* * *

  59 I;] F2 subst.; I F 62 mother queen] mother-queen F4 63 Ate] Rowe; Ace F

  67 inconsiderate not considering themselves, reckless

  voluntaries volunteers, F4’s reading. Oxf1 points out a helpful instance later in the canon when Achilles draws a distinction for the benefit of Thersites: ‘Ajax was here the voluntary, and you as under an impress’ (TC 2.1.94–6).

  68 with ladies’ faces i.e. they are young and beardless, effeminate in appearance.

  fierce dragons’ spleens hot tempers; see 448, ‘With swifter spleen than powder can enforce’, 5.7.50, ‘spleen of speed’. The spleen was considered the seat of passions. Cf. R3 5.3.350, ‘Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons.’

  69 at … homes i.e. at the price of their hereditary land(s); for at = at the price of, see Abbott, 143.

  70 i.e. they have spent their inheritances to buy the new armour which they are now wearing; see Tilley, W61, ‘All his wardrobe is on his back’, and L452, ‘He wears a whole lordship on his back’; also Edward II, 1.4.407, ‘He wears a lords revenewe on his back’.

  72 braver choice After citing Schmidt’s ‘more splendid’, ‘beautiful’, Braumuller points out that ‘Brave in various parts of speech appears many times in the play, often mingling the meanings of courage, defiance, fine display, and ostentation.’

  73 bottoms ships

  waft wafted (for the omission of -ed in the participle of verbs ending in t see Abbott, 342); i.e. carried over the sea, cf. 3H6 3.3.253, ‘Shall waft them over with our royal fleet’.

  75 scathe in Christendom Ard2 notes parallels in the influential Soliman and Perseda. Cf. ‘Till it haue prickt the hart of Christendome, / Which now that paltrie Iland keeps from scath’ (1.5.16–17), and ‘What millions of men, opprest with ruine and scath, / The Turkish armies did oer-throw in Christendome’ (3.5.5–6).

  scathe harm, injury

  77 circumstance circumstantiality of detail (OED n. II 6); also the formality, ceremony, surrounding any important event or action (OED n. 7a)

  * * *

  67 voluntaries] volunteers F4 75 SD] this edn; after hand, 77 F (Drum beats)

  79 expedition (1) warlike enterprise (OED 2); (2) speed (of this enterprise). Cf. Holinshed 164b, marginalia, ‘K. Iohn commeth vpon his enimies not looked for’.

  82 courage … occasion See Dent, N70.1, ‘Extreme need best proves (tests) a valiant courage’; cf. H5 4.1.1–2, ‘’tis true that we are in great danger; / The greater therefore should our courage be.’ Cf. Bryhtnoth in The Battle of Maldon for the most celebrated example of this truth.

  85 lineal i.e. authorized by right of descent in the direct line of succession (OED a. 2a); cf. 5.7.101–2, ‘put on / The lineal state and glory of the land’.

  entrance physical entry into the town, and taking possession of the office of ruler of Angiers (OED n. 2b)

  86 peace ascend perhaps referring to the classical myth of Astraea (Justice) ascending to heaven, leaving the earth to its unjust strife

  87 Whiles while

  we i.e. he himself, using the royal plural

  God’s wrathful agent an allusion to the role of king as the rod of God’s wrath raised against a sinful people

  correct chastise, punish; cf. Henry IV speaking in a similar vein, 1H4 5.1.110–12, ‘But, if he will not yield, / Rebuke and dread correction wait on us, / And they shall do their office.’

  88 beats … heaven i.e. drives peace from the world

  his God’s

  * * *

  83.1 Flourish] Oxf 83.1–2 Enter … army] Enter K. of England, Bastard, Queene, Blanch, Pembroke, and others. F 89+ SP] Rowe subst.; Fran. F

  93 toil work of fighting (for Arthur’s right); the sequence of sweat (92) and toil suggests that this passage influenced Winston Churchill in his famous address to the nation of 13 May 1940.

  95 underwrought his undermined its

  97 Outfaced outfacèd; put to shame or to silence, by impudence or arrogance (OED v. 1); cf. R2 4.1.285–6, ‘Is this the face which faced so many follies, / That was at last outfaced by Bolingbroke?’

  infant state King Philip refers to Arthur as a child king; state = person representing a body politic (Schmidt; see also OED state n. II 24); cf. 395, ‘How like you this wild counsel, mighty states?’

  100 moulded possibly an echo of another sacrificial infant in the frequently borrowed episode of Miriam in Nashe’s Christ’s Tears (1593): ‘Returne unto me, and see the mould wherein thou wert cast … His pure snow-moulded fleshe will melt’ (Works, 2.74, 76).

  101 abstract epitome, specimen, i.e. Arthur

  101–2 large / Which a reversal of what we would write today, ‘that which large’ (Riv2)

  103 While it is customary to gloss draw as ‘write out, compose’ and, following Malone, to define brief as ‘short note, or description’, there seems to be an allusion, contrary to the surface logic of Philip’s comment, to the torturing of a prisoner.

  brief in opposition to abstract (101) but primarily with reference to a written summary or account (OED n. III 5b fig., citing this line); for the collocation of brief and abstract cf. Ham 2.2.462–3, ‘they are the abstract and brief chronicles’, and E3 2.248–9, ‘Whose body is an abstract or a brief / Contains each general virtue in the world.’

  volume book. The use of abstract, draw, brief, volume forms a running analogy to written documents and continues the image of the body as a read document.

  104–6 That … Geoffrey’s King Philip argues the point of rightful succession that gives authority to the issue (Arthur) of the elder-born brother (Geoffrey). Since Geoffrey died before his father (Henry II) and his elder brother (Richard I), the line of succession proceeds to Arthur. England was never Geoffrey’s right while he was alive, noted by Smallwood. Cf. the contention for the crown between the Houses of Lancaster and York in 2H6 2.2.51–5: ‘YORK So, if the issue of the elder son / Succeed before the younger, I am king. / WARWICK What plain proceeding is more plain than this? / Henry doth claim the crown from John of Gaunt, / The fourth son; York claims it from the third.’

  106 this Editors have disagreed about what this refers to. The word is emphatically used in the previous five lines three times with reference to Arthur and in opposition to that, which is used in reference to Geoffrey; here it receives its final emphasis and refers to Arthur as Geoffrey’s right (i.e. successor). Some editors have conjectured that this refers to right (and hence England, of course; the unspecified demonstrative allows the actor to point to the walls of Angiers or the crown on John’s head or even Arthur himself) (Cf. Oxf1).

  107 Ard2 cites a similar instance of incredulity from Marlowe’s Faustus, ‘How comes it then that thou art out of hell? (Doctor Faustus, 1.3.75).

  109 owe own

  o’er-masterest hold in your power (OED overmaster v. 2a cites this line), with the clear sense of by might, not right, in an act of usurpation

  110 commission delegated authority to act in some specified capacity (OED n.1 2a); warrant. The word begins a series of legal terms continued in the next few lines by answer, articles, warrant, impeach, wrong.

  111 articles ‘counts or charges in an indictment’ (Oxf1). Cf. Northumberland’s demand of Richard in the deposition scene of R2: ‘My lord, dispatch. Read o’er these articles’ (4.1.243).

  112 supernal Judge i.e. God; supernal = heavenly, celestial; cf. H8 3.1.100–1, ‘Heaven is above all yet: there sits a judge / That no king can corrupt.’

  114 blots and stains blemishes and taints. These terms are repeated in Constance’s blaming of Salisbury, the messenger bearing the bad news of the marriage of Lewis the Dauphin and Blanche, where she contrasts a putative horrible appearance with his actual more horrible words, ‘[If you were] Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains’ (3.1.45). Here they allude to a legal document that has been spoiled, a frequent idea in Shakespeare, especially at this time in his career. Cf., in R2, the ‘inky blots and rotten parchment bonds’ referred to by John of Gaunt (2.1.64) and Mowbray’s ‘My name be blotted from the book of life’ (1.3.202).

  115 guardian See Holinshed, 158a: ‘Constance … doubting the suertie of hir sonne, committed him to the trust of the French king, who receiuing him into his tuition, promised to defend him from all his enemies’.

  * * *

  106 Geoffrey’s;] Rowe; Geffreyes F 113 breast] F2; beast F

  117 chastise chàstise

  118–21 usurp … usurping … usurper … usurping polyptoton (the repetition of words which are derived from the same root, but have different endings or forms)

  119 ‘Justifying the usurpation surpasses the usurpation itself.’ A small instance of casuistry, the initial transgression by John allows for the action of Philip (an anticipation of the subtle moral gymnastics used by Pandulph in the matter of the conflicting oaths at 3.1.263ff.). Ard2 note Percy Simpson’s paraphrase, ‘It is sufficient excuse for my usurpation of authority that I am fighting against usurpation’ (N&Q, 101 (1900), 164).

  122 Thy bastard Accusations of bastardy are frequently hurled about as insults in the history plays, presumably because illegitimacy denies succession; cf. 2H6 5.1.114–15, ‘bid him come amain, / To say if that the bastard boys of York’, and KJ 3.2.211–13.

  123 queen (1) Queen Mother; (2) whore (= quean); (3) most powerful of the pieces on a chessboard, the most able to ‘check the world’

  124–6 Cf. R2 5.2.104–8, in which the Duchess of York uses similar language: ‘Thou dost suspect / That I have been disloyal to thy bed, / And that he is a bastard, not thy son / … He is as like thee as a man may be’.

  125 As thine … husband If, as some editors suggest, Constance is referring to Eleanor’s infidelity to her first husband, Louis VII of France (for which he divorced her), then this remark weakens her position as well as Arthur’s claim. Perhaps it is just bluster on her part (as in 130–1), or more likely, she means Eleanor was also unfaithful to her second husband, Henry II.

  * * *

  120+ SP] this edn; Queen. F (throughout scene, except as noted)

  128 devil … dam The point of comparison is the likeness of a devil to its mother, here John and Eleanor. Proverbial (Dent, D225, ‘The devil and his dam’), with many instances in Shakespeare; cf. e.g. Tit 4.2.67, ‘Why then, she is the devil’s dam: a joyful issue.’

  130 His father i.e. Arthur’s father, Geoffrey; unwisely, Constance returns the charge of having a bastard son to Eleanor.

  132 blots slanders

  133 blot Constance takes up Eleanor’s sense of blots in the previous line as well as blot = annihilate, destroy (OED v.1 5 fig.)

  134 Hear the crier The Bastard insults the Duke of Austria, who is guilty of the death of the Bastard’s father, by alluding satirically to the officer in the court of justice who makes public announcements and acts as a preserver of order (OED crier 2a).

  135 play the devil proverbial for ‘make mischief’ (Dent, PP13); see also OED devil n. II 22k. The image of the devil links the Bastard to the Vice figure of the medieval morality plays; cf. R3 1.3.337, ‘And seem a saint when most I play the devil.’

  136 An ’a if he

  hide the skin of the lion originally worn by King Richard and taken by Austria from the dead king. Cf. Snug in his role as lion (MND) for another instance of the use of this stage property by the Lord Chamberlain’s Company.

  137–8 hare … beard proverbial for acts of cowardice, see Tilley, H165, ‘So hares may pull dead lions by the beard’ (varied from 1580; also in Erasmus Adagia (1500), III8A (noted in Oxf1), ‘Mortuo leoni et lepores insultant’). There is a clear parallel in Spanish Tragedy: ‘He hunted well that was a lion’s death, / Not he that in a garment wore his skin: / So hares may pull dead lions by the beard’ (1.2.170–2). Beard-plucking as cowardly tolerated appears in Hamlet’s third soliloquy, where he berates himself for allowing himself to be tweaked by the beard (Ham 2.2.508)

  * * *

  136, 139 An … an] And … and

  139 smoke beat; editors cite two meanings: (1) ‘give you a thrashing, i.e. ‘beat you till your lion-skin smokes’; and (2) disinfect your mangy hide. OED cites this line under v. II 5b, with the definition, ‘To expose or subject to smoke, so as to suffocate, stupefy, or make uncomfortable’, but this meaning seems unlikely.

  skin-coat Austria’s own hide rather than his ill-gotten lion’s skin

  an if

  140 Sirrah form of address usually used to a social inferior

  141 become grace, suit; Blanche is apparently supporting the Bastard by saying that Richard, having killed the lion, was worthy to wear its skin, and, by implication, that Austria is unworthy.

  143 sightly suitably, appropriately

  144 Editors note that two proverbial expressions are combined in order to highlight the Bastard’s insult of incongruities: Dent, S366, ‘A great (Hercules’) shoe will not fit a little (child’s) foot’ (from 1548), and Dent, A351, ‘An ass in a lion’s skin’. Stephen Gosson combines the two proverbs in The School of Abuse (1579, A3v): ‘You will smile … to see how this moral philosopher toils to draw the Lion’s skin upon Aesop’s ass, Hercules’ shoes on a child’s feet’. Cf. LLL 5.2.618–19, ‘BEROWNE And thou wert a lion, we would do so. / BOYET Therefore, as he is an ass, let him go.’

  Alcides’ Hercules’; Hercules, often referred to as Alcides, which was his father’s name, slew the Nemean lion, the first of his twelve labours, and ever after wore that creature’s skin over his own shoulders.

  shoes with an aural pun on ‘shows’

  147 cracker braggart or boaster (OED 2, citing this line), but also with a pun on the Bastard’s last word

  * * *

  144 shoes] shows Theobald 149 Philip] Theobald; Lewis F 150 SP] Theobald subst.; Lew. F

  151–5 See Holinshed, 160b: ‘Moreouer he [King Philip] demanded, that Poictiers, Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, should be deliuered and wholie resigned vnto Arthur … But these and diuerse other requests which he made, king Iohn would not in any wise grant vnto’.

  156–9 See Holinshed, 165a: ‘king Iohn … went about to persuade him [Arthur] all that he could to forsake his freendship and aliance with the French king, and to leane and sticke to him being his naturall vncle’.

  156 Britain Brittany, in north-western France, not Britain as ‘greater England’

  160–3 Do … grandam ironic adoption of baby talk, dismissive of Eleanor and her actions

  160–1 it … it its … its; it, an ‘early provincial form of the old genitive, is found for its, especially when a child is mentioned, or when any one is contemptuously spoken of as a child’ (Abbott, 228).

  162 More than just fresh fruit is suggested here; ‘To give one a fig’ (Dent, F213) was proverbial for either an insulting gesture (thrusting out the thumb between the first and second fingers or into the mouth) or a contemptible trifle. Cf. H5 3.6.56–8, ‘PISTOL Die and be damned, and fico for thy friendship! / FLUELLEN It is well. / PISTOL The fig of Spain!’, and 2H6 2.3.66–7, ‘I’ll pledge you all; and a fig for Peter!’ Braunmuller suggests that the primary meaning which may predominate here is ‘poisoned fruit’ (OED fig n.1 2, from 1589).

  163–5 my mother … me Shakespeare’s emphasis on the boy’s weakness is in direct contrast to the strong position Arthur takes in Holinshed, 165a: ‘But Arthur like one that wanted good counsell, and abounding too much in his owne wilfull opinion, made a presumptuous answer … commanding king Iohn to restore vnto him the realme of England, with all those other lands and possessions which king Richard had in his hand at the houre of his death. For sith the same apperteined to him by right of inheritance, he assured him, except restitution were made the sooner, he should not long continue quiet.’

  * * *

  152 Anjou] Theobald; Angiers F

  165 coil fuss, trouble. OED n. 5b 3 cites this line.

  166 weeps Men in this play shed more tears than do women.

  169 Draws The use of the singular verb after a plural subject is common in Shakespeare, but it usually happens only with plural subjects that can be imagined as a unit (see Abbott, 333–9).

  pearls tears

  poor eyes unconscious anticipation of the threatened blinding of Arthur

  170 in nature … fee Arthur’s tears will act as a kind of lawyer’s fee which will secure heaven’s assistance. (Oxf1)

  171 crystal beads … bribed crystal beads = tears and eyes, but also figuratively suggest the beads of a rosary used to count prayers; for the use of crystals for eyes cf. H5 2.3.52, ‘Go, clear thy crystals.’ The notion of prayer as a form of celestial bribery recurs in Isabella’s fraught remark to Angelo, ‘Hark, how I’ll bribe you … Not with fond sickles of the tested gold, / … but with true prayers’ (MM 2.2.146, 150, 152).

  171–2heaven … revenge on you referring to the act of vengeance taken by heaven for the affliction of widows and orphans; a cliché of political thought concerning the duties of rulers which originates from the biblical injunction in Exodus, 22.22–3, ‘Ye shal not trouble any widowe, nor fatherles childe. If thou vexe or trouble suche, and so he call and crye vnto me, I wil surely heare his crye.’

  173–4 an instance of stichomythia, the rhetorical device of repetitive play from line to line characteristic of Shakespeare’s early work. See e.g. the exchange between Lady Anne and Gloucester in R3 1.2.

  * * *

  166 SP] Rowe subst.; Qu. Mo. F

  177 eldest son’s son eldest grandson (not ‘the son of your eldest son’, which some editors have mistakenly attributed to a genealogical confusion on Shakespeare’s part); cf. the similar phrase denoting a grandchild in R2: ‘O, had thy grandsire with a prophet’s eye / Seen how his son’s son should destroy his sons’ (2.1.104–5). Honigmann suggests a biblical derivation for the phrase (citing Deuteronomy, 6.2, ‘thou, and thy sonne, and thy sonnes sonne’), which seems appropriate considering Constance’s considerable use of scriptural parallels. Yet note in York’s justification of his claim to the English throne the phrase, ‘My mother … / Married Richard, Earl of Cambridge, who was son / To Edmund Langley, Edward the Third’s fifth son, son’ (2H6 2.2.44–6).