41–5 Sir Richard … another Salisbury, addressing the Bastard, may be recalling the comprehensive form of ‘legal interrogatories’ (cf. John’s use of the word interrogatories to Pandulph at 3.1.147): ‘Imprimis, whither do you know, or haue you herd, seene or red that’ (Ard2), but the abrupt stops and starts in his syntax, a series of anacolutha (anacoluthon = the passing to a new construction before the original is completed), reveals Salisbury’s heightened passion.

  45 This the murder of Arthur

  * * *

  34 SD] Pope subst. 40 precious-princely] Capell; precious Princely F 41 SD] Oxf1 Have you] F3; you haue F

  47 arms coat of arms, escutcheon; with a latent pun on the upper limbs of personified murder

  48 wildest … vilest Cf. the similar attempt to describe a unique violent superlative in Brutus’ stabbing of Caesar, ‘This was the most unkindest cut of all’ (JC 3.2.181).

  stroke blow

  49 wall-eyed glaring. Ard2 notes that jealousy (the motive of John) was often said to be so glaring as to be wall-eyed. The first syllable reminds us of the venue of Arthur’s last act and the second syllable is one of many repetitions that never let us forget the terror of 4.1.

  50 remorse pity, but with a touch of the current meaning of guilty regret (OED 1 2)

  51–6 The unique heinousness of the killing of Arthur (as Pembroke sees the demise of the young prince) will, by contrast, make subsequent crimes virtues and any particular murder a joke. The notion of the effect in the future of such a singular act is repeated by Shakespeare almost four years later when Cassius says of the assassination of Caesar, ‘How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over / In states unborn and accents yet unknown?’ (JC 3.1.111–13).

  54 times future times; times to come. Editors from Malone on cite the earlier parallel in Luc 718, ‘That through the length of times he stands disgraced’, and the later ‘By custom and the ordinance of times’ (H5 2.4.83).

  59 The Bastard opens the door to the possibility that the death was accidental.

  60 Salisbury explodes in anger and frustration.

  61 light revelation; hint

  63 practice scheming; treachery (OED 1. 6)

  65–72 an early example of the linking of revenge and religious justification. Cf. Shakespeare’s combining of the two in Oth, seven or so years later: ‘Till that a capable and wide revenge / Swallow them up. Now by yond marble heaven / In the due reverence of a sacred vow / I here engage my words’ (3.3.462–5).

  67 incense … vow Ard2 illustrates the equalling of prayer/vow with incense from Psalms, 141.2, ‘Let my praier be directed in thy sight (as) incense’.

  67 vow one of the very many instances in the play of oaths and promises which are made, but not in fact carried out.

  69 infected contaminated, a paradoxical expression suggesting that healthy pleasure in the light of Arthur’s murder a disease would be

  71 this hand perhaps that of Arthur, but more likely his own, which Honigmann suggests ‘he lays on his sword as on a cross’ (cf. Ham 1.5.157–8)

  77 Avaunt go away, depart; a good example of the antithetical sense of primal words – here the opposite of its other meaning, ‘advance’ (OED v.2 1 and 2)

  villain a social put-down as well as a moral indictment. Cf. OED n. 1, ‘Originally, a low-born base-minded rustic; a man of ignoble ideas or instincts; in later use, an unprincipled or depraved scoundrel; a man naturally disposed to base or criminal actions’. Hubert is often staged as responding as much to the social slur as to the moral indictment.

  * * *

  73 SD] Pope 75 SD] this edn

  78 SD *Pope was the first to suggest this natural direction.

  78 rob the law i.e. by executing you myself

  79 Editors, following Malone, cite Othello’s parallel expression, ‘Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them’ (Oth 1.2.59).

  80 sheathe To sheathe one’s sword was ‘to put an end to war or enmity’ (OED v. 2 fig.). Salisbury will cease hostility only after he has revenge for the death of Arthur by killing Hubert.

  83 forget yourself both (1) lose your sense of self-control in your anger (as Horace wrote, ‘ira est furor brevis’ (‘anger is short madness’; see Dent, A246); and (2) disregard your social position (don’t, as an aristocrat, fight with inferiors)

  84 true defence Honigmann notes the pun: ‘“Honest defence; defence in a good cause” (Johnson); skilful defence, good swordsmanship (Davies).’

  87 thou form used when speaking to a social inferior; see also 3.1.36n.

  brave challenge; defy. Bigot intervenes inasmuch as Hubert’s illegal (by the rules of heraldry) confrontation with Salisbury is equally an attack upon Bigot himself.

  88 Not … life an expression of absolute denial with a quite literal truth to it in the present circumstances

  89 innocent both guiltless and harmless

  * * *

  78 SD] Pope subst. 81 SD] Pope 82 God] xxx; heauen F 87 dunghill!] Theobald; dunghill: F

  90–1 Do … none Ard2 cites Johnson’s ‘Do not make me a murderer by compelling me to kill you; I am hitherto not a murderer’.

  91–2 Whose … lies Hubert’s definition seems tautological and is periphrastic in methodology, falling just short of naming the one who lies. Ard2 provides the appropriate passage from W. Segar’s Book of Honour and Arms (1590): ‘who soeuer being offered iniurious speach, shall say to the offerer thereof Thou liest, or thou saiest not truelie, doth therby repulse the iniurie, and force the Iniurer to challenge’ (sig. B2v). Honigmann believes that Hubert is giving Bigot the lie direct, and Pembroke’s command at 93 may be said to support such an interpretation. It seems equally possible that Hubert has challenged the truthfulness of all the nobles, but he still does not take the ultimate step of naming names. The locus classicus in Shakespeare for this circumlocutive, step-by-step challenging is Touchstone’s explication in AYL 5.4.68ff.

  93 Cut … pieces i.e. do not fight him in single heraldically validated combat, but as a ‘villain’ who can be butchered by all.

  peace The Bastard continues his practice of saying what is right in a punning manner.

  94 by aside

  gall injure; hurt with the sense of vexing by rubbing of a sore, as if Salisbury were treating Faulconbridge scarcely any better than Hubert by imaging him as a yoked or harnessed animal made sore by Salisbury who has put him under the yoke.

  97 spleen temper; perhaps ‘impetuosity’ as earlier and later in the play: ‘With swifter spleen than powder can enforce’ (2.1.448) and ‘O, I am scalded with my violent motion / And spleen of speed to see your majesty!’ (5.7.49–50).

  do me shame i.e. by treating me as you have been treating Hubert

  98 betime in good time; OED adv. 1 obs. cites this line.

  * * *

  93 SD] Cam2 subst.

  99 maul batter, beat, as with a club, hardly the instrument a noble like Salisbury should have to face

  toasting-iron dismissive epithet for a sword. Cf. Nym’s ‘I will wink and hold out mine iron. It is a simple one, but what though? It will toast cheese’ (H5 2.1.7–9).

  101 renowned renownèd; perhaps ironic, perhaps an effort to calm the Bastard and avoid bloodshed

  102 Second serve as a second in a duel that has no heraldic legality because of the social inferiority of Hubert, the man the Bastard would support

  105 This tricolon is expanded three years later in Brutus’ speech in the Roman forum (JC 3.2.24ff.).

  106 date duration; term

  108 rheum tears

  109 traded in pejoratively both (1) accustomed to, as a kind of second nature; and (2) driving a trade in (i.e. making a career out of pretending grief)

  112–13 th’uncleanly savours … smell uncleanly = lacking in physical cleanness; dirty, foul, filthy (OED a. 2, citing this example). Honigmann suggests an allusion to ‘the “unclean flesh” sacrifices of the Old Testament (Leviticus, 5, etc.); savours and smell may also be biblical: “The Lorde looke vpon you and iudge: for ye haue made our sauour to stinke before Pharaoh … ye haue put a sword in their hand to slay vs’ (Exodus, 5.21, and Genesis, 34.30).’ Klause points out that Southwell has similar terms: ‘the unsavery stench … while we are in the stench of sinne … they neyther smell us nor seek us … slaughterhouse’ (Epistle, 7r, 15v).

  * * *

  104 SD] this edn 105 SD] this edn 106 life’s] Rowe; lives F SD] this edn

  113 stifled suffocated; choked. Cf. Juliet’s fear of the noxious fumes of the Capulet tomb: ‘Shall I not then be stifled in the vault, / To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in’ (RJ 4.3.33–4).

  114 Bury St Edmundsbury

  to to meet with

  116 Here’s … world ‘It’s a bad world’ (Ard2), echoing 4.2.100.

  fair work sarcasm, also recalling the fair written warrant of 4.1

  117–19 Beyond … Hubert Hubert’s putative crime is beyond the power of mercy, otherwise infinite in its reach. Honigmann cites ‘Thy mercie, O Lord, (reacheth) vnto the heauens’ (Psalms, 36.5).

  122 more … Lucifer (with stress on more, dam-); another uniquely impossible achievement

  126 despair the one theologically unforgivable sin, for the giving up of hope in God’s mercy is perversely the ultimate pride, that one’s sinful nature is greater than God’s power of forgiveness. The customary act of despair is suicide, the most celebrated version of which in the English Renaissance is in Spenser’s FQ, 1.9. Because of the heinousness of Hubert’s alleged crime the slightest, most modest-sized instrument will serve to kill him.

  * * *

  115 SD1] this edn There,] Theobald; There F SD2 Exeunt] Rowe; Ex. F 117–19 Beyond … Hubert] Pope; F lines mercy, / … Hubert. / 125 soul –] Theobald; soule F

  129 rush thin reed

  beam ‘A large piece of squared timber, long in proportion to its breadth and thickness’ (OED n. 3, citing this line)

  130 hang Delius was the first to suggest this is an allusion to the despairing Judas who hanged himself after betraying Christ. ‘And when he had cast downe the siluer (pieces) in the Temple, he departed, and went, and hanged him self’ (Matthew, 27.5). The Geneva marginal gloss cites the cause of this death: ‘Although he abhorre his sinnes, yet is he not displeased there with, but dispaireth in Gods mercies, and seketh his owne destruction.’

  133 stifle echoing Salisbury’s word describing the effect on him of the atrocious ‘killing’ of Arthur (4.3.113)

  134 very grievously Holinshed describes King Philip’s reaction to Arthur’s death: ‘[he] tooke the matter verie greevouslie’ (166, i, noted by Honigmann); grievously = in a great or serious degree; exceedingly (OED 2 cites this line). The word may have prompted Hubert’s expression in 135 (see n.).

  135 act … thought Ard2 points out that ‘Hubert echoes the “general confession” in use before Holy Communion: “wee knowledge and bewaile our manifolde sinnes and wickednesse, which we from time to tyme most grieuously haue committed, by thought, word, and deede”’ (BCP). Shakespeare returns to this theme of the interpreted nature of thought and deed in the Gravedigger’s parody of the legal division of an act (Ham 5.1.10–12).

  139 bear … arms The Bastard seems to have accepted the truth of Hubert’s response, although it is just possible that he is testing Hubert for, as editors have noted, it was a common belief that the wounds of a murder victim would bleed in the presence of the killer (cf. R3 1.2.55–9).

  * * *

  139 SD] Collier

  140–1 lose … thorns Cf. Richard of Gloucester’s self-description in 3H6 3.2.174ff. Ard2 notes that ‘losing one’s way among thorns is a biblical commonplace’, citing Proverbs, 22.3–5, and Matthew, 13.22.

  142 Note that Hubert’s innocence (which we already know) is confirmed by the absence of any incriminating bleeding of Arthur’s wounds. Contrast Gloucester and the dead Henry VI, whose ‘wounds / Open their congealed mouths, and bleed afresh’ (R3 1.2.55–6).

  take … up Honigmann sees a second meaning: ‘levy, raise in arms’ (cf. 2H4 4.2.12), anticipating 145–54.

  143 morsel fragment, piece, but also suggesting etymologically a bite-size bit of food for all-devouring death. The first syllable adds resonance to remorse, frequent in the play.

  144–5 The life … heaven Arthur’s soul and, as he is the rightful king, England’s spiritual essence, has left this world; with the strong echo of Astraea’s (Justice’s) leaving the earth in Ovid, Met., 1.l.150, ‘ultima caelestum terras Astraea reliquit’ (in Golding’s loose translation, ‘And Ladie Astrey last / Of heavenly vertues from this earth in slaughter drowned past’).

  146 scamble scramble (OED v. 1a obs., citing this line)

  by with

  147 unowed interest Honigmann notes the pun on ‘unowned title or right’ and ‘the accruing interest or power of the nobles unowed to a king’. Hubert has already made a similar pun at 4.1.122.

  148 bare-picked bone because of having been fought over so long

  149 dogged doggèd; of or pertaining to a dog or dogs (OED a. 1b, citing this example); also cruel; surly (OED a. 2). Hubert used the word in 4.1.128.

  crest back of the neck, but the image has the power to morph into the war god Mars with his crested helmet (OED n. 8a, ‘The ridge or surface line of the neck of a horse, dog, or other animal; sometimes applied to the mane which this part bears’)

  151 from home foreign; i.e. the invading French

  152 Meet … line join; come together. Dover Wilson and Honigmann suggest collision, opposition as possible meanings. Cf. Hamlet’s ironic ‘O, ’tis most sweet / When in one line two crafts directly meet’ (Ham 3.4.207–8). It seems more likely that there are three entities involved: the French, the rebellious nobles – forces joined against John, and his remaining supporters.

  * * *

  142–3 up! … royalty,] Theobald; up, … Royaltie? F

  153 raven bird that feeds on carrion. The sick-fallen beast is not going to survive.

  154 imminent impending threateningly; coming on shortly. Cf. Hamlet’s similar expression in a context of future death, ‘The imminent death of twenty thousand men’ (Ham 4.4.59).

  wrested usurped; some think that Faulconbridge now ‘wavers in his allegiance’, recognizing John’s authority as wrested (usurped) from Arthur. We agree.

  155 *ceinture cincture (as Pope), belt. Ard2 cites Psalms, 109.19 (BCP), ‘Let it be unto him as the cloke that he hath vpon him: and as the gyrdle that he is alway gyrded withall’.

  156 child The term reinforces the idea of Arthur’s guiltless youth and the consequent poignancy in the audience’s attitude toward him.

  157 I’ll … King However John has become king, he is so with no rival English claimant; the Bastard accepts him in the face of foreign invasion.

  158 brief Ard2 cites OED (a. 5): ‘Rife; common; prevalent: often used of epidemic diseases.’

  159 Honigmann finds an orthodox statement in Holinshed of the relation between God and king: ‘the generall scourge wherewith the people were afflicted, chanced not through the princes fault, but for the wickednesse of his people, for the king was but the rod of the Lords wrath’ (173, ii). The play suggests, and the Bastard, among others, perceives, that John is at fault.

  5.1.1 Thus may refer to John’s having handed the crown to Pandulph offstage, such that Pandulph enters carrying it on a little cushion or perhaps casually in his hand. As Oxf1 notes, Take (3) indicates a concurrent action – perhaps we are to see John taking the crown from his own head, handing it to Pandulph and commenting, ‘Thus have I yielded up …’. This gesture seems in its directness and speed to be the obverse of the surrendering of the crown by the reluctant Richard to Bolingbroke in R2 4.1.

  * * *

  155 ceinture] (center); cincture Pope 159 SD Exeunt] Rowe; Exit F Hubert … body] Oxf1 5.1] Rowe; Actus Quartus, Scæna prima. F 0.1 Flourish] Oxf 0.2 with the crown] Capell 1 SD] Smallwood 2 SD] Capell

  3 From … hand Given all that has gone before in the matter of hand-connected agreements and what the audience know of the historical John’s excommunication, they and John can only hope that Pandulph and the Pope fulfil the promise.

  7 inflamed covered in fire, hinting at the kind of death suffered by John in 5.7 (‘my burned bosom’ (5.7.39), ‘I am scalded’ (49), ‘The tackle of my heart is cracked and burnt’ (52))

  8 counties personified districts of England, though possibly the leaders of these districts

  11 stranger foreign, with the last five letters of the word providing a subconscious link to mistempered in 12

  12 inundation … humour Humours are fluids and when uncontrolled they understandably are viewed as a flood of waves.

  13 ‘can only be controlled by you’ (by removing the source of the mistemper)

  15 present … ministered present is something of a transferred epithet. The medicine must be ministered ‘presently’ (= immediately). Ard2 illustrates with ‘“Gangrena … comes … because the inflammation was not defended … the aboundance of humours … choake and extinguish the naturall heate … except present helpe be ministred [mortification will follow]” (The Sclopotarie of Iosephus Quercetanus (1590), sig K3).’

  18 stubborn usage obstinate treatment of the Pope. John is not only in error, but heretically so; the wilful nature of the error raises the level of the offence. Holinshed had given Shakespeare the hint here with ‘“the Pope perceiuing that king Iohn continued still in his former mind (which he called obstinacie)” (171, ii)’