside of court at the Tower of London, though he is not shown wearing them when appearing in court. Only later in the reign of Henry VI, both in history and in the play (in 5.1), does Beaufort appear in the royal court in cardinal’s regalia. In this reading of the Winchester/Cardinal problem, Winchester’s entrance in Act 5 with three ambassadors, dressed in a cardinal’s robes, is not an elevation in his priestly status but instead marks his installation as a cardinal in England. As Essex comments: