book of beauty i.e. Blanche (another example of the body as read document)

  486 weigh … queen i.e. by the equivalent of a queen’s; even though Blanche is only a princess, not quite a queen

  489 Cf. Holinshed, 161a: ‘Iohn … resigned his title … vnto all those townes … the citie of Angiers onelie excepted’. John gives Angiers to Arthur at 552–3.

  us double royal plural, not only John but also Philip

  490 liable to subject to (OED liable a. 5, citing this line)

  494 Holds hand with is equal to; another of the very many manual images that betoken unity, equality and, ultimately, betrayal

  * * *

  487 Anjou] Pope; Angiers F

  496–509 The Dauphin’s reply is a network of elaborate conventional conceits typical of Elizabethan sonnets and love poetry: eyes conceived as light, the sun, or as mirrors which reflect the beloved; the conventional puns on shadow (cf. Son 27, 37, 43, 53), son and sun (cf. Son 7, 33, 76). As a result, the lines play with a multiplicity of meanings. This comparison looks very much ‘like a first draft for the mirror sequence’ in R2 4.1 (see Thompson & Thompson, 202, n. 2). For this passage, note the lines of Robert Southwell, a martyr in the Catholic Church who was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1595, from his Saint Peter’s Complaint, a work published shortly after his death, although probably known to Shakespeare in MS (see Klause): ‘O living mirrours [i.e. Christ’s eyes], seeing whom you shew, / Which equall shadows worthes with shadowed things: / Ye make thinges nobler then in native hew, / By being shap’d in those life giving springs. / Much more my image in those eyes was grac’d, / Then in my selfe’, ‘O Sunnes, all but your selves in light excelling’ (367–72, 397). Shakespeare has the Dauphin sound much like Southwell in imagining that a beloved’s eyes (both ‘mirrours’ and ‘Sunnes’) through reflection produce a shadow of what they see, an image that is both ‘equall’ to what is seen and ‘nobler’ (Southwell’s word) than the original, flattering (according to Shakespeare) what is shadowed to make it more lovable than before the miraculous transformation.

  498 shadow reflected image

  499 son punning on ‘sun’ (i.e. Philip’s kingly glory)

  500 Becomes a sun ‘becomes a light’ (rather than a shadow). Women’s eyes are customarily, in Petrarchan love poetry, likened to the sun in lustre. Shakespeare criticizes such hyperbole in Son 130, ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun’. For the conventional equation of the sun with ‘eye’, cf. also Son 49.6, ‘greet me with that sun, thine eye’.

  makes … shadow i.e. the light of her eye is so bright it makes Lewis literally a dark shadow; or, and perhaps more subtly, Blanche outshines King Philip’s sun-like glory, making it a shadow. Braunmuller ingeniously suggests that Lewis’s reflection in Blanche’s eye ‘is also his “son”, the product of his (pro)creative act [which] here produces the … idea of the son outshining the father (= makes your sun a shadow). As this politically and socially explosive possibility suggests, this line and its predecessor are far from being mere, and timeworn, Petrarchan gymnastics’ (Oxf1). If this suggestion is accepted, then the Dauphin is already looking ahead to the dynastic profit brought by the marriage.

  502 infixed infixèd; captured; OED v. 1b fig. cites this line.

  * * *

  496+ SP] Dol. F; Lew. Rowe 500 sun] Rowe; sonne F

  504–7 Drawn … traitor The Bastard iteratively subverts the Dauphin’s love concerns, suggesting a future infidelity on the Dauphin’s part, by using words descriptive of the punishment of a political traitor, who would have been hanged by the neck but cut down while still alive, eviscerated (Drawn) while still breathing, and ultimately cut in four parts (quartered) – to say nothing of castration and decapitation (see 496–509n.). Shakespeare omits the motive for the Bastard’s passion here. In Troublesome Reign, the Bastard protests to Queen Eleanor, ‘granddame you made me halfe a promise once, / That Lady Blanche should bring me wealth enough, / And make me heire of store(?) of England’, only to be told, ‘Peace Philip, I will look thee out a wife, / We must with pollicie compound this strife’ (Pt 1, 4.792–6).

  507 love’s traitor a traitor in love

  510–16 will used five times in these lines; Blanche rings the changes on the obvious meanings of the word, ‘determination’, ‘wish’, but the secondary meanings of ‘penis’ and ‘vagina’ (Williams, ‘will’) are also evident in 513–15.

  511–12 Cf. RJ 1.3.97–8, ‘CAPULET’S WIFE … can you like of Paris’ love? / JULIET I’ll look to like, if looking liking move’.

  * * *

  504 SD] Dyce 507 traitor.… now,] F4 subst.; traytor, … now; F 510 SD] this edn

  522 still always; Blanche yields the decision-making to uncle John, unlike the more independent Hermia of MND, but here it seems both John and Blanche favour the same young man.

  524 Cf. RJ 1.3.80, ‘What say you, can you love the gentleman?’

  527 Volquessen not included in the list John proposed at 487; the area around Rouen now called the Vexin (see Holinshed, 161b: ‘the countrie of Veuxin or Veulquessine which is part of the territorie of Gisors’. While John adds yet another territory to the list of dowry items cited at 487, he has still not offered the Ireland demanded for Arthur at the opening of the play.

  530 marks A mark was a coin originally representing the value of a mark weight (8 ounces) of pure silver. After the Norman Conquest (1066) the mark became fixed at 160 pence = 13s. 4d., or two-thirds of a pound sterling. Whatever the precise amount, let alone its modern equivalent, Blanche’s cash dowry of thirty thousand marks was impressively large. The thirty carries with it the association of betrayal as in Judas’s betrayal of Christ for thirty pieces also of silver. See Matthew, 26.15.

  * * *

  521 young ones] Rowe; yong-ones F

  534 And … too i.e. in a kiss. Austria sounds a bit like Polonius recalling his own youth: ‘I do know / When the blood burns how prodigal the soul / Lends the tongue vows’ (Ham 1.3.114–16); but also as a gesture of betrothal, cf. TN 5.1.152–4, ‘A contract of eternal bond of love, / Confirmed by mutual joinder of your hands, / Attested by the holy close of lips’.

  544 She … passionate Whatever the reason for Constance’s grief it is not the news of the marriage agreement, which she receives at the beginning of 3.1 (King Philip indicates as much in 540–2). Her last line in the scene occurred at 194. Nor is it self-evident how the Dauphin comes by his information: he has not left the stage since then. Ard2, from Ard1, cites an anticipation of this expression in Arden of Faversham: ‘How now, Alice? What, sad and passionate?’ (sig. E4).

  passionate upset, sorrowful (OED a. 5, citing this line)

  548 widow lady Shakespeare increases the pathos surrounding Constance, who in history was wedded to her third husband at the time, by making her in the play only the widow of Geoffrey, Arthur’s father.

  * * *

  533 SD] this edn 536 Angiers] F2; Angires F 539 rites] F4; rights F 541 not,] F3; not F

  551–2 Duke … Richmond John proposes formally to recognize Arthur in his titles of Duke of Brittany and Earl of Richmond, which historically he inherited from his maternal grandfather. The French had already referred to him as ‘Arthur, Duke of Britain’ (301). Cf. Holinshed, 161b: ‘The king of England likewise did homage vnto the French king for Britaine, and againe … receiued homage for the same countrie, and for the countrie of Richmont of his nephue Arthur.’

  554 repair come

  556 fill … will In other contexts and perhaps here this expression would be fraught with sexual innuendo and the impossibility of satisfying female desire.

  measure vessel used for dealing out fixed quantities of liquids (suggested by fill up) but also with the sense of ‘extent’ and ‘limit’ (OED n. II 12)

  will wishes, demands (with sexual innuendo)

  558 stop put a stop to, silence; close up (i.e. like plugging a hole – another innuendo)

  560 unprepared unpreparèd

  560 SD Dover Wilson, who noted that F has only ‘Exeunt’ and no ‘manet Bastard’, suggests that the Bastard’s speech may have been an afterthought. Troublesome Reign contains nothing corresponding to it.

  561–98 Like Act 1, this act closes with a commentary from the Bastard. Oxf1

  562 stop bar, preclude (OED n. II 21b, citing this line), but also with a play on ‘plug’ (suggested by the whole)

  563 departed with surrendered, given away, i.e. the English territories in France (OED depart v. III 12b, citing this line), but also with a play on departed (divided into parts, OED departed ppl. a. 1) in the context of whole (562) and part

  * * *

  555 SD] this edn 560 unlooked-for] Warburton subst.; unlook’d for F SD all but Bastard] Rowe

  564 whose … on i.e. who intended a war for moral reasons

  566 God’s own soldier Cf. Siward’s description of his son newly slain by Macbeth: ‘Why then, God’s soldier be he’ (Mac 5.9.13).

  rounded whispered (OED v.2)

  567–86The syntax, diction, tone and rhythm of this passage are similar to those elements in the joking between Hal and Falstaff in 1H4 2.4.1ff.

  567 With by

  568 broker ‘a middle-man, intermediary, or agent generally; frequently with implied censure’ (OED 5c, citing this line); pimp or procuress. Ard2 compares Polonius’s ‘Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers’ (Ham 1.3.126).

  faith in the sense of word or honour pledged, vow

  573 smooth-faced literally clean-shaven, used figuratively as assuming an ingratiating expression, hence plausible in manner (OED a. 1b); two other instances in Shakespeare: LLL 5.2.816, ‘I’ll mark no words that smooth-faced wooers say’, and R3 5.5.33, ‘Enrich the time to come with smooth-faced peace’

  tickling flattering, but also including sexual overtones (see Williams, ‘tickle’, used variously of sexual activity and urges)

  Commodity The Bastard’s itemization of Commodity’s qualities in this speech incorporates an all-encompassing use of the word which defies a single definition: self-interest, advantage, expediency, gain (see OED n. 2b–d, and 6b, citing this passage). Commodity is male here, but it is possible that the word’s associations allow for a metamorphosis of gender by 578 such that the word can allude to the female pudendum. See Bruster, 43.

  574 bias swaying influence (OED n. 5, citing 577–8). Oxf1 rightly says that the term derives from the game of bowls, in which a weight (bias) was added to one side of the ball, making it roll obliquely. For Shakespeare’s frequent use of images drawn from the game of bowls see Spurgeon, 110–11.

  575 peised peisèd; balanced, poised (OED v. 3)

  577 vile-drawing compound adjective modifying bias; Commodity is the bias that ‘draws’ (pulls) the bowl out of a straight line: cf. drawn in 584.

  * * *

  577 vile-drawing] Pope; vile drawing F

  579 take head rush away (Ard2)

  indifferency evenness, absence of tilt one way or another; impartiality

  582 bawd pimp; sexual go-between (= pander)

  all-changing word two meanings: (1) Commodity which changes everything (all); (2) Commodity as a word which has many meanings, as the Bastard’s speech has illustrated

  583 Clapped on suddenly taking hold of (OED clap v.1 10d)

  outward eye hole in the lawn-bowling ball, which holds the lead weight, the bias. Beaurline notes the appropriate parallel in Christopher St Germain’s Doctor and Student (1554), dialogue 1, ch. 14: ‘When the first man Adam was create, he received of God a double eye, that is to say, and [sic] outward eye, wherely he might see visible things and know his bodily enemies and eschew them. And an inward eye, that is the eye of reason, wherely he might see his spiritual enemies that fighteth against his soul, and beware of them.’

  589 clutch close (thereby refusing the money) (OED v.1 I 2, citing this line)

  590–2 angels … salute … raileth Holinshed lists a number of gold coins including the riall, a coin that allows Shakespeare to pun with a bit of assonantal metathesis (rial/raileth): ‘our gold is either old or new … we have yet remaining, the riall, the George Noble, the Henry riall, the salut, the angel’ (quoted by Rushton, Shakespeare Illustrated (1867), 1.15, and noted in Ard2).

  593–6 The Bastard explains how one rationalizes the moral value of having money or not having it.

  * * *

  582 all-changing word] Pope; all-changing-word F

  595 virtue i.e. nominal pose of a virtuous attitude

  597 upon on account of

  Commodity expediency (OED n. 2b)

  598 Shakespearean bastards have a gift for apostrophe. Cf. Edmund’s opening to his soliloquy ‘Thou, Nature, art my goddess, to thy law / My services are bound’ (KL 1.2.1–2) (where ‘Nature’ has the sense of appetitive self-interest, a kind of more violent Commodity).

  3.1 Location: France; the French King’s pavilion (Riv2)

  2 False … false blood Constance plays with both senses of false as representing the disloyalty of the French and the illicit claims to the throne made by John’s family; the repetition of blood recalls 1.1.19 and 2.1.329. Her speeches are prone to antanaclasis, which depends for its effect on the two or more meanings attached to the same repeated word.

  be friends not in the modern sense, but to become kindred

  3 those Volquessen, Touraine, Maine, Poitiers and Anjou (cf. 2.1.527–8)

  4 thou … misheard Shakespeare often has a character blame the messenger when the message is painful; cf. AC 2.5.26–7, ‘Antonio’s dead! If thou say, so villain, / Thou kill’st thy mistress.’

  5 well advised sure (i.e. of what you say)

  11 frighting frightening

  * * *

  3.1] Theobald; Actus Secundus F 3 Blanche] (Blaunch throughout scene)

  12 sick the only reference to her being ill. Constance is not physically or mentally ill in the modern sense; Elizabethans would have recognized her problem as ‘melancholy’: a disease supposed to result from the condition of having too much black choler, brought on by fear, sorrow or an anguished mind (see Burton, 1.169–70).

  capable of susceptible to

  14 widow, husbandless not necessarily a tautology: Constance is Geoffrey’s widow and not yet married again, therefore husbandless.

  15 ‘because I am a woman, whose nature it is to be fearful’

  16 jest Riv2 sees here a pun on ‘joust’ (= engage; encounter as in a tournament), a term which logically leads to the truce of 17.

  17 vexed spirits The technical/medical use of the term ‘spirit’ is that of the tertium quid that mediates between the soul and body: see C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image (1964), 166–9. Constance’s spirits are agitated (vexed), hence the reference to quake and tremble in 18.

  take a truce agree upon or conclude a peace (OED take v. VIII 54), used figuratively. Unlike the kings, who have made a successful truce, Constance cannot make peace with her inner turmoil.

  19–23 There is an unusual sequence of internal stage directions here: Constance’s dialogue lines provide detailed instructions for what Salisbury is to do. He must shake his head (19), look sadly at Arthur (20), put his hand on his heart (21) and appear to be trying to restrain his tears (22). Such directions are common enough in Shakespeare, but seldom found in such profusion. See Ard2

  22 lamentable rheum sorrowful liquid, i.e. tears (OED rheum n.1 1b)

  23 proud swollen

  peering o’er overflowing, with peering following from the tearful eye of the previous line

  * * *

  16 jest,] Rowe; iest F

  27 them i.e. those who have occasioned her grief (the French and English kings), persons she already has doubts about

  28 cause reason, justification. The close proximity of prove may also imply a term of law: case of one party in a suit, or the subject of litigation (OED n. II 7, 8).

  34 boy Arthur

  36–7 Cf. the scorn the Messenger (who also brings bad news) receives from Cleopatra in AC 2.5.95–7, ‘Go, get thee hence! / Hadst thou Narcissus in thy face, to me / Thou wouldst appear most ugly.’

  36 Fellow a contemptuous appellation for someone of Salisbury’s rank; in keeping with Constance’s use of thou and thee for him, while Salisbury uses the deferential you towards her.

  brook tolerate

  43 grim of threatening aspect

  44–7 Similar language describing abhorrent offspring appears in R3: ‘If ever he have child, abortive be it, / Prodigious, and untimely brought to light, / Whose ugly and unnatural aspect / May fright the hopeful mother at the view’ (1.2.21–4); ‘Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog, / Thou that wast sealed in thy nativity / The slave of nature and the son of hell; / Thou slander of thy heavy mother’s womb’ (1.3.227–30).

  44 slanderous source of shame, disgraceful, with the suggestion of the child’s father as other than Geoffrey (OED a. 1b, citing this line)

  45–7 blots … stains … moles … marks disfiguring marks; for the collocation of blots and stains cf. 2.1.114, ‘To look into the blots and stains of right’. Injury and disfigurement of the newborn was an ever-present danger in sixteenth-century births. Help in avoiding it is sought in the epilogue to MND: ‘And the blots of nature’s hand / Shall not in their issue stand. / Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar / Nor mark prodigious, such as are / Despised in nativity, / Shall upon their children be’ (5.1.399–404).

  45 sightless unsightly

  46 swart swarthy, dark-skinned

  prodigious monstrous (hence portentous of evil) (OED 1 and 2)

  47 Patched marked

  moles on the skin, regarded as the physical signs of spiritual weakness

  eye-offending marks Such marks were considered outward expressions of inward depravity: ‘For as Nature hath doth ill by them; So doe they by Nature’ (Bacon).