44 surmises conjectures; imaginings (OED n. 4a; 5)

  45.1, 46 SP This Frenchman seems unacquainted with the citizens (46) he addresses. His arrival from the fair mountain (54) from which he has had a panoramic view of the advancing English force’s depredations seems more conventional than particular and links his descriptive speech with others in the play (see 54n.).

  46 SP *See 2.1 SPn.

  46 countrymen may simply identify all onstage as French, rather than distinguishing countrymen from citizens. At 69 all present are addressed as citizens.

  47–8 For elaboration of this idea, cf. H5 5.2.33–62.

  48 expulsed the land driven out of France (see Abbott, 198, for the frequent omission of prepositions)

  49 whom peace (47) personified

  ransacked ransacking (see Abbott, 374, ‘-ed is loosely employed for -ful, -ing, or some other’). Cf. 2.318, 3.192.

  constraining violating; oppressing (OED constrain v. 5b; 6)

  50 The ominous carrion birds prophesy death in the house.

  like to like

  ravens See 4.84n.

  * * *

  41–3 the … France.] as quoted speech Capell 43 fleur-de-lys] (fluerdeluce), Armstrong2 subst. 45.1another] Capell; a Q 46 SP] Winny; not in Q; 4. F. / Capell; 3 Fr. / Armstrong; FRENCHMAN Armstrong2; FLEEING FRENCHMAN Oxf 47 Sweet-flowering] (Sweete flowring) 49 ransacked, constraining] (ransackt constraining), Armstrong2; ransack-constraining Capell

  51 Slaughter and mischief are personifications (Cam).

  mischief calamity; wickedness (OED n. 1a; 5)

  52 unrestrained Cf. 1.76n. on unpolished.

  53 The form whereof i.e. the spectacle of havoc (devastation)

  even now just now; even is monosyllabic (e’en).

  54–68 one of a series of panoramic military descriptions: see 4.144–84n.

  54 metrical if fair is disyllabic (‘fayer’) (WP)

  this fair mountain A gesture is implied by this to locate it (perhaps as the gallery above the stage from which he could descend to make his entrance). A messenger running from a mountain may have been inspired by Sharrock’s prelude to the battle of Crécy (although there the messenger is warning the English of the French): ‘When sodainly a spie from mountaines topps in post hast runnes, / And warning giues, that Valoys king of Galls in armour comes’ (sig. C3r). Hilltops feature elsewhere in the play: cf. 2.48–52, 4.100, 8.1–3, 12.15–39, 13.113–20, 18.127–45.

  55 metrically awkward: Capell plausibly omits off and emends directed to ‘did direct’; Craik’s suggestion ‘did rest’ is simpler and suggests misreading as a source for Q’s error. Most convincing is WP’s suggestion, followed by Cam, that direct[e]d should have only two syllables, as -ed was often omitted after d or t (see 4.75n.).

  56 five cities In the lead-up to the battle of Crécy, Froissart, 279–82, describes the English taking five towns when proceeding through Normandy: ‘Harflewe’ (= Barfleur), ‘Cherbourgue’, ‘Mountbourgue’, ‘Quarentyne’ and ‘saynt Lowe’ (see also Holinshed, 3.370, where these towns are listed in the margin). Cf. 6.20 and n.

  57 Cornfields See Sc. 5 LN; also Froissart, 280, ‘brennynge and exilyng the countrey, the which was plentyfull of every thynge; the granges full of corne’.

  burning … oven i.e. like the fire beneath an oven; cf. Malachi, 4.1, ‘FOR marke, the day commeth burning like an ouen: and all the proude, and all that worke wickednesse shalbe stubble, and the day that is for to come … shall leaue them neither roote, nor braunche.’

  58–9 Cf. 1H6 2.2.26–7, ‘Myself, as far as I could well discern / For smoke and dusky vapours of the night’.

  58 leaking vapour smoke issuing (from the burning cities and countryside)

  59 *Turned but aside cleared a little; Q’s ‘I’ at the start of this line makes little sense, even as affirmative ‘ay’: its removal (Delius) is the simplest emendation.

  60 escaped having escaped from

  * * *

  55 off] (of); om. Capell directed] did direct Capell; direct Delius; direct’d Cam; did rest (Craik) 58 leaking] reeking Delius (Capell) 59 Turned but aside] Delius; I tourned but a side Q; Turned aside Capell; Ay turned but aside (Capell) I likewise might] I might (Capell)

  62–8 The Three ways derive from Froissart’s descriptions of the deployment of the English army progressing through Normandy from La Hogue towards Crécy: see LN. A complication arises in the following scene, where it emerges that Prince Edward, in accord with the King’s orders to Scour to Newhaven (Le Havre: see 3.201n. and LN), has landed and won various towns (6.19), but has not yet reunited his force with his father’s. The Frenchman’s words at 67, ‘though distant yet conspire in one’ (distant = far apart and far off, OED a. 2, 3a), may go some way to resolving any inconsistency, as does the fact that the panoramic view from the top of a fair mountain (54) is wide enough to encompass ‘five cities all on fire’ (55). See 3.200–3n., 6.11–20n.

  62–3 Cf. R3 1.1.8, ‘Our dreadful marches to delightful measures’.

  62 ministers of wrath agents of destruction; the expected sense would be that the wrath was supernatural and retributive. Cf. Romans, 13.4; also Lodge, Wounds, TLN 1808, ‘the monstrous ministers of wrath’; and R3 1.2.46, ‘dreadful minister of hell’.

  63 The oncoming English army’s march is imagined as a deadly (tragic) and formal dance of warriors; tread the measures = dance in a stately manner (OED tread v. 2d).

  64–6 The play’s second account of an army’s disposition: cf. 4.96–102.

  64 conquering OED a. cites as its first example 1H6 2.1.26 (cf. also 9.12, 12.155); recurs in various forms from the beginning of the play, here the first of two occurrences in the mouth of a Frenchman, anticipating King John’s conquered at 17.10.

  65 hot, unbridled eager and unrestrained, like an unbroken colt. Cf. 2.589n. on youth.

  66 midst Cf. 18.139.

  *their simple emendation to identify the ‘nation’ as English. Q’s ‘our’ appears to be an error in context: the English seem the likelier ministers of wrath (62). The glittering host seems inconsistent with the fall of wretched France (75).

  glittering host because of the sunlight reflected from the armour (host = army); Sharrock, sig. C2r, describes ‘The valiant Britayne youth, in sturdie steele coates glittering’, and later, sig. C3v, ‘The maine battaile … in glittering armour’. Cf. 2.51–2n.

  67 yet refers both backwards, ‘though still distant’, and forwards, ‘nonetheless already conspire’

  68 where they come Cf. 6.184, 191, 197, 203n.; where = wherever.

  * * *

  65 his] Q2; is Q 66 their] Cam (Lapides); our Q

  71–2 In Froissart, 285, when the English army takes the town of ‘Cane’ (= Caen; in the lead-up to the battle of Crécy), instructions are given ‘in the kynges name [for] non to be so hardy to put fyre in any hous, to slee any persone, nor to vyolate any woman’, so that the townspeople ‘receyved the Englysshmen into their houses, … and some opyned their coffers, and badde them take what them lyst’ (see also Holinshed, 3.370). Siemon, 409, points out that R3 (5.3.336–7) and H5 (3.3.19–21) ‘are the only Shakespearean history plays to associate rape with military invasion’ and that E3 ‘makes the same association’.

  71 stay See 2.60n.

  72 treasure riches; refers back to wives in the previous line, and/or their chastity. See 2.318n.

  your weeping eyes Cf. R3 4.4.278.

  73 you yourselves redundant pronoun (see Abbott, 243)

  the … rise The battle of Crécy is preceded in Froissart, 297, by ‘great rayne and a clyps [eclipse] with a terryble thonder’ (see also Holinshed, 3.372), although storm often figures in the idiom of war.

  74 Methinks … drums perhaps an implicit SD for drums within to announce and accompany King Edward’s entry for Sc. 6; cf. 8.57–8.

  75–6 Cf. 4.127; also 13.35n.

  76 tottering wall biblical: cf. Psalms, 62.3, ‘Howe long wyll ye imagine mischiefe against euery man? ye shalbe slayne all the sort of you: [ye shalbe] as a tottering wall’ (Sagovsky).

  tottering disyllabic (tott’ring); see 4.170n.

  * * *

  70 off] (of) 73 you] om. Capell 73 SD] Collier2 subst., after 74 76 SD] Q2

  Sc. 6

  Sc. 6 Located in Picardy not far from Crécy plains (42), in the lead-up to the battle fought at Crécy on 26 August 1346, the scene begins after King Edward’s army, guided by Gobin de Grâce, has crossed the Somme by the Blanchetaque ford. See 36–42 LN. Unhistorically, Edward’s son rejoins his father a little later (see 11–20n.). Certain Q spellings of names suggest that 1–12 and 19–26 derive directly from Holinshed, 3.370–1, possibly with awareness of the more detailed account in Froissart, 278–93. The rest of the scene (the meeting of the two kings and the arming of Prince Edward) freely elaborates hints from the chronicles. The ritual and symmetry of the arming of Prince Edward have analogues in the ghost scene in Act 5 of R3 and in Soliman and Perseda, 1.3.12–69.

  0.2, 6GOBIN de Grâce French prisoner who revealed the tidal ford of Blanchetaque; see LR, 17n.

  1–3 See LN.

  1 *‘This line lacks one syllable. “Where is” is a better emendation than “guidance” for “guide” ’ (Cam).

  guide guidance (OED n. 12)

  2 shallow shallow passage, ford; Holinshed uses the adjective (see 1–3 LN), but not Froissart.

  *Somme Q ‘Sone’, presumably a minim misreading of ‘Some’ (a chronicle spelling)

  3 pass the sea cross the river; sea perhaps because the ‘estuary of the Somme … flows into the English Channel’ (Lapides)

  5 How … called in Shakespeare only at 2H6 5.1.73, where the King asks the name of Alexander Iden, killer of Jack Cade

  7–10 varied from Holinshed, 3.371, ‘he acquitted Gobin Agace, and all his companie of their ransomes, and gaue to the same Gobin an hundred nobles, and a good horsse’ (cf. Froissart, 292). The release of a co-operative prisoner is repeated in Salisbury’s treatment of Villiers (Sc. 9).

  * * *

  Sc. 6] Oxf; SCENE III. The same. / Capell; SCENE SEVEN Warren 0.1Enter] Drums. Enter / Capell

  0.2 Grâce] Cam subst. (Grace), Oxf; Graie Q; Grey Capell 1 Where is] Capell; Wheres Q; Where’s Q2

  2 Somme] Capell; Sone Q 6Grâce] Cam subst. (Grace), Oxf; Graie Q; Grey / Capell

  9 perhaps metrically defective: Capell supplies the missing syllable by emending to ‘a recompence’; another possibility is ‘more recompense’, which sharpens the sense of beside. And can, however, represent an emphatic monosyllabic foot (see Abbott, 481).

  good benefit, i.e. his release

  10 five hundred marks worth ten times Holinshed’s ‘hundred nobles’: the mark was worth 13 shillings and fourpence, or two thirds of a pound, while the noble was worth six shillings and eightpence, one third of a pound.

  10 SD *As the last line clearly addressed to Gobin is 10, he may exit at this point. After the French King’s entry at 46, his presence would be awkward.

  11–20 Edward’s separation from his son is unhistorical: Froissart places him in the ‘myddes’ of the battle formation with his father (see 5.62–8 LN); Holinshed, 3.369, names ‘Edward prince of Wales, being as then about the age of thirteene yeares’ among the ‘cheefest capteins that went ouer with [the King]’. The Prince’s separation is a theatrical expedient to string the ‘famous victories’ together into a continuous narrative: thus, while the King deals with the French at Sluys (see Sc. 4n.), his son, having landed at Newhaven (Le Havre; see 3.201n.), is rampaging through Normandy. These lines affirm that the King has had no contact with the Prince since his landing in France (15), and that by crossing the Somme at Blanchetaque he is to be reunited with his son at Crécy.

  11 elliptical: i.e. ‘[without Gobin] I wouldn’t have had a chance of meeting my son’ (see Abbott, 382)

  12.1ARTOIS Artois died in 1342 (see LR, 15n.); his presence in the play from this point is unhistorical.

  13 SP *See 2.1 SPn.

  14 with … Audley Cf. 220–4, 3.200.

  comes The singular verb may be heard as relating primarily to Audley, but its extension to cover the rest is grammatically acceptable (see 2.134n.).

  * * *

  9 recompense] (recompenc); a recompence Capell; more recompense (this edn) 10 SD] this edn 13 SP] Q2 (Art.); not in Q

  17 arrival disembarkation

  20 The play unhistorically attributes capture of these French cities to Prince Edward’s force alone: see 11–20n. At 5.56 the burning of five cities is described (see n.), but only four are named here. The Prince’s landing at Newhaven (Le Havre; see 3.201n.), closer to the Somme than to the Norman towns, sits uneasily with the campaign’s true topography, but see n. on Harfleur. The spelling of two French place-names (see t.nn. and Cam, 203) indicates Holinshed as the immediate source for the Prince’s account of his advance (‘Carentine’, ‘Saint Lo’ (3.370)), rather than Froissart (‘Quarentyne’ (279), ‘saynt Lowe’ (280)).

  *Harfleur historically Barfleur, a coastal town, and principal harbour, in Normandy, wrongly translated from Froissart as ‘Harflewe’ by Berners (followed by Holinshed). Q’s ‘Harslen’ is an easy misreading of ‘Harfleu’, the presumed copy form. The topographical error is obviously authorial (from the sources), and may have partly influenced the choice of Newhaven as the Prince’s imagined landing place.

  *Lô St Lô, south-east of Carentan; corrected by Capell from Q’s ‘Lie’ (presumably a misreading of ‘Lo(e)’)

  *Crotoy Q’s ‘Crotag’ is presumably a misreading of ‘Crotay’ (a chronicle spelling), resulting from easy confusion of y and g. Though third in the sequence, Le Crotoy lies at the mouth of the Somme, much nearer to Crécy than the other three towns, and was burnt only after the English crossed to the north of the river.

  *Carentan Q’s ‘Carentigne’, probably derived from ‘Carentine’ in Holinshed. Like St Lô, Carentan lies inland south of Barfleur.

  21–6 Behind these lines lies Tacitus’ famous phrase, Agricola, 30.5, ‘ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant’ (‘they make a desolation and they call it peace’). Lines 24–6 work to qualify any sense that Edward is tyrannical, or that this desolation is a tyrannous proceeding (48; cf. 18.39–55 and nn.).

  21 wasted sacked, destroyed; linked by alliteration with won (19)

  at our heels behind us

  22 wide apparent broad and bare

  field stretch of open land, devoid of life, i.e. wasteland

  23 possibly suggested by Holinshed’s description of the progress through Normandy as ‘exiling [i.e. depopulating] the countrie’ (3.370; derived from Froissart, 280)

  solitariness desolation, ‘the state or character of being unfrequented … absence of life’ (OED n. 2, citing this line)

  * * *

  16] Q2 lines Prince, / sonne, / 20 Harfleur] Capell; Harslen Q; Barfleur Cam Lô] Cam (Sams); Lie Q; Lo / Capell Crotoy] Winny; Crotag Q; Crotaie WP; Crotaye Moore Smith Carentan] Capell; Carentigne Q

  24–6 This passage summarizes a contemporary definition of good government; behind it may lie Virgil’s lines (spoken to Aeneas by the ghost of Anchises): ‘tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento / (hae tibi erunt artes), pacisque imponere morem, / parcere subiectis et debellare superbos’ (‘you, Roman, be sure to rule the world (be these your arts), to crown peace with justice, to spare the vanquished and to crush the proud’: Virgil, Aeneid, 6.851–3). Cf. 2.561–3n., 10.33–5n.

  24 who whoever

  our proffered peace the peace we offered. Cf. 1H6 4.2.9.

  25 sharp revenge Cf. 18.165; also 17.30n.

  sharp merciless

  26 *In Q, 26 precedes 24–5, producing an apparent reversal of the logic of Yet and For. Melchiori, keeping Q’s order, argues that For who (24) = ‘Whereas those who’; others have emended For to ‘But’. Neither suggestion convinces, as they leave 24–5 separated from 21–3. It seems likelier that 26 has been misplaced in Q and should end the speech, vindicating the Prince’s actions; then 24–5 give the prosaic explanation for the desolation. The changed sequence is further recommended by 27–8, where the King picks up kindly with kind. For other misplaced lines, see 8.109–13n. and LN, 12.42–60n. and LN, and pp. 119–20.

  kindly humanely

  27–33 Edward apostrophizes France as a cherished but recalcitrant child or lover, using the intimate thou and thy (see 1.55, 57n.). Metaphoric personification of France (as at 5.75 (Sams)) becomes uneasy at 30, where mould (soil, earth) with tender suggests fragility, i.e. earth easily broken up and the earth of the grave (OED n.1 1a, 3), sustaining the image of the earth as ‘the material of the human body’ (2a); cf. 18.171. See also 2.188–9n.

  27 this thus; see 3.165n.

  28 kind embracement Cf. TS Ind.1.117 and CE 1.1.43. In the light of 32–3, cf. also VA 312, ‘Beating his kind embracements with her heels’.

  kind as of kindred, affectionate

  friends relatives, kin

  29–33 Cf. 146, 5.65.

  30 tender ‘yielding easily to force or pressure’ (OED a. 1a); precious (8b)

  31 disdainful pride tautologous, but a familiar collocation in the period. Cf. scorn at 24.

  32 skittish … colt Cf. 2.589n. on youth.

  untamed untamèd

  33 start aside of a horse, ‘to swerve suddenly from its course’ (OED start v. 5b, citing R3 3.4.84)

  * * *

  24 For] But Delius (Capell) 26]this edn; before 24 Q 27 shouldst] (shouldest)this] thus Q2 29 gently] gentle Q2

  34 Ned See 1.141, 157n.

  35 the usurping elided: th’usurping. Cf. 1.80.

  36–42 Despite local linguistic difficulty (see t.nn.), the purport of this speech is clear: King John’s vastly superior French forces, on both banks of the Somme, threatened destruction of Prince Edward’s smaller power less than two hours previously, until, observing the approach of King Edward’s army, they withdrew toward Crécy. Emendation is unnecessary if with (38) = along (OED prep. 5b) and both (39) is construed as adverbial = too, also (adv. 2a). See LN.