* * *

  11 stranger blood] Theobald; stranger-bloud F 16 incurably] F4; incurable F

  19 convertite ‘a person converted to a religious life, or to an approved course of action’ (OED 2, cited as the earliest instance)

  21 make fair weather Ard2 points out that the phrase means ‘(a) be conciliatory, (b) pretend that something is better than it is’, finding this expression indicative of Pandulph’s hypocritical nature, but the lines seem literally to indicate that Pandulph, satisfied with John’s return to obedience to the Pope, is now a little too confident to stop what he had started.

  22–4 There is a two-fold iteration here: a reminder first to the audience and to John of how this action of royal surrender occurred when it was predicted to occur, and second to John, to reinforce the cause-and-effect nature of John’s submission and Pandulph’s peace-making.

  24 SD Exit F’s SD. Capell was the first to make this word plural. Both Jowett and Braunmuller accept Capell’s emendation on the grounds that ‘The conversation with the Bastard [30ff.] is most effective as a private dialogue’ (TxC, 321). Braunmuller admits that ‘it is not clear, however, what duty or protocol might motivate the exit of all John’s attendants along with Pandulph’s.’

  29 it … voluntary The actor playing John can convey a rueful irony, with the King aware of just how forced by military exigencies he was to surrender the crown, or a blithe recrudescence of self-confidence oblivious to the true circumstances.

  * * *

  24 SD Exit] Exeunt / Capell with Attendants] this edn

  32 kind host Freud made much ado about the antithetical nature of primal words, and this phrase stands Janus-faced in the sentence, looking back to the Londoners who are hospitably welcoming in the manner of an innkeeper the army of the invading Dauphin and forward to that army (host) as a benign force, especially to those who support them, the Londoners.

  35 amazement hurries another of the many instances in the play of personification. Were it not for the editorial principle that words that make sense in a Shakespeare passage should not be emended in favour of an expression preferred by the editor, one would be tempted as was Staunton, to propose ‘harries’, as a word mistaken by a scribe or compositor for ‘hurries’.

  36 doubtful both (1) fearful, nervous, and (2) causing doubt about their fidelity

  40 jewel of life i.e. the soul (that has left the body, its casket). The soul was often imagined as a pearl (perhaps because that too has a container, the shell of the oyster). Macbeth realizes the cost of his crimes, the loss of ‘mine eternal jewel’ (Mac 3.1.67).

  43 he knew Smallwood suggests that stressing the pronoun allows the Bastard to imply that others, ‘perhaps John himself, may have known more’.

  44 droop look down (see OED v. 1, ‘Of the eyes: To be bent downward, with the eyelids lowered’.

  Why … sad In the midst of his dismay over this news of the death of Arthur, John hears in the Bastard’s voice an echo of the words used by Arthur (4.1.11) as he was about to be blinded/killed by Hubert on John’s orders – a nice closing of the circle of ultimate responsibility.

  * * *

  43 aught] Theobald; ought F

  45 Be … act This section of the Bastard’s counsel to the King – and as a royal person and family member (nephew) he is an appropriate person to be giving the King his advice – is paralleled/anticipated by the advice given by Carlisle and Aumerle to the weak King Richard in R2 3.2.178ff.

  50 bragging boasting

  inferior eyes metonymy for persons socially beneath royalty

  54 glister … war shine like (armoured) Mars, the god of war. Richard II uses the same word but attaches it to himself and Phaëton in R2 3.3.178.

  55 become Oxf1 suggests both ‘to come to a place; to arrive’ and ‘grace or adorn’; the latter seems the first idea, especially when one notes a parallel cited by Braunmuller from E3 in one of the four scenes now commonly believed to be by Shakespeare: ‘The lion doth become his bloody jaws / And grace his foragement by being mild’ (2.561–2).

  59 Forage range abroad; raid

  60 displeasure an instance of personification

  61 grapple anticipation of the vexed grapple of the next scene (5.2.36)

  65 inglorious league an indictment by the Bastard that strikes home when one recalls John’s own stress on glory at the opening of the scene with the crown as ‘The circle of my glory’ (5.1.2).

  66–9 Shall … invasive Ard2 cites a possible source for this rhetorical question in Kyd’s Cornelia (1594): ‘“Shall we then, that are men and Romains borne, / Submit vs to vnurged slauerie? / Shall Rome that hath so many ouerthrowne / Now make herselfe a subject to her owne? / O base indignitie: a beardles youth …” (Kyd, p. 138).’

  67 fair-play orders The Bastard is sarcastically saying that invaded, violated England should nevertheless play ‘fair and square’ with the enemy. Note that fair-play, unique in the canon, appears in Nashe’s Unfortunate Traveller (Works, 2.295) as does beardless boy (69), a phrase used to describe Jack Wilton (Works, 2.309), the rogue-like hero of the ‘novel’ and parallel figure in terms of cheerfully independent energy and humour to the Bastard, who is now using these two Nashean phrases.

  70 cockered-silken especially pampered

  brave our fields defy (our troops) in the field (cf. Son 12.14); Wright, cited in Ard2, sees also ‘a side reference to the meaning of the adjective “brave”, showy or splendid; as if “to brave our fields” signified “to display his finery in our fields”’.

  71 flesh … soil experience battle for the first time by putting his sword into the flesh of another. Cf. the young John of Lancaster in 1H4. Oxf1 suggests that if soil is ‘a muddy place used by a wild boar for wallowing in’, the Dauphin would then be a more successful Adonis, the victim of the boar who fleshed his tusk in the young man. ‘Finally, if fields (70) and check (73) represent imagery from hunting or hawking, soil may be an error for ‘spoil’; see AW 4.3.14–15, ‘he fleshes his will in the spoil of her honour’. To complete the parallel, the Dauphin is the young rapist and mother England the despoiled victim.

  72 idly spread casually presented (as a result of excessive confidence)

  73 check resistance

  77 Here is the moment when the Bastard, who is of royal blood, becomes the nation’s military, though not its political leader.

  present current

  * * *

  67 fair-play orders] Capell; fayre-play-orders F 70 cockered-silken] cockered silken Fleay (cock’red; Pope subst.)

  78–9 Yet … foe Ard2 reads Yet as ‘now as always’ or ‘none the less’, i.e. ‘(Though I am heartening you) yet (this is unnecessary since) our side (party) may well cope with a more spirited (prouder) foe.’ However, Oxf1 , by introducing a SD ‘aside’ after courage and before Yet, allows the audience to doubt the outcome of the Bastard’s efforts.

  5.2.1 this the document of agreement between the rebellious English lords and the Dauphin. In the event this written pact will not be worth the parchment it is written on, as Melun will tell the English lords the truth with his dying breath in 5.4.14ff.

  3 precedent original

  4 fair order While the Dauphin may, hypocritically, be describing the statement as fair in the sense of ‘just’, he is primarily referring to a clean, legible copy made from notes taken of the agreement. According to Ard2, Holinshed implies that the document refers to Magna Carta: ‘“[Lewis] tooke an oth to mainteine and performe the old lawes and customes of the realme” (191, ii).’

  5 perusing reading closely

  6 the sacrament The religious, eucharistic comparison to murderous behaviour for political goals gilds the lily of duplicity. Ard2 suggests that Shakespeare is following Holinshed here: ‘At St Edmundsbury the nobles “receiued a solemne oth vpon the altar” that they would force John to confirm their rights “vnder his seale, for euer to remaine most stedfast and inuiolable”’ (Holinshed, 183–4).

  9 albeit although

  * * *

  78 courage!] Dyce; courage: F SD] Oxf 5.2.0.1–3] Enter (in Armes) Dolphin, Salisbury, Melooue, Pembroke, Bigot, Souldiers. 0.2 with a document] this edn 1+ SP] Dol. F 1 SD] this edn

  10 voluntary Although Salisbury’s comment seems to be true, the pressures of the time are making his decision only a bit more voluntary than that of John in surrendering the crown to Pandulph: ‘God be thanked, it is but voluntary’ (5.1.29).

  12 sore ulcer or wound

  13 plaster dressing

  14 inveterate canker old ulcer

  one wound i.e. the death of Arthur

  16 *this metal his sword

  17 widow-maker a kenning for ‘sword’

  19 Cries out upon appeals to, though it is possible that this expression is part of the self-accusation of the guilt-ridden Salisbury and means ‘exclaims against’

  21 physic cure. Here begins a somewhat circumlocutive version of homeopathic medicine: the disease or wound can be cured only by use of an element of the instrument that had caused the wound (cf. E3 2.130 and 2H6 5.1.100–1).

  22 deal … hand The hand is possibly not (just) a part of the body but chance, the cards fate has ‘dealt’. Ard2 sees the origin of the line in Holinshed: ‘“in such extremitie of despaire they [the barons in 1216] resolued with themselues to seeke for aid at the enimies hands” (190, i).’

  23 confused confusèd

  24 grieved grievèd

  26 *Were F2 corrects ‘Was’ to Were, but perhaps needlessly inasmuch as ‘was’ in the sixteenth century was a proper plural as well as a singular.

  28 her gentle bosom England is often personified as a woman, usually a mother. Cf. Genesis, 4.11, for the origin of the idea.

  * * *

  16 metal] Rowe; mettle F 26 Were] F2; Was F

  30 Upon the spot because of the stain

  31 land remote here France, but the passage refers to the folly of internecine European warfare when co-operation would allow for a Crusade to the pagan shore (36). The same question of a Crusade (one that doesn’t ever take place) is raised in the opening of 1H4 when the troubled King speaks of a putative move towards ‘strands afar remote’ where the English will ‘chase these pagans’ (1.1.4, 24).

  32 unacquainted unfamiliar (because foreign)

  34 Neptune’s arms the embrace of the sea which surrounds the island nation of England; Neptune = Roman god of the sea

  who either ‘[arms] that’, or Shakespeare has perhaps shifted the focus from the limbs doing the embracing to Neptune himself. Oxf1 cites Edward II, 1.4.49, for the impossibility of England’s sailing away from its present geographical position.

  clippeth thee embraces you, perhaps an echo of the dramatist’s most profoundly absorbed Latin text, Ovid’s Metamorphoses: ‘nec bracchia longo / margine terrarum’ (1.13–14, translated by Golding as ‘nor winding in and out / Did Amphitrytee with hir armes embrace the earth about’), and ‘ter Neptunus aquis cum torvo bracchia vultu / exserere ausus erat, ter non tulit aeris ignes’ (2.270–1: Golding skips these lines; the Loeb edition has: ‘Thrice Neptune essayed to lift his arms and august face from out the fiery atmosphere’ (Ovid, Met.).

  35 knowledge of thyself The intellectual goal of life is commonly held to be self-knowledge, with the admonition nosce teipsum (know thyself) so frequent in the sixteenth century that it is the title of a work by Sir John Davies (pub. 1599). Oxf1 notes Constance’s wish that she might be mad and thereby escape her pain, ‘For then ’tis like I should forget myself’ (3.4.49).

  36 *grapple a possible solution to F’s unhelpful ‘cripple’. The idea of England’s being drawn by hooks (grappling irons) across the seas to the Holy Land would work.

  38 malice echoes the French King’s reference to our cannons’ malice at 2.1.251.

  vein (1) blood-vessel; (2) mood, humour (Dover Wilson, cited in Ard2)

  40 temper nature, attitude, feeling

  * * *

  29–32 ranks – … cause – … here.] Cam2; rankes? … cause, … heere: F 33 SD] this edn 36 grapple] Pope; cripple F

  44 compulsion … brave respect requirement, constraint (to support John) … splendid sense of what they owe to England

  45 Tears would not be visible to many in the audience even if the actor could shed them on demand, but this reality could be conveyed by the Dauphin’s actually wiping Salisbury’s face with a handkerchief.

  46 progress With the Dauphin understandably eager to rule England, he speaks in the vocabulary of English royal practice; a progress is a royal visit through the country beyond London.

  48 inundation Here and in tempest (50) the Dauphin echoes the diction of John (and Pandulph) in the previous scene when John refers to the invasion of the French as an inundation (5.1.12) and Pandulph speaks of tempest (17).

  54 renowned renownèd

  59 gossiping relaxed conversation

  * * *

  43 thou] F4; not in F 47 SD] this edn 56 baby eyes] Capell; baby-eyes F 57 giant world] Theobald; giant-world F 63 SD] Smallwood

  64 an angel spake Editors often insert a SD for a trumpet blast signifying Pandulph’s entry and making possible the pun on angel, a gold coin worth about 10 shillings, sometimes called a ‘noble’ (cf. nobles, 62). In the midst of the humour in the joke is the notion that the English rebels have a fundamentally mercenary interest in siding with the Dauphin.

  68 holy breath picking up Pandulph’s own promise in the previous scene to use his breath to calm the storm of war (5.1.17)

  68–77 Hail … show Pandulph too confidently has assumed that for the French, as well as for himself, this war has essentially involved Rome and England, with France as the supportive agent of Rome. The Dauphin shows how this view is mistaken.

  79 propertied used as a thing, a tool or instrument of another

  * * *

  64.1] Halliwell; after 63 F PANDULPH] Pandulpho F attended] Capell 72 see] F4; Sea F 79 propertied,] F4 (propertied F2); proportied F

  83 coals of war Capell was first to suggest that F’s singular ‘coal’ should be plural, but in 4.1.108 the word is used as a plural without an s. Oxf1 suggestively notes that F’s final s on ‘wars’ may have been moved erroneously by the compositor from its intended position after ‘coal’.

  89 interest to title to; claim on. Ard2 cites Holinshed’s description of what Lewis is speaking of here to Pandulph: ‘Lewis “with frowning looke beheld the legat … disprouing not onelie the right which king Iohn had to the crowne, but also alledging his owne interest’ (191, i).

  92–107 What … set a lengthy series of 11 rhetorical questions revealing the independent anger of the indignant Dauphin

  93 by … marriage-bed With the death of Arthur, the nearest blood relative, aside from the usurping John, is Blanche, John’s niece and wife of the Dauphin, who claims the English throne through her.

  * * *

  83 coals of war] Hudson (Capell); coal of wars F 93 marriage-bed] F4; marriage bed F 95 half-conquered] Cam; half conquered F

  104 Vive le roi ‘Long live the king!’ Ard2 points out that Vive is disyllabic and that the expression was printed on sixteenth-century playing cards.

  banked Braunmuller notes, ‘A puzzling word, which Staunton claimed was “an allusion to card-playing where banked equaled won their towns, put them in bank” (a verb) is not recorded in the OED in Shakespeare’s time, nor is the sense of ‘bank’ as ‘a card dealer’s stake’. Bone, however, found closely apposite meanings in most European languages and allusions in English (Honigmann, 170, n. 2). Schanzer supports this interpretation, but shows that there is no connection between this passage and a similarly phrased one in Troublesome Reign, Pt 2, 3.517–22, as Honigmann claimed (170–1). Vaughan, New (85–6), supported Steevens’s tentative gloss, ‘thrown up entrenchments before them [the towns]’, by citing 2 Samuel, 20.15, ‘And they came and besieged him … and they cast up a bank against the city, and the people thereof stood on the ramper.’ It is also possible that banked means ‘confined within banks’, i.e. captured; see OED bank v. 3 trans. (earliest citation 1622).’

  106 match contest; with, as Braunmuller suggests, a reference to his marriage (match) to Blanche as the basis for his claim to England

  107 yielded set game already won. The pain for the Dauphin derives from his being opposed to the surrendering of what is now almost his. The term set, referring to the match or winning part of the match, is from card-playing. Cf. Tit 5.1.100.

  112 promised promisèd

  113 head of war Ard2 suggests not simply ‘army’ but the ‘flower, nucleus of an army’, loosely translating caput belli.

  114 culled selected, with an echo of ‘called’

  fiery spirits warriors so brave that they are like the spirits present at the birth of Glendower in 1H4 3.1.12–13: ‘At my nativity / The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes’; the Dauphin here is a bit like Glendower (and Hotspur in his hubris and seeking of glory).

  115 outlook OED v. 2, citing this as first instance given the senses of ‘outface’, ‘defy’ and ‘outstare’; as used by the two Philips, the King of France in 2.1.97 and the Bastard in 5.1.49.

  * * *

  108 No!] Smallwood; No, F

  118 fair play The Bastard likes this expression, repeating it from 5.1.67, but now in a positive sense.

  120 holy lord holy is spoken here either with heavy irony or with diplomatic smoothness. In either case the Bastard ignores the Dauphin.

  121 dealt for him acted or negotiated on his behalf (Oxf1)

  122–3 The Bastard is telling Pandulph either that he will not edit the Cardinal’s remarks, or that whatever he personally might think of the response he will in his current role as John’s ambassador not comment on what is said. In the event, the Bastard is quite personally and explosively expressive in response to Pandulph’s description of the Dauphin’s attitude.

  125 temporize with adjust to; hence, compromise