* * *

  110 England:] England, F

  123 Three days actually three years before. Shakespeare may have misremembered, or he may have brought these two antagonists’ deaths together for dramatic and thematic reasons.

  rumour’s tongue figure of speech for the unreliable statement. Shakespeare brings Rumour onstage crowned in decorative tongues at the beginning of 2H4: ‘Enter RUMOUR painted full of tongues’, and ‘From Rumour’s tongues / They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs’ (2H4 Ind.39–40).

  124 idly inattentively

  125 Occasion here, a personification of death. The folly of believing that one can be a partner with death (‘make a league with me’) is a yet more vivid instance of the many failed unions in this play. Certainly those who would partner death find themselves in a league of their own.

  128 estate fortune, with the simultaneous suggestion of the lands about to be lost by this current misfortune

  129 conduct leadership

  131 giddy dizzy; a term used by Shakespeare frequently, often in memorable passages, as Clarence in R3 describing his terrible dream and his walking on ‘the giddy footing of the hatches’ (R3 1.4.17) and Troilus’ anticipation of making love to Cressida: ‘I am giddy; expectation whirls me round’ (TC 3.2.16)

  132 SD Pomfret Pontefract, city in Yorkshire

  133 stuff John is both overcome with the bad news and perhaps hoping that the news is false. See Shakespeare’s use of ‘stuff’ in 2H4 in the context of Rumour, ‘Stuffing the ears of men with false reports’ (2H4 Ind.8). A skilled actor can by tone, facial expressions and general body language convey these two emotions.

  * * *

  125 Occasion!] Theobald; Occasion: F 128 France!] Oxf1; France? F 132 SD] Johnson; after Dolphin. 131 F

  136 Then let The Bastard points out that disregarding the truth will not obliterate its effects.

  138 Ard2 adds parallels from Psalms, 88.16–18 and 42.7.

  tide echoing tidings, 115, and together with giddy, 131, suggesting that John has nearly, but not ultimately drowned under the waves of bad news

  141 sped fared; succeeded (together with the suggestion that all this success was achieved rapidly)

  150 sung Ard2 cites OED v. 12, ‘declared in verse’.

  151 Ascension Day 40 days after Easter, the Feast celebrating the Son of God, in the mode of Christ, in his return to Heaven, leaving this world until the Second Coming. It was, understandably, a day appropriate for monarchs to celebrate their own elevation to the throne. Boswell-Stone points out that John’s first coronation was on Ascension Day 1199, 27 May, and that ‘Peter’s prediction must have been made after Ascension Day (May 22), 1213, on which day John surrendered his crown to Pandulph.’

  * * *

  143 travelled] F4 (travell’d); trauail’d F 150 harsh-sounding] Pope; harsh sounding F

  153 Thou idle dreamer John’s indictment of Peter the Prophet uses the words of his chief supporter, the Bastard, perhaps in an attempt to signal to Faulconbridge the King’s high valuing of him. In the event, Peter is quite correct, as John subsequently recognizes; cf. 5.1.25–9. That John is not really fearful of Peter and his prophecy and that his immediately subsequent mortal condemning of him is a wilful display of power, may be suggested by the parallel first noted by H.F. Brooks (cited in Ard2) of Caesar’s dismissive remark about the soothsayer, ‘He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass’ (JC 1.2.24).

  158 safety custody

  159 must Cf. ‘necessity, / The tyrant’s plea’ (Paradise Lost, 4.394).

  use even as he criminally had in the past

  163 eyes … fire This image recalls the earlier circumstances of Arthur, the subject of this red-eyed grief.

  165 whom properly ‘who’, as subject of is; Honigmann supports a confusion with ‘whom they say (report) killed’.

  * * *

  159 SD] Smallwood; after 159 Theobald subst. 163 new-enkindled] Pope; new enkindled F 165–6 Of Arthur … suggestion] Rowe; one line F

  170 the … before Ard2 cites the expression as already proverbial (Tilley, F570), when used by Shakespeare in Tit 2.2.192 (‘Come, my lords, the better foot before’).

  171 subject domestic; native

  174 Mercury Roman messenger god, a byword for speed. Ard2, citing E.I. Fripp, notes Ovid’s description of Apollo’s speed in pursuit wearing ‘the feathred wings that Cupid had him lent’ (Golding, 1.662ff.)

  175 fly like thought Honigmann notes that ‘as swift as thought was proverbial’ (Dent, T240), as in Lucrece’s maid in response to her mistress, ‘For fleet-winged duty with thought’s feathers flies’ (Luc 1216).

  177 sprightful spirited; Ard2 sees a pun on spirit in 176 (‘spright’ being a contraction of spirit).

  * * *

  178 SD] this edn 180 SD] Rowe 181 dead!] Rowe; dead? F 181.1 Enter] Re-enter / Capell

  182–4 The visual components that belong to KJ should not obscure the fact that Shakespeare was careful to draw the line at using extreme forms of spectacle, those that call attention to themselves rather than fitting in or illustrating appropriate elements of the plot. One such casualty of this drawing of the line is the staged performance of the prophetic rotating five moons in Troublesome Reign (Pt 1, 13.135ff.), moons in their movement unstaged but merely referred to in KJ, now clearly a forecasting of Arthur’s death.

  Such a suppression of spectacular material from Shakespeare’s primary source reminds us of his calculated independence from Troublesome Reign, the most scrupulously followed of all his models. And directors at times are notoriously independent of Shakespeare’s own plot, as in the spectacular instance of Constance’s returning to life in disguise as the monk who poisons John in the Southwark 2012 production (dir. Phil Willmott). Whether by omission or radical change, directors have kept KJ, which needs no such gilding, more and more frequently on the stage in the early twenty-first century. Perhaps in a future production we’ll see a Bastard, like Donalbain in Macbeth, silently and longingly look upon the throne now occupied by a vulnerable relative. The text says nothing to this effect, but the sometimes inconsistent moral logic of Faulconbridge doesn’t rule it out.

  182 five moons described in Holinshed and presented in Troublesome Reign. England is the fifth moon.

  185 beldams aged women; grandmothers

  186 prophesy Ard2 cites Wright, ‘used not so much in the sense of foretelling the future events predicted by this phenomenon as in that of commenting upon and expounding the phenomenon itself, making it the text of a dangerous discourse’.

  187 Ard2 provides Holinshed’s passage, which Shakespeare is expanding upon: ‘For the space of fifteene daies this rumour incessantlie ran through both the realmes of England and France’ (165, ii).

  193–4 smith … anvil Southwell uses an analogous phrase, ‘pressed hard together lyke the hammerers anvyle’ (Epistle, 73r).

  194 iron … cool pathetically echoing the benign cooling of the hot irons of the previous scene

  196 shears recalling John’s exculpatory comment at 91, ‘Think you I bear the shears of destiny?’

  197 Standing on slippers Ard2 cites Malone’s observation that ‘tailors generally work barefooted’. The diction recalls Pandulph’s correct prophecy about John and Arthur, ‘And he that stands upon a slippery place / Makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up: / That John may stand, then Arthur needs must fall’ (3.4.137–9).

  200 embattled (with four syllables in keeping with F’s ‘embattailed’); ordered for battle

  Kent rich county in south-eastern England, the first territory a Channel-crossing invasion would strike

  201 lean Tailors were proverbially thin.

  unwashed perhaps a subconscious anticipation of the sinking of the French in the Wash, the approximately 22-mile-long and 15-mile-wide shallow bay off the east central coast of England.

  artificer ‘One who makes by art or skill; esp one who follows an industrial handicraft, a craftsman’ (OED 1, citing Nashe’s Pierce Penilesse: ‘In one place let me show you a base Artificer, that hath no revenues to boast on but a needle in his bosome, as brave as any Pensioner or nobleman’ (Works, 1.173). OED 6, though, notes the long-obsolete sense common in the sixteenth century of ‘An artful or wily person; a trickster’ and cites its use in Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour, 3.5.20, ‘who would have thought thou hadst been such an artificer’.

  203 Ard2 notes the echoing of theme and diction from Constance’s lament at 3.1.11–18.

  205–6 John attempts to distinguish his culpability from that of Hubert in words that anticipate Bolingbroke/Henry IV’s indictment of Sir Pierce Exton: ‘Exton, I thank thee not, for thou has wrought / A deed of slander with thy fatal hand / Upon my head and all this famous land. / … They love not poison that do poison need, / Nor do I thee. Though I did wish him dead, / I hate the murderer, love him murdered’ (R2 5.6.34–6, 38–40).

  * * *

  200 embattled] Delius; embattailed F

  207 provoke often glossed as ‘incite’, which is not incorrect, but etymologically ‘calling out’ is closer to what has happened; ‘excite’, from pro- + vocare, to call (Puttenham, 33)

  208–14 Historically, Hubert had in fact not killed Arthur, for fear that John’s command was the result of ‘heat and furie … and that afterwards, vpon better aduisement, he would both repent himselfe so to haue commanded, and giue them small thanke that should see it put in execution’ (Holinshed, 165, ii, cited in Ard2).

  208 curse of kings John seeks to free himself from responsibility not only by arguing that it is an underling’s fault, but that the problem is universal to all who bear his title. He seeks moral safety in numbers.

  211 winking John anticipates the counsel of the Boston (USA) political leader Martin Lomasney (d. 1933), ‘Never write when you can speak, never speak when you can nod, never nod when you can wink.’

  215 Here … hand Hubert attempts to justify his putative action in the manner of Exton (for his actual deed) in R2 5.6.34ff.

  216 last account final reckoning; Day of Judgement. Cf. Othello’s lines to the murdered Desdemona, ‘When we shall meet at compt, / This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven / And fiends will snatch at it’ (Oth 5.2.271–3).

  220 *Makes Grammar requires the singular form Makes; in F (‘Make’), the intervening ‘means’ and ‘deeds’ have obscured ‘sight’ (219), the singular subject.

  ill done performed ‘sinfully’, not ‘badly’

  * * *

  207 lord!] Cam; lord? F 215, 216, 219 SDs] this edn 216 account] Rowe; accompt F 220 Makes] Theobald; Make F done!] Theobald; done? F

  221–3 marked … mind i.e. it’s all your fault for looking so ugly and evil that I responded in an evil way.

  222 Quoted noted

  224 aspect aspèct

  227 broke with raised with; suggested to

  228 endeared endearèd

  232 darkly … purposed purposèd; elliptically … intended; cf. Lear’s second line, ‘Meantime we shall express our darker purpose’ (KL 1.1.35).

  234 As so as (Abbott, 280); such as

  238 signs … sin John awkwardly puns here.

  parley confer in agreement

  240 rude violent

  241 vile Cf. Arthur’s remark at 4.1.95.

  242 Out … sight a common response by tyrannous monarchs. Cf. Lear to Kent, KL 1.1.158.

  never … more John suggests that Hubert’s punishment will come from being deprived of the King’s presence in his life, rather like the theological view that hell is the absence of God’s grace/presence. Possibly, John, in his rage and anxiety, has lost control of his pronouns.

  * * *

  230 lord –] Rowe; lord. F 242 more!] Pope; more: F

  243 braved challenged

  245 this fleshly land i.e. John’s own body

  254–5 never … thought Hubert is conveniently omitting his earlier apparent willingness to carry out John’s request.

  255 motion inclination

  261 Throw this report as if it were a covering that could extinguish fire

  incensed incensèd; reminding us of the earlier description of how the Lords ‘burn[ed] in indignation’ (103)

  264 rage was blind again reminding us of what John was willing to do to Arthur

  265 imaginary eyes eyes that presented the image of murder

  * * *

  246 breath,] F4 (breath F3); breathe F 252–3 hand, … blood.] Pope; hand. … blood, F

  266 more … art Presumably John means that Hubert is still physically, but not morally, ugly. Some apology.

  269 conjure urge

  4.3.1 leap This is quite close to Arthur’s expression in Troublesome Reign after some momentary inner debate: ‘Ile venter sure: tis but a leape for life’ (Pt 2, 1.11). Holinshed presents some ambiguity: ‘Some have written, that as he assaied to have escaped out of prison, and proving to climb over the walls of the castle, he fell into the river of Saine, and so was drowned. Others write, that through verie, greefe, and languor, he pined awaie and died of naturall siknesse’ (quoted in Bullough, 4.33). Honigmann adds Foxe’s version that Arthur died ‘leaping into the ditch thinking to make his escape’ (Foxe, 250, i). Holinshed’s version of what happened lacks the boldness/courage of Arthur and the word leap.

  7 shifts both stratagems and changes of clothing. Honigmann illustrates this pun with the Duchess of Gloucester’s statement when under arrest, ‘My shame will not be shifted with my sheet’ (2H6 2.4.107).

  8 SD *Ard2 notes Shakespeare following Troublesome Reign’s SD: ‘He leapes, and bruising his bones, after he was from his traunce, speakes thus’ (after l. 11, p. 120, Bullough). Leaps real or imagined are notoriously difficult to stage. Cf. the delicate problem of staging Gloucester’s ‘leap’ from Dover Cliff, KL 4.6.11ff.

  * * *

  269 fast!] Ard2; fast. F 4.3.2 not!] Pope; not F 8 SD] Rowe

  11 him the Dauphin

  Saint Edmundsbury This is as close as Shakespeare comes to any reference to the issues that led to the signing of Magna Carta (1215), as he gives to Salisbury the place to meet the Dauphin which was the very town where the nobles met in 1214.

  15 Count Melun Troublesome Reign does not show Melun preceding the invading French army, another indication that Shakespeare took from Holinshed useful material his dramatic source did not provide.

  21 distempered ill-tempered; perhaps choleric, as the tempering of the four humours has lost the balance among the four fluids: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. Choler is the humour that leads to anger. Honigmann suggests that the Bastard ‘probably means “deranged”, i.e. making their disloyalty a disease’. Cf. 2.1.66n.

  23 Salisbury again echoes a line from King Leir, ‘The King hath dispossest himselfe of all’ (744).

  * * *

  11 Saint] F2; S. F 15 Melun] (Meloone) 16 love] Theobald; loue, F

  24 line Dover Wilson and Ard2 offer ‘(a) furnish a lining to, (b) reinforce’. The tailoring image recalls the earlier mistaken ornamentation of guard (4.2.10).

  thin-bestained thin-bestainèd

  25–6 nor … walks Ard2 notes earlier pejorative references to footwork: John’s ‘this foot of mine’ (treading on serpent Arthur, 3.3.62) and Pembroke’s ‘The steps of wrong’ (to John, 4.2.57). See also Psalms, 68.23, ‘That thy foote may be dipped in the blood … of the enemies’, and the secular parallel particularly appropriate to KJ, ‘Machiavelli … maintaineth that where the Pope and Cardinals set footing, they leave most fearefull printes of confusion’ (E. Daunce, Brief Discourses (1590, sig. D2v), noted by Honigmann.

  28 good words The Bastard, following the principle of ‘do as I say, not as I do’, suggests a smoother, less challenging, more political response.

  29 reason question, call to account. OED v. 1 obs. finds no post-1578 instance of this sense of the word, but the context here 15 to 20 years later allows for it. Ard2 suggests ‘talk’.

  30 Note Pandulph’s rebuke to Constance, ‘Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow’ (3.4.43).

  reason natural element; rationality

  32 impatience … privilege a version of ‘Anger [in the sense of righteous indignation] has its privilege’ (see Dent, P591.1)

  33 to hurt … else Ard2 cites the Latin tag iracundia sibi nocet (‘resentment hurts itself’, and Ecclesiasticus, 1.27.

  *man F’s reading, ‘mans’, looks very much like an instance of haplography where the scribe or compositor has let his eye return to manners in 31, the penultimate word in the line as here. F2’s ‘man’ not only makes sense in context but also preserves the metre. Ard2 adds a parallel from Holinshed, ‘to his naturall brother, and to no man else’ (146, ii).

  * * *

  33 man] F2; mans F

  35 proud … pure … princely The alliteration adds to the high tone of this apostrophe.

  37–8 Murder … revenge a pair of personifications frequent in Elizabethan literature. Cf. Tit 5.2.3ff.

  38 urge yet another of the words in the play suggesting incitement, as in Arthur’s tar (4.1.116) and Hubert’s provoke (4.2.207)

  40 precious-princely Klause notes Southwell’s similar diction: ‘pretious is the death of saintes … worthye to be honoured in the Princes hande’ (Epistle, 114r–v).

  for a grave Although Shakespeare could change the nature of funeral rites with ease (cf. Antony’s referring to the good deeds and reputation of the deceased being ‘interred with their bones’ (JC 3.2.77), despite the fact that the Romans of the Republic did not usually bury their dead), there is a political significance to the grave as against a proper tomb, as Dover Wilson notes: ‘The bodies of princes were not buried in the ground, but embalmed and placed in a sepulchre or vault’.