583 solicitor pandar (see Painter, ‘your self, is the shamelesse Poste of an act so dishonest’ (sig. 3S4v)); advocate. Cf. attorney at 547; also solicit, 1.151 and n.

  584–5 possibly proverbial: cf. Dent2, R168.11, ‘No (such) root, no (such) fruit’ (citations from 1607).

  584 *For metrical smoothing of the line (cf. Q2’s adding ‘then’ before though, while retaining Q’s ‘be then’), Collier’s singular for Q’s ‘braunches’ is the simplest expedient, the alternative being Capell’s omission of then. The singular also balances more exactly with root, 585. The metre may, however, be regular, if ‘branches’ could be monosyllabic (see Abbott, 471 (WP)).

  584, 586No marvel though it’s not surprising that (OED though conj. 4a)

  585 encompassed encompassèd: ‘encircled (looks back to besiege and envir’d)’ (Riv)

  586–7 Breastfeeding (dug = nipple or breast) was often seen by Elizabethans as a means of transferring disease (see 586n.) and moral or character traits (cf. Dent, E198, ‘He sucked evil from the dug’). The metaphor, while specifically referring to a mother’s role, is extended to bad parenting in general – hence to Warwick’s Unnatural (578) conduct.

  586 leprous diseased; poisoned, by analogy with Ham 1.5.64, ‘the leperous distilment’, and in view of envenometh, 587 (certain poisons were thought to lead to scaly skin, as of leprosy); tainted (morally)

  587 stern merciless, cruel

  dame mother, here contemptuous (OED dam n.2 3, dame 8a)

  588 a passport authority (OED n.1 6a fig.); cf. literal use at 9.25, 11.17, 48 SD, 53.

  589 youth youthful wantonness (OED 3), imagined as an unruly colt (cf. 5.65, 6.32, 146) given too loose a rein; here virtually synonymous with liberty

  liberty indiscipline, licence, licentiousness. Cf. Son 41.1, MM 1.2.125–8.

  590 Blot out See 1.144n.

  strict … law severe legal penalties

  591 canon law, edict, with possible ecclesiastical association (OED n.1 1a, 2a)

  592 shame for shame Moore Smith, finding tautology, proposed that the second shame was an authorial slip for ‘sin’ (see 529–30n.; cf. 618–19); Brooke rejected the emendation as unnecessary. The relevant senses of shame are disgrace, ignominy; loss of chastity (OED n. 3a, c).

  * * *

  584 though] then though Q2 branch] Collier; braunches Q be then] be Capell 589 rein] (reigne)

  5922shame] sin (Moore Smith)

  593–5 See LN.

  593 will carnal desire, lust (OED n.1 2), played on by repeated Will, 594. Cf. Son 136, and Duncan-Jones’s n. on l. 5, applicable here: ‘the threefold -ill … [hints] at the “ill” or evil nature of what is proposed’. Cf. 409–10n.

  595 graceless lust wicked desire; lacking the royal, and Christian, virtue of ‘grace’. Cf. 539 and n.

  597 unsay … again both retract and contradict my previous speech

  unsay current from the late 15th century. Cf. unswear, 492, and n.

  598–619 See 551–74, 598–619n. Cf. 345–7 (and n.) and Luc 1114–20 for a similar catalogue.

  598–9 Cf. Warwick’s words to his daughter in Painter, ‘I haue still preferred honour before lyfe bicause … it is a lesse matter to dye innocently, than to liue in the dishonour and shame of the whole world’ (sig. 3S3v). Contrast 551–5 and cf. Dent, H576, ‘It is better to die with honor … than to live with shame’.

  598 honourable grave Cf. Cor 2.1.84–6, JC 1.2.137.

  599 polluted Cf. Luc 1725–6, with reference to suicide, ‘That blow did bail it [the soul] from the deep unrest / Of that polluted prison where it breathed.’

  closet private apartment of a monarch (OED n. 2a). Cf. 3.15.

  600–1 proverbial: ‘The greater the man the greater the crime’ (Dent2, M153, citing this line as his first example; see Luke, 12.48). Cf. Luc 1004–5, ‘The mightier man, the mightier is the thing / That makes him honoured or begets him hate’; also 560.

  602–3 i.e. an insignificant speck of dust seems bigger and more important when it is caught in a sunbeam; the metaphor implicitly identifies the King with the sun (see 556). Cf. 564–9.

  602 unreputed beneath notice, OED’s first citation (see 1.76n. on unpolished)

  mote ‘one of the innumerable minute specks seen floating in a beam of light’ (OED n.1 1a); alludes to the biblical ‘mote in the eye’ or trifling sin of Matthew, 7.3

  604–5 extends the metaphor of the King as sun, while equating sexual corruption with death (see 556n.). Cf. Son 18.5 (GTW) and MM 2.2.165–8.

  604 freshest most untarnished, most blooming, brightest (OED fresh a.1 9a); the brightest summer’s day is by implication the hottest and doth soonest taint. Cf. 326.

  taint corrupt, contaminate

  * * *

  593 boisterous] (boystrous) 604 freshest] fiercest (Capell)

  605 loathed loathèd

  carrion disyllabic (carr-yon)

  kiss makes explicit the sexual force of the metaphor, as in Ham 2.2.178–9

  606 illustrates the principle stated at 600–1 (see n.); suggests the axe representing God’s judgement against the sinful (Matthew, 3.10). Cf. Ham 4.5.210, ‘And where th’offence is let the great axe fall’; also 8.79–81.

  607 aggravate ‘To make (an offence) more heinous or offensive’ (OED v. 4a, citing this line)

  608 holy place figures the sanctity of an anointed king; cf. Acts, 6.13, ‘This man ceasseth not to speake blasphemous wordes agaynste this holy place and the lawe.’

  609 by authority sanctioned by one in a position of power. Cf. Son 66.9, ‘art made tongue-tied by authority’.

  610 subornation the act of inducing a person to commit an evil deed or crime (OED 1b), often applied to perjury. Cf. Luc 919.

  610–12 deck … beast proverbial: ‘An ape is an ape though clad in scarlet (gold, purple)’ (Dent2, A263). Cf. 1.98–100; also MM 2.2.118–21, ‘But man, proud man, / Dress’d in a little brief authority, / … like an angry ape’. Cf. undecked at 150 (see n.).

  611 tissue rich cloth often interwoven with gold and silver threads (OED n. 1a)

  612 Adds … unto provokes even greater contempt for

  beast As well as tyranny, beasts signified lustfulness (especially monkeys: cf., e.g., 2H4 3.2.313, Oth 3.3.406). Cf. 12.95.

  613 spacious … reasons extensive array of arguments (OED field n.1 18b). Cf. also 3.12.

  614 Between to show the relation Between (the King’s public splendour and the private cost of the Countess’s dishonour)

  *glory Capell’s emendation is clearly correct (cf. glory, 564 and n.), and Q’s ‘gloomie’ probably a minim reading error.

  615 poison … cup proverbial: ‘Poison is hidden in golden cups’ (Dent2, P458), presumably derived from Seneca, Thyestes, l. 453, ‘venenum in auro bibitur’ (‘While drunke in golde the poyson is’, trans. Heywood, Seneca, sig. E4r); a further instance of the dangers of glory and royal favour. Cf. 567–9.

  616 Contrast 565–6 (see n.). Cf. also 4.129n.

  * * *

  614 glory,] Capell; gloomie Q

  617 also the final line of Son 94. Son 94 recommends a correspondence between outer beauty and inner virtue (lilies), concluding that concealment of corruption by the former is a greater evil than the reflection of inner corruption in outer ugliness (weeds), hence the line’s appropriateness in E3. See LN.

  far worse than Cf. 10.16 and see p. 68.

  618–19 glory … sin … shame Cf. 529–30 (and n.), and see 592n.

  618 glory ‘A metonymy: the attributes of power … indicate the person endowed with that power’ (Cam)

  619 i.e. is three times more shameful as a consequence of being great or glorious (glory = the opposite to shame: see 564n.); for by = as a consequence of, see Abbott, 146. Cf. happy opposite, 347.

  treble Cf. 4.52, a treble game (and n.); also MM 3.2.262–3, ‘Twice treble shame on Angelo, / To weed my vice, and let his grow’ (Sams).

  620 Cf. Painter, ‘The Father hearing the wyse aunswere of the daughter, gaue her his blessing’ (sig. 3T1r). Cf. 3.121.

  621 heavy severe

  622–5 Cf. 593–5 LN.

  622 honour’s golden name Cf. 13.75.

  623 black faction wicked sect; black contrasts with golden, 622; faction is opprobrious (OED n.1 2a, ‘a party’ to which are attributed ‘selfish or mischievous ends or disruptive or unscrupulous methods’), as at Tit 1.1.409 and TC 2.1.115–16.

  *bed-blotting shame shameful adultery. Q’s comma after blotting makes bed-blotting a noun, but Q2’s removal of it, converting it to an adjective, has been generally adopted as producing better sense (see OED blot v. 3a, tarnish, sully). See 1.144n.

  624–5 Here Warwick’s active role ends; in Painter, sig. 3T1v, he returns to the King to relay the Countess’s rejection, then departs from the castle leaving his daughter alone with her mother.

  624 follow thee follow your advice. Though ‘follow on after you’ is possible, the plural Exeunt, 625 SD, implies that Warwick remains to leave the stage with her. To leave the Countess alone for her final couplet (Tocilescu) adds pathos to her predicament, but at some cost to a sense of Warwick’s solicitude.

  turns so converts to the black faction of 623

  625 i.e. the shame incurred by the body will cause the soul to descend into hell (see OED sink v. 2a, 17a); woe = ‘the pains of hell’ (OED n. 2b). Cf. Luc 1482, ‘Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe.’ For the duality of body and soul as a 16th-century topos, see 401–8n. and cf. 100–1n.

  * * *

  619 shame] same Delius 622 convert’st] (conuertest) 623 bed-blotting] (bed blotting,) shame.] shame! Exit. / Capell 625 woe. Exeunt.] (woo. Exeunt.), Q2; woe! Exit. / Capell

  Sc. 3

  Sc. 3 Armstrong2 treats this scene as continuous with Sc. 2 (see n.). The first half of it presents Edward’s peers as very much concerned with the war; in Painter, the peers abet Edward in his love affairs (see 2.536 LN).

  0.1–3 prescribes entry by two separate doors, a staging not specified elsewhere in the play (but cf. 4.39.2n., 5.0.3n. on ‘meet them’). Derby and Audley’s appearance swings the action back towards war, setting in motion the alternation between war and love that structures this scene.

  0.2 from France It is hard to see how this can be communicated to an audience. The phrase seems likely to be a note to help the author(s) keep track of characters: cf. Stern, 33–4, for the origin of such phrases in SDs in the ‘plot’ of the play. Cam notes that Derby has been not in France but in Hainault, ‘on the French border of Flanders’ (see 1.147–52 and LN).

  0.3 Drum drummer (the noise of an offstage drum later distracts Edward: see 46–59)

  1 Thrice-noble See 2.322n.

  2 Cf. 13n.

  3 full a fortnight presumably refers to the time elapsed since the events of Sc. 1; conventional rather than exact

  4 muster men recruit soldiers; see 1.141n.

  5 accordingly Metrical awkwardness could easily have been avoided by different phrasing, but the word is picked up at 26, 31 and 33 (reversing ‘accord’ with the King’s prior orders).

  hither Capell omitted the word on metrical grounds, but alexandrines are frequent in plays of the period (see Abbott, 458).

  6 In fair array drawn up in good order; well equipped (OED array n. 1a; 8a)

  * * *

  Sc. 3]Oxf; SCENE II. The same. A Room in the Castle. / Capell; SCENE FOUR Warren 7 What] Q2; King: What Q

  8–11 See 1.147–52 LN. Cf. Froissart, 104, ‘there openly was redde the letters of themperour, by the which, the kyng was made vycare generall, and lieftenaunt, for the emperour, and had power gyven hym to make lawes, and to mynistre justyce to every person, in themperours name, and to make money of golde and sylver. The emperour also there commaunded by his letters, that all persons of his empyre, and all other his subgiettes, shulde obey to the kyng of England, his vycare, as to hymselfe, and to do hym homage.’

  10 lieutenant-general one who exercises a delegated rule over a region or kingdom, a vicegerent (OED lieutenant 1a); lieutenant is the noun, general an adjective defining his scope.

  11 his … dominions i.e. the Holy Roman Empire, effectively Germany and the Low Countries; see 1.83n.

  large wide, broad; also at 92, 4.104

  12 via away, come on! (Italian); first cited in OED (int. 1) here and at 3H6 2.1.181 (and True Tragedy). Cf. also LLL 5.1.140, 5.2.112.

  spacious extensive; also at 2.613

  bounds boundaries, hence territory

  13 clumsy, as Derby asked after the King in 2, so Audley already knows that he has not yet seen Edward and therefore could not have conveyed the news – at least in person. Tocilescu exploited the awkwardness by having a deaf Audley straining to catch Derby’s whispered confidences.

  leap Cf. 2.273, summer-leaping.

  13, 14these news … them Until the 17th century news was generally construed as plural, though singular usage occurs in the 16th century (see OED n. 2a, b); cf. 29.

  14 open reveal

  15 closet private room, as at 2.599

  malcontent discontented. Cf. 4.13; also TGV 2.1.15–18.

  16 gave in charge commanded (OED charge n.1 13b)

  17 after dinner the afternoon (dinner = the main meal, eaten in the middle of the day)

  19 underneath the brows not recorded by OED; probably signifies ‘downcast’ or ‘discontented’; to ‘knit the brows’ is to frown, as at 2H6 1.2.3–4.

  * * *

  13 these] this Q2

  20 amiss out of order. Cf. 2.183n.

  20 SD ‘a fanfare usually played within on a trumpet … primarily when important figures enter’ (Dessen & Thomson, 94); cf. 18.175.1, 186.1.

  21 trumpets trumpeters; their instruments (Riv)

  abroad out of his closet

  22 SP *Q’s ‘Ar.’ (as if for Artois) is probably a misreading of ‘Au.’, corrected to ‘Awd.’ by Q2.

  23 i.e. may all your wishes be granted; conventional courtesy from a subject to his king. Cf., e.g., R2 1.1.20–1.

  23, 24wish … witch Assonance may prompt witch in response to wish (Sams).

  24–9 The King’s responses to Derby are not addressed to him directly. The signs of his distraction conform with Painter: ‘he coulde take no reste, giuing ouer vse of armes, administration of iustice … And things were brought to so pitifull state, yt within fewe dayes, the Citizens and other gentlemen, began to perceyue the raging loue of their Prince’ (sigs 3T1v–2r).

  26 accorded … suit granted your petition (for aid against France); see 5n. The phrasing cues Edward’s thought of his love-suit.

  highness’ See 2.426n. on marriage’, 434n.

  * * *

  20 SD] Capell (after 21), Tyrrell 21.1]Capell; after 20 Q (Enter the King.) EDWARD] Capell 22 SP] Q2 (Awd.); Ar. Q 24 SD] Oxf 25 you –] Winny; you. Q; you: presenting Letters. / Capell 25, 27 SD] Moltke 26 suit.] Q2 (sute.), Capell; suite, Q; suit – Armstrong2

  29 all … none from the proverb ‘One and none is all one’ (Dent, O52): if everyone loves him except the Countess, then he may as well be loved by no one.

  30 levied Cf. 1.140 (and n.).

  horse and foot cavalry and infantry; cf. 1.140, where Audley is commanded to levy footmen, and see 1.141n. on men-at-arms. Cf. also 18.136.

  31 *According … charge as you ordered (echoed at 33); Q’s ‘as your charge’ is grammatically incorrect and fails to prepare for the King’s response, recommending Q2’s emendation of ‘as’ to to. Cf. 5n.

  32 upon immediately after (OED prep. 7b)

  33 According … discharge in accordance with my dismissal (playing on charge, 31). Shakespeare puns on charge/discharge at 2H4 2.4.111–15. Cf. 5n.

  34–6 Cf. R3 4.1.17–18, where Brakenbury stumbles between ‘King’ and ‘Protector’.

  34 Derby ‘hypermetrical vocative, a frequent feature of verse plays, see Abbott 512’ (Cam)

  34, 35, 37 mind thoughts; response, as conveyed in letters

  37 humour mood (OED 5); possibly with specific reference to melancholy (one of the four ‘humours’ in ancient and medieval physiology, OED 1a). Cf. 15n. on malcontent.

  * * *

  27 liest.] Armstrong2; lyest Q; lyest, Q2; ly’st, Capell; lyest: Collier 29 SD1] Moltke SD2] Collier2 subst. 31 to] Q2; as Q 33 to] (too) 34]Capell lines mind / Anon. / ; WP line Darby, / anone. / 37 SD1] Hop subst. What is] What is in Q2 SD2] Capell subst.; Exunt. Q; Exeunt. Q2

  38 *abundance Delius’s emendation of Q’s ‘aboundant’ is anticipated in Bodenham, sig. M6r, where, under the heading ‘Of the Tongue, &c.’, the line is rendered as ‘The hearts aboundance issues from the tongue’. Cf. ‘Of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks’ (Matthew, 12.34; Dent2, A13). See Appendix 1. Misreading of c as t is an easy error and may imply a copy spelling lacking ‘-e’.

  39–42 The lines recall 2.267–70.

  40 long line (heptameter) comically articulates the heart’s abundance, 38; cf. 2.262.

  imperator ìmperàtor: Lat. for ‘emperor’. Cf. LLL 3.1.180.

  41 vassal humble servant

  observes defers to (OED v. 4)

  42 pleasure or displeasure echoes charge/discharge (31, 33). Cf. 10.53, 18.3n., 88–9; also 11.54, 18.124, 218, 227.

  42.1LODWICK His role shrinks in this scene to that of a messenger.

  43–4 the … Caesar The love of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra (alluded to in AC 2.6.64–5, etc.) affords the most exalted precedent for imperial adultery, Cleopatra being a paradigm of beauty (as at AYL 3.2.143), though outdone by the Countess. Cf. 2.204 and the Countess’s reference to Caesar’s wife, 2.418; also 1.164 (see 160–4n.), 17.38. See pp. 27–8.

  44 Caesar a royal title, as at 1.164

  yet … night See 17n.

  45 resolve give her decision to; see 164–5 and nn.

  46–59 Cf. KJ 5.2.164–78, where Lewis and the Bastard square up for battle, esp. 166–70. For the rejection of military attributes, including the drum, in favour of writing love poetry, cf. LLL 1.2.173–7. See also 2.188–9n.